Publications
Below is a list of the most recent EROS peer-reviewed scientific papers, reports, fact sheets, and other publications. You can search all our publication holdings by type, topic, year, and order.
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Filter Total Items: 2442
Estimates of public-supply, domestic, and irrigation water withdrawal, use, and trends in the Upper Rio Grande Basin, 1985 to 2015
The Rio Grande flows approximately 670 miles from its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains of south-central Colorado to Fort Quitman, Texas, draining the Upper Rio Grande Basin (URGB) study area of 32,000 square miles that includes parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Parts of the basin extend into the United Mexican States (hereafter “Mexico”), where the Rio Grande forms the international bo
Authors
Tamara I. Ivahnenko, Allison K. Flickinger, Amy E. Galanter, Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, Diana E. Pedraza, Gabriel B. Senay
A novel automatic phenology learning (APL) method of training sample selection using multiple datasets for time-series land cover mapping
The long record of Landsat imagery, which is the cornerstone of Earth observation, provides an opportunity to monitor land use and land cover (LULC) change and understand the interactions between the climate and earth system through time. A few change detection algorithms such as Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) have been developed to utilize all available Landsat images for c
Authors
Congcong Li, George Z. Xian, Qiang Zhou, Bruce Pengra
Modeling watershed carbon dynamics as affected by land cover change and soil erosion
Process-based ecosystem carbon cycle models typically incorporate vegetation growth, vegetation mortality, and soil respiration as well as the biotic and environmental drivers that influence these variables. However, few spatially explicit process models can efficiently incorporate the influence of land cover change and carbon lateral movement at regional scales or high spatial resolution. This st
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Paul Selmants, Jiaojiao Diao, Qiang Zhou, Bruce Worstell, Monica Mei Jeen Moritsch
Digital elevation models: Terminology and definitions
Digital elevation models (DEMs) provide fundamental depictions of the three-dimensional shape of the Earth’s surface and are useful to a wide range of disciplines. Ideally, DEMs record the interface between the atmosphere and the lithosphere using a discrete two-dimensional grid, with complexities introduced by the intervening hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and anthroposphere. The treatment o
Authors
Peter L. Guth, Adriaan Van Niekerk, Carlos H. Grohmann, Jan-Peter Muller, Laurence Hawker, Igor V. Florinsky, Dean B. Gesch, Hannes I. Reuter, Virginia Herrera-Cruz, Serge Riazanoff, Carlos López-Vázquez, Claudia C. Carabajal, Clément Albinet, Peter Strobl
Virginia and Landsat
From the shores of Jamestown and spreading north, south, and west, the lands that became the State of Virginia were some of the first in North America top experience rapid landscape change from European settlement. Imagery and data from the USGS Landsat series of satellites offer an unparalleled resource for the study, understanding, and preservation of Virginia’s land and water resources. From mo
Authors
Historical changes in plant water use and need in the continental United States
A robust method for characterizing the biophysical environment of terrestrial vegetation uses the relationship between Actual Evapotranspiration (AET) and Climatic Water Deficit (CWD). These variables are usually estimated from a water balance model rather than measured directly and are often more representative of ecologically-significant changes than temperature or precipitation. We evaluate tre
Authors
Michael T Terck, David Thoma, John E. Gross, Kirk R. Sherrill, Stefanie Kagone, Gabriel B. Senay
Semi-centennial of Landsat observations and pending Landsat 9 launch
The first Landsat was placed in orbit on 23 July 1972, followed by a series of missions that have provided nearly continuous, two-satellite 8-day repeat image coverage of the Earth’s land areas for the last half-century. These observations have substantially enhanced our understanding of the Earth’s terrestrial dynamics, both as a major element of the Earth’s physical system, the primary home of h
Authors
Samuel N. Goward, Jeffery G. Masek, Thomas Loveland, John L. Dwyer, Darrel L. Williams, Terry Arvidson, Laura E.P. Rocchio, James R. Irons
Taxonomic and functional differences between winter and summer crustacean zooplankton communities in lakes across a trophic gradient
Despite increasing interest in winter limnology, few studies have examined under-ice zooplankton communities and the factors shaping them in different types of temperate lakes. To better understand drivers of zooplankton community structure in winter and summer, we sampled 13 lakes across a large trophic status gradient for crustacean zooplankton abundance, taxonomic and functional community compo
Authors
Kirill Shchapov, P. Wilburn, A. Bramburger, G. Silsbe, L. Olmanson, Christopher J. Crawford, E. Litchmann, T. Ozersky
Michigan and Landsat
Water means a lot to Michigan, often called the Great Lakes State. The name “Michigan” comes from an Ojibwe word meaning large, or great, water or lake. As the only State touching four of the five Great Lakes—Michigan, Superior, Huron, and Erie—it claims the longest freshwater coastline in the United States.Yet Michigan is not just about water—forests, agriculture, mines, cities, and even sand dun
Authors
System characterization report on the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite-4A (CBERS–4A)
Executive SummaryThis report addresses system characterization of the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite-4A (CBERS–4A) multispectral remote sensing satellite and is part of a series of system characterization reports produced and delivered by the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Cal/Val Center of Excellence in 2021. These reports present and detail the methodology
Authors
James C. Vrabel, Gregory L. Stensaas, Cody Anderson, Jon Christopherson, Minsu Kim, Seonkyung Park, Simon J. Cantrell
Mapping wetland burned area from Sentinel-2 across the southeastern United States and its contributions relative to Landsat 8 (2016-2019)
Prescribed fires and wildfires are common in wetland ecosystems across the Southeastern United States. However, the wetland burned area has been chronically underestimated across the region due to (1) spectral confusion between open water and burned area, (2) rapid post-fire vegetation regrowth, and (3) high annual precipitation limiting clear-sky satellite observations. We developed a machine lea
Authors
Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Todd Hawbaker, Casey Teske, Andrea Ku, Joe Noble, Joshua J. Picotte
Validation of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) collection 1.0 annual land cover products 1985–2017
The U.S. Geological Survey Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (USGS LCMAP) has released a suite of annual land cover and land cover change products for the conterminous United States (CONUS). The accuracy of these products was assessed using an independently collected land cover reference sample dataset produced by analysts interpreting Landsat data, high-resolution aerial photograp
Authors
Stephen V. Stehman, Bruce Pengra, Josephine Horton, Danika F. Wellington