Publications
Listed here are publications, reports and articles by the Land Change Science Program in the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area.
Filter Total Items: 1145
A case study examining the efficacy of drainage setbacks for limiting effects to wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region, USA A case study examining the efficacy of drainage setbacks for limiting effects to wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region, USA
The enhancement of agricultural lands through the use of artificial drainage systems is a common practice throughout the United States, and recently the use of this practice has expanded in the Prairie Pothole Region. Many wetlands are afforded protection from the direct effects of drainage through regulation or legal agreements, and drainage setback distances typically are used to...
Authors
Brian Tangen, Raymond Finocchiaro
Case studies of capacity building for biodiversity monitoring Case studies of capacity building for biodiversity monitoring
Monitoring the status and trends of species is critical to their conservation and management. However, the current state of biodiversity monitoring is insufficient to detect such for most species and habitats, other than in a few localised areas. One of the biggest obstacles to adequate monitoring is the lack of local capacity to carry out such programs. Thus, building the capacity to do...
Authors
Dirk Schmeller, Christos Arvanitidis, Monika Bohm, Neil Brummitt, Eva Chatzinikolaou, Mark Costello, Hui Ding, Michael Gill, Peter Haase, Romain Juillard, Jaime Garcia-Moreno, Nathalie Pettorelli, Cui Peng, Corinna Riginos, Ute Schmiedel, John Simaika, Carly Waterman, Jun Wu, Haigen Xu, Jayne Belnap
Integrating continuous stocks and flows into state-and-transition simulation models of landscape change Integrating continuous stocks and flows into state-and-transition simulation models of landscape change
State-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) provide a general framework for forecasting landscape dynamics, including projections of both vegetation and land-use/land-cover (LULC) change. The STSM method divides a landscape into spatially-referenced cells and then simulates the state of each cell forward in time, as a discrete-time stochastic process using a Monte Carlo approach, in...
Authors
Colin Daniel, Benjamin Sleeter, Leonardo Frid, Marie-Josée Fortin
The ACER pollen and charcoal database: A global resource to document vegetation and fire response to abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period The ACER pollen and charcoal database: A global resource to document vegetation and fire response to abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period
Quaternary records provide an opportunity to examine the nature of the vegetation and fire responses to rapid past climate changes comparable in velocity and magnitude to those expected in the 21st century. The best documented examples of rapid climate change in the past are the warming events associated with the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles during the last glacial period, which were
Authors
M.F. Sanchez-Goni, S. Desprat, A.-L. Daniau, F. Bassinot, J.M. Polanco-Martinez, S.P. Harrison, J.R.M. Allen, R. Anderson, H. Behling, R. Bonnefille, F. Burjachs, J.S. Carrion, R. Cheddadi, J.S. Clark, N. Combourieu-Nebout, C.J. Courtney Mustaphi, G.H. Debusk, L. Dupont, J. Finch, W.J. Fletcher, M. Giardini, C. González, W.D. Gosling, L.D. Grigg, E.C. Grimm, R. Hayashi, K. Helmens, Heusser. L.E., T. Hill, G. Hope, B. Huntley, Y. Igarashi, T. Irino, B. Jacobs, G. Jiménez-Moreno, S. Kawai, P. Kershaw, F. Kumon, I. Lawson, M.-P. Ledru, A.-M. Lézine, P.-M. Liew, D. Magri, R. Marchant, V. Margari, F. Mayle, M. McKenzie, P. Moss, U.C. Muller, F. Naughton, R.M. Newnham, T. Oba, R. Perez-Obiol, R. Pini, C. Ravazzi, K.H. Roucoux, S. Rucina, L. Scott, H. Takahara, P.C. Tzedakis, D.H. Urrego, Debra Willard, B. Van Geel, B.G. Valencia, M.J. Vandergoes, A. Vincens, C.L. Whitlock, Debra Willard, M. Yamamoto
Landscape-scale variation in canopy water content of giant sequoias during drought Landscape-scale variation in canopy water content of giant sequoias during drought
Recent drought (2012–2016) caused unprecedented foliage dieback in giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), a species endemic to the western slope of the southern Sierra Nevada in central California. As part of an effort to understand and map sequoia response to droughts, we studied the patterns of remotely sensed canopy water content (CWC), both within and among sequoia groves in two...
Authors
Tarin Paz-Kagan, Nicolas Vaughn, Roberta Martin, Philip Brodrick, Nathan Stephenson, Adrian Das, Koren Nydick, Gregory Asner
Reply to the discussion of Pinter et al. on ‘Fluvial system response to late Pleistocene-Holocene sea-level change on Santa Rosa Island, Channel Islands National Park, California’ by Schumann et al. (2016) Reply to the discussion of Pinter et al. on ‘Fluvial system response to late Pleistocene-Holocene sea-level change on Santa Rosa Island, Channel Islands National Park, California’ by Schumann et al. (2016)
We appreciate the thoughtful discussion offered by Pinter et al. (2017) because it gives us an opportunity to elucidate some of the main points of our study, address some apparent misinterpretations, and recapitulate one of our conclusions. Pinter et al.’s discussion emphasizes and reinforces some of the important concepts we presented but also raises questions regarding specific aspects...
Authors
R. Schumann, Jeffrey Pigati
Application of synthetic scenarios to address water resource concerns: A management-guided case study from the Upper Colorado River Basin Application of synthetic scenarios to address water resource concerns: A management-guided case study from the Upper Colorado River Basin
Water managers are increasingly interested in better understanding and planning for projected resource impacts from climate change. In this management-guided study, we use a very large suite of synthetic climate scenarios in a statistical modeling framework to simultaneously evaluate how (1) average temperature and precipitation changes, (2) initial basin conditions, and (3) temporal
Authors
Stephanie A. McAfee, Gregory Pederson, Connie Woodhouse, Gregory McCabe
Organic carbon burial in global lakes and reservoirs Organic carbon burial in global lakes and reservoirs
Burial in sediments removes organic carbon (OC) from the short-term biosphere-atmosphere carbon (C) cycle, and therefore prevents greenhouse gas production in natural systems. Although OC burial in lakes and reservoirs is faster than in the ocean, the magnitude of inland water OC burial is not well constrained. Here we generate the first global-scale and regionally resolved estimate of...
Authors
Raquel Mendonca, Roger Muller, David Clow, Charles Verpoorter, Peter Raymond, Lars Tranvik, Sebastian Sobek
Late Quaternary uplift along the North America-Caribbean plate boundary: Evidence from the sea level record of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Late Quaternary uplift along the North America-Caribbean plate boundary: Evidence from the sea level record of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
The tectonic setting of the North America-Caribbean plate boundary has been studied intensively, but some aspects are still poorly understood, particularly along the Oriente fault zone. Guantanamo Bay, southern Cuba, is considered to be on a coastline that is under a transpressive tectonic regime along this zone, and is hypothesized to have a low uplift rate. We tested this by studying...
Authors
Daniel R. Muhs, Eugene Schweig, Kathleen Simmons, Robert Halley
Comparing catchment hydrologic response to a regional storm using specific conductivity sensors Comparing catchment hydrologic response to a regional storm using specific conductivity sensors
A better understanding of stormwater generation and solute sources is needed to improve the protection of aquatic ecosystems, infrastructure, and human health from large runoff events. Much of our understanding of water and solutes produced during stormflow comes from studies of individual, small headwater catchments. This study compared many different types of catchments during a single...
Authors
Ashley Inserillo, Mark B. Green, James Shanley, Joseph Boyer
Central Arctic Ocean paleoceanography from ∼50 ka to present, on the basis of ostracode faunal assemblages from the SWERUS 2014 expedition Central Arctic Ocean paleoceanography from ∼50 ka to present, on the basis of ostracode faunal assemblages from the SWERUS 2014 expedition
Late Quaternary paleoceanographic changes at the Lomonosov Ridge, central Arctic Ocean, were reconstructed from a multicore and gravity core recovered during the 2014 SWERUS-C3 Expedition. Ostracode assemblages dated by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) indicate changing sea-ice conditions and warm Atlantic Water (AW)inflow to the Arctic Ocean from ∼50 ka to present. Key taxa used as
Authors
Laura Gemery, Thomas Cronin, Robert Poirier, Christof Pearce, Natalia Barrientos, Matt O’Regan, Carina Johansson, Andrey Koshurnikov, Martin Jakobsson
Patterns and correlates of giant sequoia foliage dieback during California’s 2012–2016 hotter drought Patterns and correlates of giant sequoia foliage dieback during California’s 2012–2016 hotter drought
Hotter droughts – droughts in which unusually high temperatures exacerbate the effects of low precipitation – are expected to increase in frequency and severity in coming decades, challenging scientists and managers to identify which parts of forested landscapes may be most vulnerable. In 2014, in the middle of California’s historically unprecedented 2012–2016 hotter drought, we noticed...
Authors
Nathan Stephenson, Adrian Das, Nicholas Ampersee, Kathleen Cahill, Anthony Caprio, John Sanders, A. Williams