Characterization of Historic Shrub Component Change across the U.S. West with Landsat, Providing New Insights into Historical Change Patterns
Abstract
The USGS in collaboration with the BLM has produced a comprehensive remote sensing-based quantification of western U.S. shrub lands designed to support a wide variety of analysis and applications. These base geospatial products are part of the National Land Cover Database and provide information about the percent shrub, sagebrush, big sagebrush, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, litter, bare ground, shrub height and sagebrush height for every 30m pixel. Subsequent methodologies were developed to further quantify these components historically across time using the Landsat archive. Quantification of component change from 1984-2017 has been accomplished for the Great Basin and much of Wyoming. Total change across these 33 years is regionally significant. Initial results show that fire is the most dominant change agent, but substantial component change is also being driven by changing precipitation and temperature trends. Product methodologies and results will be overviewed, with special focus on analysis of change drivers and potential implications. Overall these products provide unprecedented new opportunity to inform science and management across the West.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.B14B..04H
- Keywords:
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- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1807 Climate impacts;
- HYDROLOGY