Publications
Here you will find publications, reports and articles produced by Core Science System scientists. For a comprehensive listing of all USGS publications please click the button below.
Filter Total Items: 249
The 4th paradigm in multiscale data representation: Modernizing the National Geospatial Data Infrastructure
The need of citizens in any nation to access geospatial data in readily usable form is critical to societal well-being, and in the United States (US), demands for information by scientists, students, professionals and citizens continue to grow. Areas such as public health, urbanization, resource management, economic development and environmental management require a variety of data collected from
Authors
Barbara P. Buttenfield, Larry Stanislawski, Barry J. Kronenfeld, Ethan J. Shavers
Spatial data reduction through element -of-interest (EOI) extraction
Any large, multifaceted data collection that is challenging to handle with traditional management practices can be branded ‘Big Data.’ Any big data containing geo-referenced attributes can be considered big geospatial data. The increased proliferation of big geospatial data is currently reforming the geospatial industry into a data-driven enterprise. Challenges in the big spatial data domain can b
Authors
Samantha Arundel, E. Lynn Usery
Mars Astrobiological Cave and Internal habitability Explorer (MACIE): A New Frontiers mission concept
Martian subsurface habitability and astrobiology can be evaluated via a lava tube cave, without drilling. MACIE addresses two key goals of the Decadal Survey (2013–2022) and three MEPAG goals. New advances in robotic architectures, autonomous navigation, target sample selection, and analysis will enable MACIE to explore the Martian subsurface.
Authors
C. M. Phillips-Lander, A. Agha-mohamamdi, J. J. Wynne, Timothy N. Titus, N. Chanover, C. Demirel-Floyd, Kyle Uckert, Kaj E. Williams, D Wyrick, J. Blank, Penelope J. Boston, K. Mitchell, A Kereszturi, J. Martin-Torres, S. Shkolyar, N. Bardabelias, S. Datta, K. Retherford, Lydia Sam, A. Bahardwaj, A. Fairén, D. Flannery, Roger C. Wiens
GIS object data properties
Data properties are characteristics of GIS attribute systems and values whose design and format impacts analytical and computational processing. Geospatial data are expressed at conceptual, logical, and physical levels of database abstraction intended to represent geographical information. The appropriate design of attribute systems and selection of properties should be logically consistent and s
Authors
Dalia E. Varanka
An attention U-Net model for detection of fine-scale hydrologic streamlines
Surface water is an irreplaceable resource for human survival and environmental sustainability. Accurate, finely detailed cartographic representations of hydrologic streamlines are critically important in various scientific domains, such as assessing the quantity and quality of present and future water resources, modeling climate changes, evaluating agricultural suitability, mapping flood inundati
Authors
Zewei Xu, Shaowen Wang, Larry Stanislawski, Zhe Jiang, Nattapon Jaroenchai, Arpan Man Sainju, Ethan J. Shavers, E. Lynn Usery, Li Chen, Zhiyu Li, Bin Su
Drought stress and hurricane defoliation influence mountain clouds and moisture recycling in a tropical forest
Mountain ranges generate clouds, precipitation, and perennial streamflow for water supplies, but the role of forest cover in mountain hydrometeorology and cloud formation is not well understood. In the Luquillo Experimental Forest of Puerto Rico, mountains are immersed in clouds nightly, providing a steady precipitation source to support the tropical forest ecosystems and human uses. A severe drou
Authors
Martha A. Scholl, Maoya Bassiouni, Angel J. Torres-Sanchez
Identification of Global Priorities for New Mountain Protected and Conserved Areas
Mountain ecosystems are extremely diverse and fragile. They include astonishing biodiversity in terms of number of taxa and endemicity, and globally provide the most diverse range of ecosystem services. The world’s system of protected and conserved areas includes many outstanding areas within the earth’s mountainous landscape: about 19% of mountain areas are protected or conserved, globally. Furth
Authors
Peter Jacobs, Erik A. Beever, Clinton Carbutt, Marc Foggin, Diego Juffe-Bignoli, Madeline Thomas Martin, Shane Orchard, Roger Sayre
Improving the positional and vertical accuracy of named summits above 13,000 ft in the United States
The National Map (TNM) portal provides public access to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) high-resolution topographic datasets, and maps from the Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC). Elevation values shown on HTMC maps were obtained from ground spot elevation measurements, as compared to today’s elevation measurements derived from more efficient methods, such as lidar, radar, or sonar. These
Authors
Samantha Arundel, Gaurav Sinha, Arthur Chan
Creating annotations for web ontology language ontology generated from relational databases
Many approaches that have been proposed that allow users to create a Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology from a relational database fail to include metadata that are inherent to the database tables. Without metadata, the resulting ontology lacks annotation properties. These properties are key when performing ontology alignment. This paper proposes a method to include relevant metadata through ann
Authors
Matthew Edward Wagner, Tanner Edward Fry, Jacques Jules Bourquin, Dalia E. Varanka
The geography of islands
Islands come in all shapes, sizes and types, from tiny rocky outcrops, to enormous continental landmasses. The true number of islands distributed in the planet’s seas and oceans is still elusive. Recent efforts bolstered by an abundance of detailed satellite imagery and the sophistication of geographic information systems (GIS) are bringing real answers to those questions closer than ever.
Authors
Roger Sayre, Madeline Thomas Martin, Jill Janene Cress, Nick Holmes, Osgur McDermott-Long, Lauren Weatherdon, Dena Spatz, Keith VanGraafeiland, David Will
2020 Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation—Remote sensing satellite compendium
The Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) is a collaboration between five Federal agencies that are major users and producers of satellite land remote sensing data. In recent years, the JACIE group has observed ever-increasing numbers of remote sensing satellites being launched. This rapidly growing wave of new systems creates a need for a single reference for land remote sensing sate
Authors
Shankar N. Ramaseri Chandra, Jon Christopherson, Kimberly A. Casey
Channel cross-section analysis for automated stream head identification
Headwater streams account for more than half of the streams in the United States by length. The substantial occurrence and susceptibility to change of headwater streams makes regular updating of related maps vital to the accuracy of associated analysis and display. Here we present work testing new methods of completely automated remote headwater stream identification using metrics derived from cha
Authors
Ethan J. Shavers, Larry Stanislawski