Landscape Ecology

Land cover change is one of the fundamental measures for understanding pressures on ecosystems and is widely used to understand the consequences to biodiversity and ecosystem services. This study utilizes land cover and other associated socioeconomic and environmental data to examine the consequences of land cover change in human-dominated landscapes, and how provisioning of ecosystem services...

Drought and fire are powerful disturbance agents that can trigger rapid and lasting changes in the forests of western North America. Over the last decade, increases in fire size and severity coincided with warming, drought, and earlier snowmelt, factors that projected climatic changes are likely to exacerbate. However, recent observations are brief relative to the lifespans of trees and include...

Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) track critical attributes of the atmosphere, oceanic, and terrestrial systems over time-scales appropriate for analyzing their relationships with climate change. As part of a larger Climate Data Record (CDR) and ECV project, scientists at GECSC are leading the development and validation of the Burned Area ECV algorithm. This algorithm automatically extracts...

Ecosystem services are the benefits that nature provides to human well-being: clean air and water, protection from natural disasters, fisheries, crop pollination and control of pests and disease, and outdoor places for recreation, solitude, and renewal. Ecosystem services underlie the functioning of our entire economy. They are neither worthless nor priceless, and by integrating the physical...

Energy is a cornerstone issue for humanity, nations, and individuals. How we create and use energy impacts the consequences it embodies. The critical issue facing humanity involves meeting our massive and growing energy needs, without undermining human and natural capital. Facing the challenge of long-term, sustainable energy for the nation and world requires understanding the consequences of...

This project studies past high sea levels on coastlines that preserve fossil coral reefs or marine terraces. We ascertain the magnitudes of sea-level high stands by field mapping, stratigraphic measurements, and precise elevation measurements. Geochronology is accomplished by radiocarbon dating of mollusks (for Holocene-to-last-glacial deposits), uranium-series dating of corals (for high-sea...

The Earth contains an astonishing variety of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, that provide the biological resources and services essential to our survival. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in partnership with other organizations, is generating the datasets needed to better manage, conserve, and restore these vital natural resources that are increasingly threatened by fragmentation...

In the Southern Rocky Mountains, an epidemic outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae; MPB) has caused forest mortality on a scale unprecedented in recorded history. The impacts of insect-induced mortality have only recently received attention, although other disturbances such as fires and land-use change have a strong influence on carbon sequestration and can result in a net...

Evidence of the loss and fragmentation of forest, wetland, shrubland, grassland and other natural and semi-natural cover to human activities is pervasive. In response, this study focuses on the trajectory of land use and development coupled with the capacity for landscape conservation and recovery of natural and semi-natural land cover across a diversity of U.S. landscapes.