Mission Areas
Land Resources
Understanding a changing world and how it affects our natural resources, livelihoods, and communities. Science plays an essential role in helping communities and resource managers understand the local to global implications of change, anticipate the effects of change, prepare for change, and reduce the risks associated with decisionmaking in a changing environment.
EROS Center
The Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is responsible for satellite operations, including Landsat, and performs image data collection, archiving, processing, and distribution.
Explore EROSLandCarbon
The biologic carbon sequestration assessment program (LandCarbon) studies ecosystem carbon cycle research topics, investigates carbon management science needs, and develops monitoring methods.
Learn MoreData and Tools
Land Resources supports the science community with its long-term observational networks and extensive databases encompassing the fields of climate history, land-use and land-cover change, and carbon and nutrient cycles.
U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit
News
LCMAP Projects Possibilities for Future Land Cover Change
One of the key elements of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) bold new Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) initiative is its potential to project how land cover across the country may change in the future.
Improved Forecasting Tools Offer Early Warning for Drought
There are 2.2 million people in Somalia at risk for malnutrition this year.
The reasons are myriad, but the ravages of drought – crop failures, food shortages, spiking food prices - are primary drivers of that risk.
Water Consumption Work at EROS Important Asset to Colorado River Concerns
Western states looking at critical water shortages along the Colorado River got a reprieve this past April when President Trump approved legislation allowing the Interior Secretary—through the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)—to oversee an updated water conservation plan along the river’s Lower Basin.
Publications
Bundle adjustment using space based triangulation method for improving the Landsat global ground reference
There is an ever-increasing interest and need for accurate geo-registration of remotely sensed data products to a common global geometric reference. Although the geo-registration has improved significantly in the last decade, the lack of an accurate global ground reference dataset poses serious issues for data providers seeking to make...
Choate, Michael; Storey, James C.; Rengarajan, R.; Choate, Michael J. Perspective: Developing flow policies to balance the water needs of humans and wetlands requires a landscape scale approach inclusive of future scenarios and multiple timescales
Maintenance of the natural flow regime is essential for continued wetland integrity; however, the flow regime is greatly influenced by both natural and anthropogenic forces. Wetlands may be particularly susceptible to altered flow regimes as they are directly impacted by water flows at a variety of time scales. In Puerto Rico, contemporary water...
Murry, Brent; Bowden, Jared; Branoff, Benjamin; Garcia-Bermudez, Miguel; Middleton, Beth; Ortiz-Zayas, Jorge; Restrepo, Carla; Terando, Adam Spatial conservation planning under uncertainty: adapting to climate change risks using modern portfolio theory
Climate change and urban growth impact habitats, species, and ecosystem services. To buffer against global change, an established adaptation strategy is designing protected areas to increase representation and complementarity of biodiversity features. Uncertainty regarding the scale and magnitude of landscape change complicates reserve planning...
Eaton, Mitchell; Yurek, Simeon; Haider, Zulqarnain; Martin, Julien; Johnson, Fred; Udell, Bradley J; Charkhgard, Hadi; Kwon, Changhyun