Publications
Listed here are publications, reports and articles by the Land Change Science Program in the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area.
Filter Total Items: 1136
Trees have similar growth responses to first-entry fires and reburns following long-term fire exclusion
Managing fire ignitions for resource benefit decreases fuel loads and reduces the risk of high-severity fire in fire-suppressed dry conifer forests. However, the reintroduction of low-severity wildfire can injure trees, which may decrease their growth after fire. Post-fire growth responses could change from first-entry fires to reburns, as first-entry fires reduce fuel loads and the...
Authors
Kevin G. Willson, Ellis Margolis, Mathew D. Hurteau
Aboveground carbon stocks across a hydrological gradient: Ghost forests to non-tidal freshwater forested wetlands
Upper estuarine forested wetlands (UEFWs) play an important role in the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C), which is facilitated by their position at the boundary of terrestrial and maritime environments but threatened by sea level rise. This study assessed the change in aboveground C stocks along the estuarine–riverine hydrogeomorphic gradient spanning salt-impacted freshwater...
Authors
Christopher J. Shipway, Jamie Duberstein, William H. Conner, Ken W. Krauss, Gregory Noe, Stefanie L. Whitmire
Forest cover lessens hurricane impacts on peak streamflow
Cyclonic storms (i.e., hurricanes) are powerful disturbance events that often cause widespread forest damage. Storm-related canopy damage reduces rainfall interception and evapotranspiration, but impacts on streamflow regimes are poorly understood. We quantify streamflow changes in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, and evaluate whether forest cover and storm...
Authors
Jazlynn S. Hall, Martha A. Scholl, James B. Shanley, Serena Matt, María Uriarte
Pre-fire assessment of post-fire debris flow hazards in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed
BackgroundWildfires are increasing in size and severity due to climate change combined with overstocked forests. Fire increases the likelihood of debris flows, posing significant threats to life, property, and water supplies.AimsWe conducted a debris-flow hazard assessment of the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed (SFMW) to answer two questions: (1) where are debris flows most likely to occur...
Authors
Manuel K. Lopez, Ellis Margolis, Anne C. Tillery, S. Bassett, Alan Hook
The effect of drying boreal lakes on plants, soils, and microbial communities in lake margin habitats
Decadal scale lake drying in interior Alaska results in lake margin colonization by willow shrub and graminoid vegetation, but the effects of these changes on plant production, biodiversity, soil properties, and soil microbial communities are not well known. We studied changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) storage, plant and microbial community composition, and soil...
Authors
Vijay P. Patil, Jack W. McFarland, Kimberly Wickland, Kristen L. Manies, Mark Winterstein, Teresa N. Hollingsworth, Eugenie S. Euskirchen, Mark P. Waldrop
Glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland
No abstract available.
Authors
D. Burgess, G. Wolken, B. Wouters, L.M. Andreassen, Caitlyn Florentine, J. Kohler, B. Luks, F. Pálsson, Louis Sass, L. Thomson, T. Thorsteinsson
Observing glacier elevation changes from spaceborne optical and radar sensors – an inter-comparison experiment using ASTER and TanDEM-X data
Observations of glacier mass changes are key to understanding the response of glaciers to climate change and related impacts, such as regional runoff, ecosystem changes, and global sea level rise. Spaceborne optical and radar sensors make it possible to quantify glacier elevation changes, and thus multi-annual mass changes, on a regional and global scale. However, estimates from a...
Authors
Livia Piermattei, Michael Zemp, Christian Sommer, Fanny Brun, Matthias H. Braun, Liss M. Andreassen, Joaquín M. C. Belart, Etienne Berthier, Atanu Bhattacharya, Laura Boehm Vock, Tobias Bolch, Amaury Dehecq, Inés Dussaillant, Daniel Falaschi, Caitlyn Florentine, Dana Floricioiu, Christian Ginzler, Gregoire Guillet, Romain Hugonnet, Andreas Kääb, Owen King, Christoph Klug, Friedrich Knuth, Lukas Krieger, Jeff La Frenierre, Robert McNabb, Christopher Mcneil, Rainer Prinz, Louis Sass, Thorsten Seehaus, David Shean, Désirée Treichler, Anja Wendt, Ruitang Yang
Projected changes in mangrove distribution and vegetation structure under climate change in the southeastern United States
AimThe climate change-induced transition from grass-dominated marshes to woody-plant-dominated mangrove forests has the potential to impact the ecosystem goods and services provided by coastal wetlands. To better anticipate and prepare for these impacts, there is a need to advance understanding of future changes in mangrove distribution and coastal wetland vegetation structural...
Authors
Rémi Bardou, Michael J. Osland, Jahson B. Alemu, Laura C. Feher, David P. Harlan, Stephen B. Scyphers, Christine C. Shepard, Savannah H. Swinea, Kalaina B. Thorne, Jill E. Andrew, A. Randall Hughes
Seasonal drought treatments impact plant and microbial uptake of nitrogen in a mixed shrub grassland on the Colorado Plateau
For many drylands, both long- and short-term drought conditions can accentuate landscape heterogeneity at both temporal (e.g., role of seasonal patterns) and spatial (e.g., patchy plant cover) scales. Furthermore, short-term drought conditions occurring over one season can exacerbate long-term, multidecadal droughts or aridification, by limiting soil water recharge, decreasing plant...
Authors
Rebecca A Finger-Higgens, David L. Hoover, Anna C. Knight, Savannah L. Wilson, Tara Boyce Belnap Bishop, Robin H. Reibold, Sasha Reed, Michael Duniway
The geochronology of White Sands Locality 2 is resolved
Rhode et al. (2024) allege that there are many “unresolved issues” with the geochronology of White Sands National Park (WHSA) Locality 2. They suggest there are substantial age offsets due to hard-water effects in the aquatic plants that were dated and that radiocarbon ages of pollen may be anomalously old due to reworking. In their view, the luminescence ages are likely to be maximum...
Authors
Jeffrey S. Pigati, Kathleen B. Springer, Harrison J. Gray, Matthew R. Bennett, David Bustos
Permafrost history in the sporadic zone as context for recent carbon loss using acryostratigraphy, plant macrofossil, and stable isotope approach
Permafrost and landscape history, in addition to ground ice content, are increasingly identified as important components in predicting permafrost thaw trajectories. Together with cryostratigraphy, plant remains and stable isotopes can provide useful information about past permafrost aggradation and thaw. We applied these methods with radiocarbon dating on peat and permafrost cores in the...
Authors
Miriam C. Jones, Lesleigh Anderson, Eva Anne Stephani, Benjamin M. Jones
Freshwater biogeochemical hotspots: High primary production and ecosystem respiration in shallow waterbodies
Ponds, wetlands, and shallow lakes (collectively “shallow waterbodies”) are among the most biogeochemically active freshwater ecosystems. Measurements of gross primary production (GPP), respiration (R), and net ecosystem production (NEP) are rare in shallow waterbodies compared to larger and deeper lakes, which can bias our understanding of lentic ecosystem processes. In this study, we...
Authors
Joseph Rabaey, Meredith A. Holgerson, David M. Richardson, Mikkel Rene Andersen, Sheel Bansal, Lauren E Bortolotti, James B. Cotner, Daniel J. Hornbach, Kenneth T. Martinsen, Eric Moody, Olivia F. Schloegel