Western Geographic Science Center

Approximately 35% of the US and approximately 82% of DOI lands are “drylands” found throughout the western US. These lands contain oil, gas, oil shale, shale oil, and tar sand deposits and the exploration for and extraction of these resources has resulted in hundreds of thousands of operating and abandoned wells across the West. These arid and semi-arid lands have unique soil and plant communities...

Exotic annual grasses such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) have heavily invaded portions of the western United States, rapidly degrading habitats and increasing wildfire risk. Cheatgrass and other ESIs (desert alyssum [Alyssum desertorum], and annual wheatgrass [Eremopyrum triticeum]) are an emerging threat to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE); climatic changes including earlier snowmelt/run...

The GFSAD is a NASA funded project (2023-2028) to provide highest-resolution global cropland data and their water use that contributes towards global food-and-water security in the twenty-first century. The GFSAD products are derived through multi-sensor remote sensing data (e.g., Landsat-series, Sentinel-series, MODIS, AVHRR), secondary data, and field-plot data and aims at documenting cropland...