Landscape Change and Impacts

Wetlands accumulate organic-rich sediment or peat stratigraphically, making them great archives of past environmental change. Wetlands also act as hydrologic buffers on the landscape and are important to global biogeochemical cycling. This project uses wetland archives from a range of environments to better understand how vegetation, hydrology, and hydroclimate has changed on decadal to multi...

Land cover and land use (LC/LU), climate, and biogeochemical processing are significant drivers of water quality in streams and rivers over broad scales of space and time. As LC/LU and climate continue to change we can expect changes in water quality. This project seeks to understand the drivers of spatial and temporal variability in water quality across scales using new and existing data to...

Climate-related forest disturbances, particularly drought-induced tree mortality and large, high-severity fires from increasingly warm and dry conditions, are altering forest ecosystems and the ecosystem services society depends on (e.g., water supplies). Our research combines long-term place-based ecological data, diverse methods (e.g., paleo, remote-sensing), and networking approaches to...

The ecological foundation of thousands of acres of wetland habitat is being impacted by changes in land cover, land use, climate, and invasive species. This project utilizes USGS remotely-sensed products, along with experimental and observational field data to develop spatially-explicit, landscape-scale models of invasive cattails and soil biogeochemical processes. These models will assist...

Forests provide society with economically important and often irreplaceable goods and services, such as wood products, carbon sequestration, clean water, biodiversity, and recreational opportunities. Yet hotter droughts (droughts in which unusually high temperatures exacerbate the effects of low precipitation) are projected to increase in frequency and intensity in coming decades, potentially...

Improper land use during drought has been a major driver of land degradation in drylands globally, especially in the western U.S. Increasing aridity in western U.S. drylands under future climates will exacerbate risks associated with drought and land use decisions. This project provides critical observational, experimental, and modelling evidence to support our DOI partners with decision processes...

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America is one of the most important breeding areas for continental waterfowl populations, a Department of Interior (DOI) trust resource. Land use and climate both influence the functioning of the region’s wetland ecosystems, with effects not just on the waterfowl that depend on these wetlands, but also on the services they provide to society, such as...

Changing temperature, precipitation, and land use intensification has resulted in global soil degradation. The accompanying loss of soil organic matter (SOM) decreases important soil health services. Soil organic matter is a major global pool of carbon; if SOM can be increased, soils can mitigate elevated atmospheric CO2. However, there are major knowledge gaps in SOM persistence. This project...

USGS scientists have a long tradition of providing high-quality, consistent, and relevant land-cover data for the United States, using our archive of current and historical remote sensing data. Scientists at USGS EROS are using their experience in mapping land cover and their knowledge of land-cover change processes to temporally extend these databases beyond the dates of available remote sensing...

More than a third of the United States population lives in counties directly on the shoreline, making them vulnerable to hazards associated with changing sea level and storm surges associated with hurricanes and severe storms. The geologic record contains many examples of past intervals of warm climate and high sea level. "Geological Investigation of the Neogene" is examining proxy records of...

The Arctic is undergoing historically unprecedented changes in weather, sea ice, temperature and ecosystems. These changes have led to greater coastal erosion, greater export of freshwater, and changes to marine and terrestrial ecosystems, habitats, and productivity, among other trends. Meanwhile, many believe the Arctic “amplifies” large climate changes during both warm periods and ice ages and...

This project studies past high sea levels on coastlines that preserve fossil coral reefs or marine terraces. We ascertain the magnitudes of sea-level high stands by field mapping, stratigraphic measurements, and precise elevation measurements. Geochronology is accomplished by radiocarbon dating of mollusks (for Holocene-to-last-glacial deposits), uranium-series dating of corals (for high-sea...