Publications

The term “rangeland” is rather nebulous, and there is no single definition of rangeland that is universally accepted by land managers, scientists, or international bodies (Lund, 2007; Reeves and Mitchell, 2011). Dozens and possibly hundreds (Lund, 2007) of definitions and ideologies exist because various stakeholders often have unique objectives requiring different information. For the...

Background Climate change and the concurrent change in wildfire events and land use comprehensively affect carbon dynamics in both spatial and temporal dimensions. The purpose of this study was to project the spatial and temporal aspects of carbon storage in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) under these changes from 2006 to 2050. We selected three emission scenarios and produced...

Wildfire can affect soil hydraulic properties, often resulting in reduced infiltration. The magnitude of change in infiltration varies depending on the burn severity. Quantitative approaches to link burn severity with changes in infiltration are lacking. This study uses controlled laboratory measurements to determine relations between a remotely sensed burn severity metric (dNBR, change...

The southern Piedmont in the U.S. was an important farming region during the 19th century, but by the end of the 20th century, agricultural land use had decreased substantially with forest becoming the majority land cover by the 1970s. Geographical literature has documented this change but has not concentrated on the region’s contemporary land uses. The Piedmont currently has three main...

No abstract available.

This study evaluates the radiometric consistency between Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) using cross calibration techniques. Two approaches are used, one based on cross calibration between the two sensors using simultaneous image pairs, acquired during an underfly event on 29–30 March 2013. The other approach is based on using...

Most airborne topographic light detection and ranging (lidar) systems operate within the near-infrared spectrum. Laser pulses from these systems frequently are absorbed by water and therefore do not generate reflected returns on water bodies in the resulting void regions within the lidar point cloud. Thus, an analysis of lidar voids has implications for identifying water bodies. Data...

Observations and sea surface temperature (SST)-forced ECHAM5 simulations are examined to study the seasonal cycle of eastern Africa rainfall and its SST sensitivity during 1979–2012, focusing on interannual variability and trends. The eastern Horn is drier than the rest of equatorial Africa, with two distinct wet seasons, and whereas the October–December wet season has become wetter, the...

Study Region: Brahmaputra River basin in South Asia. Study Focus: The Soil and Water Assessment Tool was used to evaluate sensitivities and patterns in freshwater availability due to projected climate and land use changes in the Brahmaputra basin. The daily observed discharge at Bahadurabad station in Bangladesh was used to calibrate and validate the model and analyze uncertainties with...

We evaluated the spatial and seasonal responses of precipitation in the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins as modulated by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) modes using Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) full data reanalysis of monthly global land-surface precipitation data from 1901 to 2010 with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5°. The GPCC...

Losses in lake area have been observed for several Arctic and Subarctic regions in recent decades, with unknown consequences for lake ecosystems. These reductions are primarily attributed to two climate-sensitive mechanisms, both of which may also cause changes in water chemistry: (i) increased imbalance of evaporation relative to inflow, whereby increased evaporation and decreased...

The Landsat 8 spacecraft was launched on 11 February 2013 carrying two imaging payloads: the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). The TIRS instrument employs a refractive telescope design that is opaque to visible wavelengths making prelaunch geometric characterization challenging. TIRS geometric calibration thus relied heavily on on-orbit measurements...