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Publications

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Hierarchical clustering for paired watershed experiments: Case study in southeastern Arizona, U.S.A.

Watershed studies are often onerous due to a lack of data available to portray baseline conditions with which to compare results of monitoring environmental effects. A paired-watershed approach is often adopted to simulate baseline conditions in an adjacent watershed that can be comparable but assumes there is a quantifiable relationship between the control and treated watersheds. Finding suitably
Authors
Roy Petrakis, Laura M. Norman, Kurt Vaughn, Richard Pritzlaff, Caleb Weaver, Audrey J Rader, H. Ronald Pulliam

Developing climate resilience in aridlands using rock detention structures as green infrastructure

The potential of ecological restoration and green infrastructure has been long suggested in the literature as adaptation strategies for a changing climate, with an emphasis on revegetation and, more recently, carbon sequestration and stormwater management. Tree planting and “natural” stormwater detention structures such as bioswales, stormwater detention basins, and sediment traps are popular appr
Authors
Laura M. Norman, Benjamin L. Ruddell, Deborah Tosline, Michael Fell, Blair P. Greimann, Jay Cederberg

Tamm review: Postfire landscape management in frequent-fire conifer forests of the southwestern United States

The increasing incidence of wildfires across the southwestern United States (US) is altering the contemporary forest management template within historically frequent-fire conifer forests. An increasing fraction of southwestern conifer forests have recently burned, and many of these burned landscapes contain complex mosaics of surviving forest and severely burned patches without surviving conifer t
Authors
Jens T. Stevens, Collin Haffey, Jonathan D. Coop, Paula J. Fornwalt, Larissa Yocom, Craig D. Allen, Anne Bradley, Owen T. Burney, Dennis Carril, Marin E. Chambers, Theresa B. Chapman, Sandra L. Haire, Matthew D. Hurteau, José M. Iniguez, Ellis Margolis, Christopher Marks, Laura A. E. Marshall, Kyle C. Rodman, Camille S. Stevens-Rumann, Andrea E. Thode, Jessica J. Walker

Ecosystem carbon balance in the Hawaiian Islands under different scenarios of future climate and land use change

The State of Hawai'i passed legislation to be carbon neutral by 2045, a goal that will partly depend on carbon sequestration by terrestrial ecosystems. However, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the future direction and magnitude of the land carbon sink in the Hawaiian Islands. We used the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS), a spatially explicit stochastic simulation model
Authors
Paul Selmants, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Jinxun Liu, Tamara S. Wilson, Clay Trauernicht, Abby G. Frazier, Gregory P. Asner

A simplified method for rapid estimation of emergency water supply needs after earthquakes

Researchers are investigating the problem of estimating households with potable water service outages soon after an earthquake. Most of these modeling approaches are computationally intensive, have large proprietary data collection requirements or lack precision, making them unfeasible for rapid assessment, prioritization, and allocation of emergency water resources in large, complex disasters. Th
Authors
Joseph Charles Toland, Anne Wein

Evaluation of SWIR crop residue bands for the Landsat Next mission

This research reports the findings of a Landsat Next expert review panel that evaluated the use of narrow shortwave infrared (SWIR) reflectance bands to measure ligno-cellulose absorption features centered near 2100 and 2300 nm, with the objective of measuring and mapping non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), crop residue cover, and the adoption of conservation tillage practices within agricultural
Authors
W. Dean Hively, Brian T. Lamb, Craig S.T. Daughtry, Guy Serbin, Phillip Dennison, Raymond F. Kokaly, Zhuoting Wu, Jeffrey G. Masek

Modeling watershed carbon dynamics as affected by land cover change and soil erosion

Process-based ecosystem carbon cycle models typically incorporate vegetation growth, vegetation mortality, and soil respiration as well as the biotic and environmental drivers that influence these variables. However, few spatially explicit process models can efficiently incorporate the influence of land cover change and carbon lateral movement at regional scales or high spatial resolution. This st
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Paul Selmants, Jiaojiao Diao, Qiang Zhou, Bruce Worstell, Monica Mei Jeen Moritsch

BERM: A Belowground Ecosystem Resiliency Model for estimating Spartina alterniflora belowground biomass

SummarySpatiotemporal patterns of Spartina alterniflora belowground biomass (BGB) are important for evaluating salt marsh resiliency. To solve this, we created the BERM (Belowground Ecosystem Resiliency Model), which estimates monthly BGB (30-m spatial resolution) from freely available data such as Landsat-8 and Daymet climate summaries.Our modeling framework relied on extreme gradient boosting, a
Authors
Jessica L. O'Connell, Deepak Mishra, Merryl Alber, Kristin B. Byrd

Global application of an unoccupied aerial vehicle photogrammetry protocol for predicting aboveground biomass in non-forest ecosystems

Non-forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change threats emphasize the need for new tools to capture
Authors
Andrew Cunliffe, Karen Anderson, Fabio Boschetti, Richard E. Brazier, Hugh A. Graham, Isla H. Myers-Smith, Thomas Astor, Matthias M. Boer, Leonor G. Calvo, Patrick Clark, Michael D. Cramer, Miguel S. Encinas-Lara, Stephen M. Escarzaga, Adrian Fisher, José M Fernández-Guisuraga, Kateřina Gdulová, Breahna M. Gillespie, Anne Griebel, Niall P Hanan, Muhammed S. Hanggito, Stefan Haselberger, Caroline A. Havrilla, Phil Heilman, Wenjie Ji, Jason W. Karl, Sabine Kraushaar, Marguerite E. Mauritz, Mitchell Lyons, Irene Marzolff, C. D. McIntire, Daniel Metzen, Luis A. Mendez-Barroso, Simon C. Power, Jiri Prosek, Enoc Sanz-Ablanedo, Katherine J. Sauer, Damian Schulze-Brüninghoff, Petra Šímová, Stephen Sitch, Julian L. Smit, Caiti M. Steele, Susana Suárez-Seoane, Sergio A. Vargas, Fleur Visser, Miguel L. Villarreal, Michael Wachendorf, Hannes Wirnsberger, Robert Wojcikiewicz

Trait-based filtering mediates the effects of realistic biodiversity losses on ecosystem functioning

Biodiversity losses are a major driver of global changes in ecosystem functioning. While most studies of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning have examined randomized species losses, trait-based filtering associated with species-specific vulnerability to drivers of diversity loss can strongly influence how ecosystem functioning responds to declining biodiversity. Moreove
Authors
Amelia A. Wolf, Jennifer L. Funk, Paul Selmants, Connor N Morozumi, Daniel L. Hernandez, Jae R Pasari, Erika S Zavaleta

Hyperspectral narrowband data propel gigantic leap in the earth remote sensing

Hyperspectral narrowbands (HNBs) capture data as nearly continuous “spectral signatures” rather than a “few spectral data points” along the electromagnetic spectrum as with multispectral broadbands (MBBs). Almost all of satellite remote sensing of the Earth in the twentieth century was conducted using MBB data from sensors such as the Landsat-series, Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR
Authors
Prasad Thenkabail, Itiya Aneece, Pardhasaradhi Teluguntla, Adam Oliphant

A new remote sensing-based Carbon Sequestration Potential Index (CSPI): A tool to support land carbon management

Integrating remote sensing into assessments of carbon stocks and fluxes has advanced our understanding of how global change affects landscapes and our capacity to support decision making about forest management. However, there remains a lack of detailed and actionable analyses conducted across widely ranging environmental conditions that are appropriate for tactical planning. We used airborne lase
Authors
Adrian Pascual, Christian P. Giardina, Paul Selmants, Leah J Laramee, Gregory P. Asner