Publications
Publications, scientific literature, and information products from the Land Change Science Program.
Filter Total Items: 562
Assessing rangeland health under climate variability and change
RANGELAND HEALTH IN A CHANGING WORLD Rangeland health is an integrated metric that describes a complex suite of ecosystem properties and processes as applied to resource management. While the concept of “healthy” landscapes has a long history, the term “rangeland health” was codified in the US in 1994 as part of an effort to move towards a national, data driven, rangeland condition assessment (Nat
Authors
John B. Bradford, Michael C. Duniway, Seth M. Munson
Evidence for non-steady-state carbon emissions from snow-scoured alpine tundra
High-latitude warming is capable of accelerating permafrost degradation and the decomposition of previously frozen carbon. The existence of an analogous high-altitude feedback, however, has yet to be directly evaluated. We address this knowledge gap by coupling a radiocarbon-based model to 7 years (2008–2014) of continuous eddy covariance data from a snow-scoured alpine tundra meadow in Colorado,
Authors
John F. Knowles, Peter D. Blanken, Corey Lawrence, Mark W. Williams
Wind erosion and dust from US drylands: a review of causes, consequences, and solutions in a changing world
Erosion by wind is one of the principal processes associated with land degradation in drylands
and is a significant concern to land managers and policymakers globally. In the drylands of North America, millions of tons of soil are lost to wind erosion annually. Of the 60 million ha in the United States identified as most vulnerable to wind erosion (arid and dominated by fine sandy soils), 64% are man
Authors
Michael C. Duniway, Alix A. Pfennigwerth, Stephen E. Fick, Travis W. Nauman, Jayne Belnap, Nichole N. Barger
Surface fire to Crown Fire: Fire history in the Taos Valley watersheds, New Mexico, USA
Tree-ring fire scars, tree ages, historical photographs, and historical surveys indicate that, for centuries, fire played different ecological roles across gradients of elevation, forest, and fire regimes in the Taos Valley Watersheds. Historical fire regimes collapsed across the three watersheds by 1899, leaving all sites without fire for at least 119 years. Historical photographs and quaking asp
Authors
Lane B Johnson, Ellis Margolis
Historical background and current developments for mapping burned area from satellite Earth observation
Fire has a diverse range of impacts on Earth's physical and social systems. Accurate and up to date information on areas affected by fire is critical to better understand drivers of fire activity, as well as its relevance for biogeochemical cycles, climate, air quality, and to aid fire management. Mapping burned areas was traditionally done from field sketches. With the launch of the first Earth o
Authors
Emilio Chuvieco, Flourent Mouillot, Guido R. van der Werf, Jesús San Miguel, Mihai Tanasse, Nikos Koutsias, Mariano García, Marta Yebra, Marc Padilla, Angelika Heil, Todd Hawbaker, Louis Giglio
An assessment of plant species differences on cellulose oxygen isotopes from two Kenai Peninsula, Alaska peatlands: Implications for hydroclimatic reconstructions
Peat cores are valuable archives of past environmental change because they accumulate plant organic matter over millennia. While studies have primarily focused on physical, ecological, and some biogeochemical proxies, cores from peatlands have increasingly been used to interpret hydroclimatic change using stable isotope analyses of cellulose preserved in plant remains. Previous studies indicate th
Authors
Miriam Jones, Lesleigh Anderson, Katherine Keller, Bailey Nash, Virginia Littell, Matthew J. Wooller, Chelsea Jolley
The plant diversity sampling design for The National Ecological Observatory Network
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is designed to facilitate an understanding of the impact of environmental change on ecological systems. Observations of plant diversity—responsive to changes in climate, disturbance, and land use, and ecologically linked to soil, biogeochemistry, and organisms—result in NEON data products that cross a range of organizational levels. Collections in
Authors
David T. Barnett, Peter B. Adler, Benjamin R. Chemel, Paul A. Duffy, Brian J. Enquist, James B. Grace, Susan P. Harrison, Robert K. Peet, David S. Schimel, Thomas J. Stohlgren, Mark Vellend
Microclimate influences mangrove freeze damage: Implications for range expansion in response to changing macroclimate
In response to warming winter air temperatures, freeze-sensitive mangrove forests are expected to expand at the expense of freeze-tolerant salt marshes. To better anticipate and prepare for mangrove range expansion, there is a need to advance understanding of the modulating role of microclimate. Here, we synthesized hypotheses regarding the effects of microclimatic variation on temperature gradien
Authors
Michael J. Osland, Arik M. Hartmann, Richard H. Day, Michael S. Ross, Courtney T. Hall, Laura C. Feher, William Vervaeke
A multidisciplinary framework to derive global river reach classifications at high spatial resolution
Projected climate and environmental change are expected to increase the pressure on global freshwater resources. To prepare for and cope with the related risks, stakeholders need to devise plans for sustainable management of river systems, which in turn requires the identification of management-appropriate operational units, such as groups of rivers that share similar environmental and biological
Authors
Camille Ouellet Dallaire, Bernhard Lehner, Roger Sayre, Michele Thieme
A new 30 meter resolution global shoreline vector and associated global islands database for the development of standardized ecological coastal units
A new 30-m spatial resolution global shoreline vector (GSV) was developed from annual composites of 2014 Landsat satellite imagery. The semi-automated classification of the imagery was accomplished by manual selection of training points representing water and non-water classes along the entire global coastline. Polygon topology was applied to the GSV, resulting in a new characterisation of the num
Authors
Roger Sayre, Suzanne Noble, Sharon L. Hamann, Rebecca A. Smith, Dawn J. Wright, Sean P. Breyer, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Dabney Hopkins, Drew Stephens, Kevin Kelly, Zeenatul Basher, Devon Burton, Jill Janene Cress, Karina Atkins, D. Paco Van Sistine, Beverly Friesen, Rebecca Allee, Tom Allen, Peter Aniello, Irawan Asaad, Mark John Costello, Kathy Goodin, Peter Harrison, Maria T. Kavanaugh, Helen Lillis, Eleonora Manca, Frank E. Muller-Karger, Bjorn Nyberg, Rost Parsons, Justin Saarinen, Jac Steiner, Adam Reed
Long-term nitrogen addition shifts the soil nematode community to bacterivore-dominated and reduces its ecological maturity in a subalpine forest
Nitrogen deposition from anthropogenic sources is a global problem that reaches even the most remote ecosystems. Responses belowground vary by ecosystem, and have feedbacks to geochemical processes, including carbon storage. A long-term nitrogen addition study in a subalpine forest has shown carbon loss over time, atypical for a forest ecosystem. Loss of microbial biomass is likely linked to lower
Authors
E. Ashley Shaw, Claudia M. Boot, John C. Moore, Diana H. Wall, Jill Baron
Sediment trapping and carbon sequestration in floodplains of the lower Atchafalaya Basin, LA: Allochthonous vs. autochthonous carbon sources
Recent studies suggest that about 2 Pg of organic C is stored on floodplains worldwide. The present study indicates the Atchafalaya River, fifth largest river in the United States in terms of discharge, traps 30 mm/y of sediment on average within its floodplain, which is the highest average non‐episodic rate of fluvial deposition on the U.S. Coastal Plain. We installed sediment sampling stations a
Authors
Cliff R. Hupp, Daniel E. Kroes, Gregory Noe, Edward R. Schenk, Richard H. Day