Core Science Systems
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.
Elevation Difference and Bouguer Anomaly Analysis Tool (EDBAAT) User's Guide
This report describes a software tool that imports gravity anomaly point data from the Gravity Database of the United States (GDUS) of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and University of Texas at El Paso along with elevation data from The National Map (TNM) of the U.S. Geological Survey that lie within a user-specified geographic area of...
Smittle, Aaron M.; Shoberg, Thomas G.
Baseline and projected future carbon storage and carbon fluxes in ecosystems of Hawai‘i
This assessment was conducted to fulfill the requirements of section 712 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and to improve understanding of factors influencing carbon balance in ecosystems of Hawai‘i. Ecosystem carbon storage, carbon fluxes, and carbon balance were examined for major terrestrial ecosystems on the seven main...
Selmants, Paul C.; Giardina, Christian P.; Jacobi, James D.; Zhu, Zhiliang
Integrating multiple data sources in species distribution modeling: A framework for data fusion
The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the use of species distribution models (SDMs) to characterize patterns of species’ occurrence and abundance. Efforts to parameterize SDMs often create a tension between the quality and quantity of data available to fit models. Estimation methods that integrate both standardized and non-standardized...
Pacifici, Krishna; Reich, Brian J.; Miller, David A.W.; Gardner, Beth; Stauffer, Glenn E.; Singh, Susheela; McKerrow, Alexa J.; Collazo, Jaime A. Long-term fish monitoring in large rivers: Utility of “benchmarking” across basins
In business, benchmarking is a widely used practice of comparing your own business processes to those of other comparable companies and incorporating identified best practices to improve performance. Biologists and resource managers designing and conducting monitoring programs for fish in large river systems tend to focus on single river basins or...
Ward, David L.; Casper, Andrew F.; Counihan, Timothy D.; Bayer, Jennifer M.; Waite, Ian R.; Kosovich, John J.; Chapman, Colin; Irwin, Elise R.; Sauer, Jennifer S.; Ickes, Brian; McKerrow, Alexa J. Shapes on a plane: Evaluating the impact of projection distortion on spatial binning
One method for working with large, dense sets of spatial point data is to aggregate the measure of the data into polygonal containers, such as political boundaries, or into regular spatial bins such as triangles, squares, or hexagons. When mapping these aggregations, the map projection must inevitably distort relationships. This distortion can...
Battersby, Sarah E.; Strebe, Daniel “daan”; Finn, Michael P. TopoLens: Building a cyberGIS community data service for enhancing the usability of high-resolution National Topographic datasets
Geospatial data, often embedded with geographic references, are important to many application and science domains, and represent a major type of big data. The increased volume and diversity of geospatial data have caused serious usability issues for researchers in various scientific domains, which call for innovative cyberGIS solutions. To address...
Hu, Hao; Hong, Xingchen; Terstriep, Jeff; Liu, Yan; Finn, Michael P.; Rush, Johnathan; Wendel, Jeffrey; Wang, Shaowen A comparison of NLCD 2011 and LANDFIRE EVT 2010: Regional and national summaries.
In order to provide the land cover user community a summary of the similarity and differences between the 2011 National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) and the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Program Existing Vegetation 2010 Data (LANDFIRE EVT), the two datasets were compared at a national (conterminous U.S.) and regional (Eastern...
McKerrow, Alexa J.; Dewitz, Jon; Long, Donald G.; Nelson, Kurtis; Connot, Joel A.; Smith, Jim Defining resilience: A preliminary integrative literature review
The term “resilience” is ubiquitous in technical literature; it appears in numerous forms, such as resilience, resiliency, or resilient, and each use may have a different definition depending on the interpretation of the writer. This creates difficulties in understanding what is meant by ‘resilience’ in any given use case, especially in...
Wilt, Bonnie; Long, Suzanna K.; Shoberg, Thomas G. Measuring distance “as the horse runs”: Cross-scale comparison of terrain-based metrics
Distance metrics play significant roles in spatial modeling tasks, such as flood inundation (Tucker and Hancock 2010), stream extraction (Stanislawski et al. 2015), power line routing (Kiessling et al. 2003) and analysis of surface pollutants such as nitrogen (Harms et al. 2009). Avalanche risk is based on slope, aspect, and curvature, all...
Buttenfield, Barbara P.; Ghandehari, M; Leyk, S; Stanislawski, Larry V.; Brantley, M E; Qiang, Yi Use of lidar point cloud data to support estimation of residual trace metals stored in mine chat piles in the Old Lead Belt of southeastern, Missouri
Historic lead and zinc (Pb-Zn) mining in southeast Missouri’s ―Old Lead Belt‖ has left large chat piles dominating the landscape where prior to 1972 mining was the major industry of the region. As a result of variable beneficiation methods over the history of mining activity, these piles remain with large quantities of unrecovered Pb and Zn and to...
Witt, Emitt C. Uncertainty quantification and propagation for projections of extremes in monthly area burned under climate change: A case study in the coastal plain of Georgia, USA
Human‐caused climate change is predicted to affect the frequency of hazard‐linked extremes. Unusually large wildfires are a type of extreme event that is constrained by climate and can be a hazard to society but also an important ecological disturbance. This chapter focuses on changes in the frequency of extreme monthly area burned by wildfires...
Riley, Karin L.; Webley, Peter; Thompson, Matthew; Terando, Adam J.; Reich, Brian J.; Pacifici, Krishna; Costanza, Jennifer; McKerrow, Alexa J.; Collazo, Jaime A. Projected gains and losses of wildlife habitat from bioenergy-induced landscape change
Domestic and foreign renewable energy targets and financial incentives have increased demand for woody biomass and bioenergy in the southeastern United States. This demand is expected to be met through purpose-grown agricultural bioenergy crops, short-rotation tree plantations, thinning and harvest of planted and natural forests, and forest...
Tarr, Nathan M.; Rubino, Matthew J.; Costanza, Jennifer K.; McKerrow, Alexa J.; Collazo, Jaime A.; Abt, Robert C.