Publications
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Implementation of a surface water extent model in Cambodia using cloud-based remote sensing
Mapping surface water over time provides the spatially explicit information essential for hydroclimatic research focused on droughts and flooding. Hazard risk assessments and water management planning also rely on accurate, long-term measurements describing hydrologic fluctuations. Stream gages are a common measurement tool used to better understand flow and inundation dynamics, but gage networks
Authors
Christopher E. Soulard, Jessica J. Walker, Roy E. Petrakis
Critical land change information enhances the understanding of carbon balance in the United States
Large-scale terrestrial carbon (C) estimating studies using methods such as atmospheric inversion, biogeochemical modeling, and field inventories have produced different results. The goal of this study was to integrate fine-scale processes including land use and land cover change into a large-scale ecosystem framework. We analyzed the terrestrial C budget of the conterminous United States from 197
Authors
Jinxun Liu, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Zhiliang Zhu, Thomas Loveland, Terry L. Sohl, Stephen M. Howard, Carl H. Key, Todd Hawbaker, Shuguang Liu, Bradley C. Reed, Mark A. Cochrane, Linda S. Heath, Hong Jiang, David T. Price, Jing M. Chen, Decheng Zhou, Norman B. Bliss, Tamara Wilson, Jason T. Sherba, Qiuan Zhu, Yiqi Luo, Benjiamin Paulter
Evaluating social vulnerability indicators: Criteria and their application to the Social Vulnerability Index
As a concept, social vulnerability describes combinations of social, cultural, economic,
political, and institutional processes that shape socioeconomic differentials in the experience
of and recovery from hazards. Quantitative measures of social vulnerability are
widely used in research and practice. In this paper, we establish criteria for the evaluation
of social vulnerability indicators and ap
Authors
Seth Spielman, Joseph Tuccillo, David Folch, Amy Schweikert, Rebecca Davies, Nathan J. Wood, Eric Tate
Rating fire danger from the ground up
Soil moisture information could improve assessments of wildfire probabilities and fuel conditions, resulting in better fire danger ratings.
Authors
Matthew Levi, Erik S. Krueger, Grant J. Snitker, Tyson Ochsner, Miguel L. Villarreal, Emile H. Elias, Dannele E. Peck
Marine fog inputs appear to increase methylmercury bioaccumulation in a coastal terrestrial food web
Coastal marine atmospheric fog has recently been implicated as a potential source of ocean-derived monomethylmercury (MMHg) to coastal terrestrial ecosystems through the process of sea-to-land advection of foggy air masses followed by wet deposition. This study examined whether pumas (Puma concolor) in coastal central California, USA, and their associated food web, have elevated concentrations of
Authors
Peter S. Weiss-Penzias, Michael S. Bank, Deana L. Clifford, Alicia Torregrosa, Belle Zheng, Wendy Lin, Christopher C. Wilmers
Cost-effective fuel treatment planning: A theoretical justification and case-study
Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs to
Authors
Jason R. Kreitler, Matthew Thompson, Nicole Vaillant, Todd Hawbaker
Phenology patterns indicate recovery trajectories of ponderosa pine forests after high-severity fires
Post-fire recovery trajectories in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Laws.) forests of the US Southwest are increasingly shifting away from pre-burn vegetation communities. This study investigated whether phenological metrics derived from a multi-decade remotely sensed imagery time-series could differentiate among grass, evergreen shrub, deciduous, or conifer-dominated replacement pathways. We foc
Authors
Jessica J. Walker, Christopher E. Soulard
Agricultural cropland extent and areas of South Asia derived using Landsat satellite 30-m time-series big-data using random forest machine learning algorithms on the Google Earth Engine cloud
The South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan) has a staggering 900 million people (~43% of the population) who face food insecurity or severe food insecurity as per United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). The existing coarse-resolution (>250-m) cropland maps lack precision in geo-location of individual farms
Authors
Murali Krishna Gumma, Prasad Thenkabail, Pardhasaradhi Teluguntla, Adam Oliphant
Hydrologic resilience from summertime fog and recharge: A case study for coho salmon recovery planning
Fog and low cloud cover (FLCC) and late summer recharge increase stream baseflow and decrease stream temperature during arid Mediterranean climate summers, which benefits salmon especially under climate warming conditions. The potential to discharge cool water to streams during the late summer (hydrologic capacity; HC) furnished by FLCC and recharge were mapped for the 299 subwatersheds ranked Cor
Authors
Alicia Torregrosa, Lorraine E. Flint, Alan L. Flint
A mosaic of land tenure and ownership creates challenges and opportunities for transboundary conservation in the US-Mexico borderlands
In the Madrean Sky Islands of western North America, a mixture of public and private land ownership and tenure creates a complex situation for collaborative efforts in conservation. In this case study, we describe the current ownership and management structures in the US-Mexico borderlands where social, political, and economic conditions create extreme pressures on the environment and challenges f
Authors
Miguel L. Villarreal, Sandra L. Haire, Juan Carlos Bravo, Laura M. Norman
Landsat time series assessment of invasive annual grasses following energy development
Invasive annual grasses are of concern in many areas of the Western United States because they tolerate resource variability and have high reproductive capacity, with propagules that are readily dispersed in disturbed areas like those created and maintained for energy development. Early-season invasive grasses “green up” earlier than the most native plants, producing a distinct pulse of greenness
Authors
Miguel L. Villarreal, Christopher E. Soulard, Eric Waller
The HayWired earthquake scenario—Societal consequences
The HayWired Earthquake Scenario—Societal Consequences is the third volume of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Scientific Investigations Report 2017–5013, which describes the HayWired scenario, developed by USGS and its partners. The scenario is a hypothetical yet scientifically realistic earthquake sequence that is being used to better understand hazards for the San Francisco Bay region during and a