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Publications

Publications, scientific literature, and information products from the Land Change Science Program.

Filter Total Items: 562

The mighty Susquehanna—extreme floods in Eastern North America during the past two millennia

The hazards posed by infrequent major floods to communities along the Susquehanna River and the ecological health of Chesapeake Bay remain largely unconstrained due to the short length of streamgage records. Here we develop a history of high‐flow events on the Susquehanna River during the late Holocene from flood deposits contained in MD99‐2209, a sediment core recovered in 26 m of water from Ches
Authors
Michael Toomey, Meagan Cantwell, Steven Colman, Thomas M. Cronin, Jeffrey P. Donnelly, Liviu Giosan, Clifford Heil, Robert L. Korty, Marci E. Marot, Debra A. Willard

The potential role of very high-resolution imagery to characterise lake, wetland and stream systems across the Prairie Pothole Region, United States

Aquatic features critical to watershed hydrology range widely in size from narrow, shallow streams to large, deep lakes. In this study we evaluated wetland, lake, and river systems across the Prairie Pothole Region to explore where pan-sharpened high-resolution (PSHR) imagery, relative to Landsat imagery, could provide additional data on surface water distribution and movement, missed by Landsat.
Authors
Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Charles R. Lane

A bibliometric profile of the Remote Sensing Open Access Journal published by MDPI between 2009 and 2018

Remote Sensing Open Access Journal (RS OAJ) is an international leading journal in the field of remote sensing science and technology. It was first published in the year 2009 and is currently celebrating tenth year of publications. In this research, a bibliometric analysis of RS OAJ was conducted based on 5588 articles published during the 10-year (2009–2018) time-period. The bibliometric analysis
Authors
YuYing Zhang, Prasad S. Thenkabail, Peng Wang

Adaptive management assists reintroduction as higher tides threaten an endangered salt marsh plant

In theory, extirpated plant species can be reintroduced and managed to restore sustainable populations. However, few reintroduced plants are known to persist for more than a few years. Our adaptive‐management case study illustrates how we restored the endangered hemiparasitic annual plant, Chloropyron maritimum subsp. maritimum (salt marsh bird's beak), to Sweetwater Marsh, San Diego Bay National
Authors
Gregory Noe, Meghan Fellows, Lorraine Parsons, Janelle West, John C. Callaway, Sally Trnka, Mark Wegener, Joy Zedler

Linking landscapes and people—Projecting the future of the Great Plains

We developed a unique set of landscape projections for the Great Plains that use real land-management parcels to represent landscape patterns at high spatial and thematic resolution.Both anthropogenic land use and natural vegetation respond in the model to projected changes in groundwater availability and climate change.Thirty-three scenario combinations were modeled, facilitating landscape planni
Authors
Terry L. Sohl, Jordan Dornbierer, Steve Wika

Changes in the active, dead, and dormant microbial community structure across a Pleistocene permafrost chronosequence

Permafrost hosts a community of microorganisms that survive and reproduce for millennia despite extreme environmental conditions such as water stress, subzero temperatures, high salinity, and low nutrient availability. Many studies focused on permafrost microbial community composition use DNA-based methods such as metagenomic and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. However, these methods do not distinguish
Authors
Alexander Burkert, Thomas A. Douglas, Mark Waldrop, Rachel Mackelprang

Effect of permafrost thaw on plant and soil fungal community in the boreal forest: Does fungal community change mediate plant productivity response?

Permafrost thaw is leading to rapid shifts in boreal ecosystem function. Permafrost thaw affects soil carbon turnover through changes in soil hydrology, however, the biotic mechanisms regulating plant community response remain elusive. Here, we measured the response of fungal community composition and soil nutrient content in an intact permafrost plateau forest soil and an adjacent thermokarst bog
Authors
Ursel M.E Schütte, Jeremiah A. Henning, Yuzhen Ye, A. Bowling, James D. Ford, Helene Genet, Mark Waldrop, Merritt R. Turetsky, Jeffrey R. White, James D Bever

Biological and mineralogical controls over cycling of low molecular weight organic compounds along a soil chronosequence

Low molecular weight organic compounds (LMWOC) represent a small but critical component of soil organic matter (SOM) for microbial growth and metabolism. The fate of these compounds is largely under microbial control, yet outside the cell, intrinsic soil properties can also significantly influence their turnover and retention. Using a chronosequence representing 1200 ka of pedogenic development, w
Authors
Jack McFarland, Mark P. Waldrop, Daniel Strawn, Courtney Creamer, Corey R. Lawrence, Monica Haw

The 4.2 ka event, ENSO, and coral reef development

Variability of sea-surface temperature related to shifts in the mode of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been implicated as a possible forcing mechanism for the global-scale changes in tropical and subtropical precipitation known as the 4.2 ka event. We review records of coral reef development and paleoceanography from the tropical eastern Pacific (TEP) to evaluate the potential impact
Authors
Lauren Toth, Richard B. Aronson

Early-warning signals of individual tree mortality based on annual radial growth

Tree mortality is a key driver of forest dynamics and its occurrence is projected to increase in the future due to climate change. Despite recent advances in our understanding of the physiological mechanisms leading to death, we still lack robust indicators of mortality risk that could be applied at the individual tree scale. Here, we build on a previous contribution exploring the differences in g
Authors
Maxime Cailleret, Vasilis Dakos, Steven Jansen, Elisabeth M. R. Robert, Tuomas Aakala, Mariano M. Amoroso, Joe A. Antos, Christof Bigler, Harald Bugmann, Marco Caccianaga, Jesus-Julio Camarero, Paolo Cherubini, Marie R. Coyea, Katarina Cufar, Adrian J. Das, Hendrik Davi, Guillermo Gea-Izquierdo, Sten Gillner, Laurel J. Haavik, Henrik Hartmann, Ana-Maria Heres, Kevin R. Hultine, Pavel Janda, Jeffrey M. Kane, Viachelsav I. Kharuk, Thomas Kitzberger, Tamir Klein, Tom Levanic, Juan-Carlos Linares, Fabio Lombardi, Harri Makinen, Ilona Mészáros, Juha M. Metsaranta, Walter Oberhuber, Andreas Papadopoulos, Any Mary Petritan, Brigitte Rohner, Gabriel Sanguesa-Barreda, Jeremy M. Smith, Amanda B. Stan, Dejan B. Stojanovic, Maria-Laura Suarez, Miroslav Svoboda, Volodymyr Trotsiuk, Ricardo Villalba, Alana R. Westwood, Peter H. Wyckoff, Jordi Martínez-Vilalta

Warming effects of spring rainfall increase methane emissions from thawing permafrost

Methane emissions regulate the near‐term global warming potential of permafrost thaw, particularly where loss of ice‐rich permafrost converts forest and tundra into wetlands. Northern latitudes are expected to get warmer and wetter, and while there is consensus that warming will increase thaw and methane emissions, effects of increased precipitation are uncertain. At a thawing wetland complex in I
Authors
Rebecca B. Neumann, C.J. Moorberg, J.D. Lundquist, J.C. Turner, Mark P. Waldrop, Jack W. McFarland, E.S. Euskirchen, C.W. Edgar, M. R. Turetsky

Evidence for conservative transport of dissolved organic carbon in major river basins in the Gulf of Maine Watershed

Transport and fate of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in rivers are important aspects of the carbon cycle and the critical linkage between terrestrial, aquatic, and marine systems. Recent studies have quantified fluvial export to the marine environment in many systems, but in-stream losses of DOC are poorly constrained. This study compares DOC yields (kg C/ha) between the area-weighted averages of
Authors
Thomas G. Huntington, Collin S. Roesler, George R. Aiken