Description of the Research Opportunity
The USGS’ long-standing research, product development, and expertise of its flagship land cover datasets supports a vast user community and wide array of applications. The potential for development of a new national-scale product summarizing land use in the U.S. would greatly expand the utility of USGS land-change monitoring activities by more explicitly representing human management and intended use of the landscape. Monitoring changes in how humans utilize land resources expands on those land cover efforts and is important for the management of environmental resources, supporting sustainable development, urban/rural planning, mitigating disaster risk, and informing policy decisions. This effort would augment the existing land change monitoring product suite, ensuring consistency of land cover and use products for scientists, land managers, policy and other decision-makers, and support national-scale assessments. Candidates should propose methods that would develop a hierarchical classification scheme with nested land use classes that allow use of the product for a wide array of applications. Land use categories would differentiate between natural and human-dominated systems, as well as provide detailed categorization into how the landscape is being used (land use, land management). Social and economic information should be utilized along with existing satellite-based remote sensing data, including recently available high-resolution data from the commercial remote sensing sector. The characteristics of the land use dataset (e.g., number of use categories and detail) would be developed through engagement with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the land use product meets user needs. Development of contemporary (current) land use with potential application for time series (historical) land use and periodic updating and innovative use cases for land use data would be encouraged. A pilot application would be developed, demonstrating the practicality and effectiveness of generating a national-scale land use product.
Interested applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the Research Advisor(s) early in the application process to discuss project ideas.
Proposed Duty Station
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Areas of PhD
Remote sensing, computer science, geography, ecology, or related fields (candidates holding a Ph.D. in other disciplines but with extensive knowledge and skills relevant to the Research Opportunity may be considered).
Qualifications
Applicants must meet one of the following qualifications: Research Physical Scientist, Research Geographer, Research Computer Scientist, or Research Ecologist.
(This type of research is performed by those who have backgrounds for the occupations stated above. However, other titles may be applicable depending on the applicant's background, education, and research proposal. The final classification of the position will be made by the Human Resources specialist.)
