Birgit Peterson, PhD
Dr. Peterson received her PhD in Geography from the University of Maryland. She has been at USGS EROS for that last 10 plus years, supporting various fire science projects, including the LANDFIRE program.
Dr. Peterson received her PhD in Geography from the University of Maryland. She has been at USGS EROS for that last 10 plus years, supporting various fire science projects, including the LANDFIRE program. Her primary interest is in leverage remotely sensed data to assess vegetation structure, especially as it relates to wildland fire.
Science and Products
Filter Total Items: 20
LANDFIRE 2010 - updated data to support wildfire and ecological management
Wildfire is a global phenomenon that affects human populations and ecosystems. Wildfire effects occur at local to global scales impacting many people in different ways (Figure 1). Ecological concerns due to land use, fragmentation, and climate change impact natural resource use, allocation, and conservation. Access to consistent and current environmental data is a constant challenge, yet necessary
Authors
Kurtis J. Nelson, Joel A. Connot, Birgit E. Peterson, Joshua J. Picotte
The LANDFIRE Refresh strategy: updating the national dataset
The LANDFIRE Program provides comprehensive vegetation and fuel datasets for the entire United States. As with many large-scale ecological datasets, vegetation and landscape conditions must be updated periodically to account for disturbances, growth, and natural succession. The LANDFIRE Refresh effort was the first attempt to consistently update these products nationwide. It incorporated a combina
Authors
Kurtis J. Nelson, Joel A. Connot, Birgit E. Peterson, Charley Martin
Towards integration of GLAS data into a national fuels mapping program
Comprehensive canopy structure and fuel data are critical for understanding and modeling wildland fire. The LANDFIRE project produces such data nationwide based on a collection of field observations, Landsat imagery, and other geospatial data. Where field data are not available, alternate strategies are being investigated. In this study, vegetation structure data available from GLAS were used to f
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis Nelson, Bruce Wylie
A multi-sensor lidar, multi-spectral and multi-angular approach for mapping canopy height in boreal forest regions
Spatially explicit representations of vegetation canopy height over large regions are necessary for a wide variety of inventory, monitoring, and modeling activities. Although airborne lidar data has been successfully used to develop vegetation canopy height maps in many regions, for vast, sparsely populated regions such as the boreal forest biome, airborne lidar is not widely available. An alterna
Authors
David J. Selkowitz, Gordon Green, Birgit E. Peterson, Bruce Wylie
Estimating aboveground biomass in interior Alaska with Landsat data and field measurements
Terrestrial plant biomass is a key biophysical parameter required for understanding ecological systems in Alaska. An accurate estimation of biomass at a regional scale provides an important data input for ecological modeling in this region. In this study, we created an aboveground biomass (AGB) map at 30-m resolution for the Yukon Flats ecoregion of interior Alaska using Landsat data and field mea
Authors
Lei Ji, Bruce K. Wylie, Dana R. Nossov, Birgit E. Peterson, Mark P. Waldrop, Jack W. McFarland, Jennifer R. Rover, Teresa N. Hollingsworth
Developing a regional canopy fuels assessment strategy using multi-scale lidar
Accurate assessments of canopy fuels are needed by fire scientists to understand fire behavior and to predict future fire occurrence. A key descriptor for canopy fuels is canopy bulk density (CBD). CBD is closely linked to the structure of the canopy; therefore, lidar measurements are particularly well suited to assessments of CBD. LANDFIRE scientists are exploring methods to integrate airborne an
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis Nelson
Use of waveform lidar and hyperspectral sensors to assess selected spatial and structural patterns associated with recent and repeat disturbance and the abundance of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) in a temperate mixed hardwood and conifer forest
Waveform lidar imagery was acquired on September 26, 1999 over the Bartlett Experimental Forest (BEF) in New Hampshire (USA) using NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS). This flight occurred 20 months after an ice storm damaged millions of hectares of forestland in northeastern North America. Lidar measurements of the amplitude and intensity of ground energy returns appeared to readily det
Authors
J.E. Anderson, Mark J. Ducey, A. Fast, M.E. Martin, L. Lepine, M.-L. Smith, T.D. Lee, R.O. Dubayah, M.A. Hofton, P. Hyde, Birgit Peterson, J.B. Blair
Vegetation change detection and quantification: linking Landsat imagery and LIDAR data
Measurements of the horizontal and vertical structure of vegetation are helpful for detecting and monitoring change or disturbance on the landscape. Lidar has a unique ability to capture the three-dimensional structure of vegetation canopies. In this preliminary study, we present the results of a series of exploratory data analyses that tested our assumptions about the links between the structural
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis J. Nelson
Science and Products
Filter Total Items: 20
LANDFIRE 2010 - updated data to support wildfire and ecological management
Wildfire is a global phenomenon that affects human populations and ecosystems. Wildfire effects occur at local to global scales impacting many people in different ways (Figure 1). Ecological concerns due to land use, fragmentation, and climate change impact natural resource use, allocation, and conservation. Access to consistent and current environmental data is a constant challenge, yet necessary
Authors
Kurtis J. Nelson, Joel A. Connot, Birgit E. Peterson, Joshua J. Picotte
The LANDFIRE Refresh strategy: updating the national dataset
The LANDFIRE Program provides comprehensive vegetation and fuel datasets for the entire United States. As with many large-scale ecological datasets, vegetation and landscape conditions must be updated periodically to account for disturbances, growth, and natural succession. The LANDFIRE Refresh effort was the first attempt to consistently update these products nationwide. It incorporated a combina
Authors
Kurtis J. Nelson, Joel A. Connot, Birgit E. Peterson, Charley Martin
Towards integration of GLAS data into a national fuels mapping program
Comprehensive canopy structure and fuel data are critical for understanding and modeling wildland fire. The LANDFIRE project produces such data nationwide based on a collection of field observations, Landsat imagery, and other geospatial data. Where field data are not available, alternate strategies are being investigated. In this study, vegetation structure data available from GLAS were used to f
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis Nelson, Bruce Wylie
A multi-sensor lidar, multi-spectral and multi-angular approach for mapping canopy height in boreal forest regions
Spatially explicit representations of vegetation canopy height over large regions are necessary for a wide variety of inventory, monitoring, and modeling activities. Although airborne lidar data has been successfully used to develop vegetation canopy height maps in many regions, for vast, sparsely populated regions such as the boreal forest biome, airborne lidar is not widely available. An alterna
Authors
David J. Selkowitz, Gordon Green, Birgit E. Peterson, Bruce Wylie
Estimating aboveground biomass in interior Alaska with Landsat data and field measurements
Terrestrial plant biomass is a key biophysical parameter required for understanding ecological systems in Alaska. An accurate estimation of biomass at a regional scale provides an important data input for ecological modeling in this region. In this study, we created an aboveground biomass (AGB) map at 30-m resolution for the Yukon Flats ecoregion of interior Alaska using Landsat data and field mea
Authors
Lei Ji, Bruce K. Wylie, Dana R. Nossov, Birgit E. Peterson, Mark P. Waldrop, Jack W. McFarland, Jennifer R. Rover, Teresa N. Hollingsworth
Developing a regional canopy fuels assessment strategy using multi-scale lidar
Accurate assessments of canopy fuels are needed by fire scientists to understand fire behavior and to predict future fire occurrence. A key descriptor for canopy fuels is canopy bulk density (CBD). CBD is closely linked to the structure of the canopy; therefore, lidar measurements are particularly well suited to assessments of CBD. LANDFIRE scientists are exploring methods to integrate airborne an
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis Nelson
Use of waveform lidar and hyperspectral sensors to assess selected spatial and structural patterns associated with recent and repeat disturbance and the abundance of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) in a temperate mixed hardwood and conifer forest
Waveform lidar imagery was acquired on September 26, 1999 over the Bartlett Experimental Forest (BEF) in New Hampshire (USA) using NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS). This flight occurred 20 months after an ice storm damaged millions of hectares of forestland in northeastern North America. Lidar measurements of the amplitude and intensity of ground energy returns appeared to readily det
Authors
J.E. Anderson, Mark J. Ducey, A. Fast, M.E. Martin, L. Lepine, M.-L. Smith, T.D. Lee, R.O. Dubayah, M.A. Hofton, P. Hyde, Birgit Peterson, J.B. Blair
Vegetation change detection and quantification: linking Landsat imagery and LIDAR data
Measurements of the horizontal and vertical structure of vegetation are helpful for detecting and monitoring change or disturbance on the landscape. Lidar has a unique ability to capture the three-dimensional structure of vegetation canopies. In this preliminary study, we present the results of a series of exploratory data analyses that tested our assumptions about the links between the structural
Authors
Birgit E. Peterson, Kurtis J. Nelson