Publications

It is important to understand how upland ecosystems of Alaska, which are estimated to occupy 84% of the state (i.e., 1,237,774 km2), are influencing and will influence state‐wide carbon (C) dynamics in the face of ongoing climate change. We coupled fire disturbance and biogeochemical models to assess the relative effects of changing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), climate, logging and fire regim

A Land Product Characterization System (LPCS) has been developed to provide land data and products to the community of individuals interested in validating space-based land products by comparing them with similar products available from other sensors or surface-based observations. The LPCS facilitates the application of global multi-satellite and in situ data for characterization and validation of

In the Western United States, shrubland ecosystems provide vital ecological, hydrological, biological, agricultural, and recreational services. However, disturbances such as livestock grazing, exotic species invasion, conversion to agriculture, climate change, urban expansion, and energy development are altering these ecosystems.Improving our understanding of how shrublands are distributed, where

Understanding the effects of management practices on soil organic carbon (SOC) is important for designing effective policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. In the Midwest United States, management practices in the croplands have been improved to increase crop production and reduce SOC loss since the 1980s. Many studies of SOC dynamics in croplands have been performed to under

Tools that can monitor biomass and nutritional quality of forage plants are needed to understand how arctic herbivores may respond to the rapidly changing environment at high latitudes. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) has been widely used to assess changes in abundance and distribution of terrestrial vegetative communities. However, the efficacy of NDVI to measure seasonal change

Landsat data in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) archive are being reprocessed to generate a tiered collection of consistently geolocated and radiometrically calibrated products that are suitable for time series analyses. With the implementation of the collection management, no major updates will be made to calibration of the Landsat sensors within a collection. Only calibration parameters needed

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the hydrologic cycle, accounting for ~70% of precipitation in the conterminous U.S. (CONUS), but it has been a challenge to predict accurately across different spatio-temporal scales. The increasing availability of remotely sensed data has led to significant advances in the frequency and spatial resolution of ET estimates, derived from energy balance p

Forests have historically been under significant land use pressures that cause periods of degradation, clearance, and recovery. To understand these changes, studies are needed that place trends in a historical landscape context and also examine recent dynamics. Here, we use historical investigation (c. 1800) and an examination of land use and land cover change between 1973 and 2006 to establish a

The 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) acquires high-resolution elevation data for the Nation. This program has been operating under an opportunity-oriented approach, acquiring light detection and ranging (lidar) projects of varying sizes scattered across the United States. As a result, the national 3DEP elevation layer is subject to data gaps or unnecessary overlap b

Understanding the causes and consequences of component change in sagebrush steppe is crucial for evaluating ecosystem sustainability. The sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) steppe ecosystem of the northwest USA has been impacted by the invasion of exotic grasses, increasing fire return intervals, changing land management practices, and fragmentation, often lowering the overall resilience to change. We uti

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) team provides food insecurity outlooks for several developing countries in Africa, Central Asia, and Central America. This study describes development of a new global reference evapotranspiration (ETo) seasonal reforecast and skill evaluation with a particular emphasis on the potential use of this dataset by the FEWS NET to support food insecurit

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) provides thematic land cover and land cover change data at 30-meter spatial resolution for the United States. Although the NLCD is considered to be the leading thematic land cover/land use product and overall classification accuracy across the NLCD is high, performance and consistency in the vast shrub and grasslands of the Western United States is lower tha