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: 2456
A new approach to evaluate and reduce uncertainty of model-based biodiversity projections for conservation policy formulation
Biodiversity projections with uncertainty estimates under different climate, land-use, and policy scenarios are essential to setting and achieving international targets to mitigate biodiversity loss. Evaluating and improving biodiversity predictions to better inform policy decisions remains a central conservation goal and challenge. A comprehensive strategy to evaluate and reduce uncertainty of mo
Authors
Bonnie Myers, Sarah R. Weiskopf, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Simon Ferrier, Ensheng Weng, Kimberly Ann Casey, Michael Harfoot, Stephen Jackson, Allison K. Leidner, Timothy M. Lenton, Gordon Luikart, Hiroyuki Matsuda, Nathalie Pettorelli, Isabel M. D. Rosa, Alexander C. Ruane, Gabriel B. Senay, Shawn P. Serbin, Derek P. Tittensor, T. Douglas Beard
Impact of precipitation and increasing temperatures on drought trends in eastern Africa
In eastern Africa droughts can cause crop failure and lead to food insecurity. With increasing temperatures, there is an a priori assumption that droughts are becoming more severe. However, the link between droughts and climate change is not sufficiently understood. Here we investigate trends in long-term agricultural drought and the influence of increasing temperatures and precipitation deficits.
Authors
Sarah F. Kew, Sjoukje Y. Philip, Mathias Hauser, Michael Hobbins, Niko Wanders, Ted I.E. Veldkamp, Gert von Oldenburgh, Karin van der Wiel, Ted I. E. Veldkamp, Joyce Kimutai, Chris Funk, Friederike Otto
The climate envelope of Alaska’s northern treelines: Implications for controlling factors and future treeline advance
Understanding the key mechanisms that control northern treelines is important to accurately predict biome shifts and terrestrial feedbacks to climate. At a global scale, it has long been observed that elevational and latitudinal treelines occur at similar mean growing season air temperature (GSAT) isotherms, inspiring the growth limitation hypothesis (GLH) that cold GSAT limits aboveground growth
Authors
Colin T. Maher, Roman J. Dial, Neal J Pastick, Rebecca E. Hewitt, M. Torre Jorgenson, Patrick F. Sullivan
Simulated atmospheric response to four projected land-use land-cover change scenarios for 2050 in the north-central United States
Land-use land-cover change (LULCC) has become an important topic of research for the central United States because of the extensive conversion of the natural prairie into agricultural land, especially in the northern Great Plains. As a result, shifts in the natural climate (minimum/maximum temperature, precipitation, etc.) across the north-central United States have been observed, as noted within
Authors
Paul Xavier Flanagan, Rezaul Mahmood, Terry L. Sohl, Mark Svoboda, Brian D. Wardlow, Michael Hayes, Eric Rappin
Post-drought groundwater storage recovery in California’s Central Valley
Groundwater depletion is a major threat to agricultural and municipal water supply in California's Central Valley. Recent droughts during 2007–2009 and 2012–2016 exacerbated chronic groundwater depletion. However, it is unclear how much groundwater storage recovered from drought-related overdrafts during post-drought years, and how climatic conditions and water management affected recovery times.
Authors
Sarfaraz Alam, Mekonnen Gebremichael, Zhaoxin Ban, Bridget R. Scanlon, Gabriel B. Senay, D. P. Lettenmaier
Earth Resources Observation and Science Center—Keeping watch over Earth's resources
The Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is the largest facility of its kind within the U.S. Geological Survey. As both a science and data center, EROS serves a unique and critical role in shaping our understanding of a changing planet.EROS opened its doors in 1973 as a receiving station, data archive, and data distribution hub for the USGS Landsat series of Earth observing satell
Authors
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