Integrated Land Change Monitoring

This study explores the feasibility of using high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) constructed from airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) surveys to develop an automated procedure to extract levee longitudinal elevation profiles for both federal levees in Atchafalaya Basin and local levees in Lafourche Parish, south Louisiana. This approach can successfully accommodate abrupt...

This image is a topobathymetric elevation model of a part of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is an example of inland bathymetry in the northern Gulf of Mexico. This regional topobathymetric elevation model includes airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) point clouds, hydrographic surveys, side-scan sonar surveys, and multibeam surveys obtained from USGS, NOAA, the State...

The northern Gulf of Mexico coast of the United States has been identified as highly vulnerable to sea-level rise (SLR), based on a combination of physical and societal factors. Vulnerability of human populations and infrastructure to projected increases in sea level is a critical area of uncertainty for communities in the extremely low-lying and flat northern gulf coastal zone. A rapidly growing...

Seacliff erosion is a serious hazard with implications for coastal management, infrastructure, and residential dwellings; seacliff erosion is often estimated using successive hand digitized cliff tops or bases to assess cliff retreat. Traditionally the recession of the cliff top or cliff base is obtained from aerial photographs, topographic maps, or in situ surveys. The availability of high...

When Atlantic hurricanes make landfall in south Florida, the coastal marshes and mangrove forests of the Everglades often act as a buffer that protects residents from rising sea levels, high winds and storm surge.

The USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection initiative aims to identify where the landscape is changing and why.

Hurricane Sandy had significant impacts throughout the Chesapeake Bay, altering the topography and ecosystems of this populous coastal region. In response to the storm, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program in collaboration with USGS National Geospatial Program, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration developed three-dimensional (3D) topobathymetric...

Light detection and ranging (lidar) wave-form processing capabilities are being developed to utilize the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program Experimental Advanced Airborne Research (EAARL) sensor. The EAARL lidar point cloud collection consists of highly detailed submerged and shallow bathymetry (water depth) of river channels, which will be merged with land elevation...

The following provides a short synopsis of current and recently completely projects using USGS EROS’ FORE-SCE model, and where applicable, links to download data. Additional project information and data will be made available as our research progresses.

Land-use change and the resultant changes in land cover impact a wide variety of ecological processes. Projected land-cover data produced by EROS have been used for a wide variety of applications, including those listed in the left column. The following provides a partial list of published applications for modeled land-use and land-cover data.

Many factors determine how human beings modify the earth's landscape. Land-cover change is inherently a local event, yet broader scale socioeconomic and biophysical factors also affect how humans make decisions to use the landscape. Projecting future land cover requires modelers to account for driving forces of land-cover change operating at scales from local ("bottom-up") to global ("top-down")...

The primary result of the data processing explained in the Methods section is a polygon feature dataset that locates and describes the areas in the conterminous United States that have experienced significant topographic change during the 20th century.