FORE-SCE Land Use Model with Terry Sohl
Detailed Description
Terry Sohl talks about the FORE-SCE Land Use model that is being used to assist a variety of groups. the model uses land cover products from the USGS and extrapolates that data to predict what areas will look like in the future, based on a variety of scenarios.
Details
Date Taken:
Length: 00:05:12
Location Taken: Sioux Falls, SD, US
Video Credits
Producer: Steve Young
Transcript
Hi, my name is Terry
Sohl, I'm a research
physical scientist.
ForeSce model is something
we developed here at EROS
and what we wanted to do
was move beyond the dates
for which remote sensing
data was available.
Where we wanted to be
able to take these USGS
produced land cover
databases that are
produced from Landsat
project them both
backward and forward in
time so groups could look
at how weather and climate
are impacted by land use
and visa versa. What's
happening currently and
then what could potentially
happen out into the future.
When you're using a land
cover model, and going out
into the future, you don't
know what those conditions
are going to do. So the
uncertainties are obviously
a lot higher. And so what we
do is we use scenario
frameworks. And so we're not
weather forecasters, we're
not trying to predict exactly
what's going to happen in
the future. What we do is
provide a suite of scenarios
that try to cover that
uncertainty.
And so in as area like the
great plains we can look
at recent trends, look at
what's happened with
agricultural land recently,
and extrapolate those
trends out in time, and that
would provide one scenario
What we can also do is look
at alternative scenarios.
Economic scenarios change.
Biofuel use changed and
so those are the type of
impacts on regional land
use that are very hard to
predict. And so what we
try to do is model multiple
scenarios try to
represent that uncertainty.
Several years ago I published
a paper that looks at
the impacts of projected
land use and projected
climate on bird populations
across the US. And that's
something that's been done,
from a climate aspect, there's
a lot of different climate
models that are out there.
There's not a lot of land use
models, especially of the
kind that we produce here
at EROS. And so we're
providing a unique product
that allows somebody like
a biologist to look at
not only how projected
changes in climate might
impact bird populations
in the future, but how
projected changes in
land use might impact
bird populations.
The city of Minneapolis
gets most of their drinking
water from the Mississippi
river. In the last few years
they've noticed things
like cyano toxins and
other other products that
are an offshoot of enriched
water from agricultural runoff.
And the reason for that is land
use change. North of
Minneapolis there's a large
tract of forest land that was
bought by the largest potato
growing company in the
United States and they
converted a lot of this forest
land to potato production.
And so what we're doing for
this is we're producing scenarios
of land use change in the
upper Mississippi river basin
that allows them to potentially
plan for what may happen for
their water treatment needs
out into the future.
We've completed land cover
projections for many scenarios
for the southern great plains
and it's a unique area from an
agricultural perspective. So a
good example is the panhandle
of Texas where it's one of the
United States major cotton
growing regions, and you
need irrigation to support
cotton in that pretty dried
landscape. And in recent
years the aquifer has declined
to the point where that
level of irrigation availability
is just not there. And so
you're starting to see some
potential shifts in
agricultural patterns. And there
are some unknowns with it.
Our scenario based framework
that we use allow us to cope
with those unknowns. So as
the irrigated water
availability declines there's
some question as to wether
they're going to move to
dryland crops like wheat,
or whether a lot of that land
is going to revert to a grazing
regime with pasture and
cattle production.
And what we can do is
provide scenarios for both.
And that allows land planners
people looking at biodiversity,
water quality and all these
other potential impacts
of land use, to look at what
are some of these potential
future scenarios and how
we may adapt no matter
how the landscape changes.
The ForeSce model was
designed to take advantage
the land use products that
are produced by USGS.
And so we can look at the
past. We can look at landscapes
that were mapped by Landsat
and we can look at landscape
patterns. And so when we model
things out into the future,
we are tapping into that
Landsat database so that
we're representing landscape
patterns that are regionally
realistic based on what's
happened in the past.
There really are no other
models that can model
broad scale land use across
broad regions or even at
a national scale that can
map the spacial resolution
of what we're doing using
actually land management
and ownership boundaries
from the USDA to
represent field by field
modeling and thematically.
We can all the land cover
classes found in the national
land cover database, and that's
what makes our model unique.
From a biodiversity standpoint,
from a climate perspective,
from a water quality standpoint,
just the wide variety of
applications that we're able to
support given that we're
trying to produce things that
are consistent with the land
cover databases that USGS
are already producing.