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David Selkowitz

Dave is a Research Geographer in the WY-MT WSC Studies Section.

Professional Experience

  • (2007 - Present) Research Geographer, US Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center

  • (2006 - 2007) Environmental Scientist, SAIC contractor for the US Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center

  • (2003 - 2005) Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

  • (2002 - 2003) Independent Contractor for National Park Service/US Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Glacier Field Station

  • (2002) Research Associate, Montana State University contractor for the US Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Glacier Field Station

Education and Certifications

  • M.S. Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, 2005

  • B.A. Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, 2001

Affiliations and Memberships*

  • American Geophysical Union

Honors and Awards

  • Graduate Research Assistantship, Oregon State University Department of Geosciences, 2003-2005

Science and Products

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Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, FWS

From Water to Wildlife: Linking Water Timing and Availability to Meadows and Wildlife in a Changing Climate

Mountain meadows in the western United States provide key habitats for many plant and wildlife species, many of which rely exclusively on these areas. Mountain meadows are also treasured by the public and provide beautiful areas to view wildflowers and wildlife on public lands such as national parks. However, mountain ecosystems are expected to be disproportionately affected by climate change. The
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Climate Adaptation Science Centers
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From Water to Wildlife: Linking Water Timing and Availability to Meadows and Wildlife in a Changing Climate

Mountain meadows in the western United States provide key habitats for many plant and wildlife species, many of which rely exclusively on these areas. Mountain meadows are also treasured by the public and provide beautiful areas to view wildflowers and wildlife on public lands such as national parks. However, mountain ecosystems are expected to be disproportionately affected by climate change. The
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Estimated Nitrogen and Phosphorus Input to Fish Creek Watershed

Geospatial Research and Development to Understand Hydrologic Processes

All natural phenomena have a spatial component. Remote sensing, GIS, and geostatistical methods can be used to evaluate the spatial components of hydrologic phenomena and understand characteristics, such as water quality, streamflow, and hydraulics.
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Wyoming-Montana Water Science Center
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Geospatial Research and Development to Understand Hydrologic Processes

All natural phenomena have a spatial component. Remote sensing, GIS, and geostatistical methods can be used to evaluate the spatial components of hydrologic phenomena and understand characteristics, such as water quality, streamflow, and hydraulics.
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Historical simulated snowpack for the Lake Sherburne, MT watershed and vicinity, water years 1980-2019

Abstract This data release contains historical SnowModel (Liston and Elder, 2006) output for the Lake Sherburne, MT watershed and surrounding area. The two quantities simulated for this release were snow water equivalent depth (swed), the liquid water equivalent depth stored as snow in the simulation domain, and runoff (roff), which includes snowmelt at the snow-soil interface and rainfall on pixe
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Wyoming-Montana Water Science Center

Integrated hydrology and operations modeling to evaluate climate change impacts in an agricultural valley irrigated with snowmelt runoff

Applying models to developed agricultural regions remains a difficult problem because there are no existing modeling codes that represent both the complex physics of the hydrology and anthropogenic manipulations to water distribution and consumption. We apply an integrated groundwater – surface water and hydrologic river operations model to an irrigated river valley in northwestern Nevada/northern
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Wesley Kitlasten, Eric D. Morway, Richard G. Niswonger, Murphy Gardner, Jeremy T. White, Enrique Triana, David J. Selkowitz
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Alaska Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, Oklahoma-Texas Water Science Center

Automated mapping of persistent ice and snow cover across the western U.S. with Landsat

We implemented an automated approach for mapping persistent ice and snow cover (PISC) across the conterminous western U.S. using all available Landsat TM and ETM+ scenes acquired during the late summer/early fall period between 2010 and 2014. Two separate validation approaches indicate this dataset provides a more accurate representation of glacial ice and perennial snow cover for the region than
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David J. Selkowitz, Richard R. Forster
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Alaska Science Center

An automated approach for mapping persistent ice and snow cover over high latitude regions

We developed an automated approach for mapping persistent ice and snow cover (glaciers and perennial snowfields) from Landsat TM and ETM+ data across a variety of topography, glacier types, and climatic conditions at high latitudes (above ~65°N). Our approach exploits all available Landsat scenes acquired during the late summer (1 August–15 September) over a multi-year period and employs an automa
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David J. Selkowitz, Richard R. Forster
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Alaska Science Center

Prevalence of pure versus mixed snow cover pixels across spatial resolutions in alpine environments: implications for binary and fractional remote sensing approaches

Remote sensing of snow-covered area (SCA) can be binary (indicating the presence/absence of snow cover at each pixel) or fractional (indicating the fraction of each pixel covered by snow). Fractional SCA mapping provides more information than binary SCA, but is more difficult to implement and may not be feasible with all types of remote sensing data. The utility of fractional SCA mapping relative
Authors
David J. Selkowitz, Richard Forster, Megan K. Caldwell
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Alaska Science Center

A multi-sensor lidar, multi-spectral and multi-angular approach for mapping canopy height in boreal forest regions

Spatially explicit representations of vegetation canopy height over large regions are necessary for a wide variety of inventory, monitoring, and modeling activities. Although airborne lidar data has been successfully used to develop vegetation canopy height maps in many regions, for vast, sparsely populated regions such as the boreal forest biome, airborne lidar is not widely available. An alterna
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David J. Selkowitz, Gordon Green, Birgit E. Peterson, Bruce Wylie
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Alaska Science Center, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Thematic accuracy of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 land cover for Alaska

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 Alaska land cover classification is the first 30-m resolution land cover product available covering the entire state of Alaska. The accuracy assessment of the NLCD 2001 Alaska land cover classification employed a geographically stratified three-stage sampling design to select the reference sample of pixels. Reference land cover class labels were determi
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David J. Selkowitz, Stephen V. Stehman
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Alaska Science Center

Exploring the potential for a fused Landsat-MODIS snow covered area product

Results from nine 3 x 3 km study areas in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA demonstrate there is potential for using sporadically acquired Landsat images in combination with daily coarse resolution fractional snow covered area (SCA) images to produce daily high resolution binary SCA images. The results also highlight several challenges to implementing this type of approach. The approach describ
Authors
David J. Selkowitz
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Alaska Science Center

Thematic accuracy of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 land cover for Alaska

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 Alaska land cover classification is the first 30-m resolution land cover product available covering the entire state of Alaska. The accuracy assessment of the NLCD 2001 Alaska land cover classification employed a geographically stratified three-stage sampling design to select the reference sample of pixels. Reference land cover class labels were determi
Authors
David J. Selkowitz, S.V. Stehman
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Alaska Science Center

A comparison of multi-spectral, multi-angular, and multi-temporal remote sensing datasets for fractional shrub canopy mapping in Arctic Alaska

Shrub cover appears to be increasing across many areas of the Arctic tundra biome, and increasing shrub cover in the Arctic has the potential to significantly impact global carbon budgets and the global climate system. For most of the Arctic, however, there is no existing baseline inventory of shrub canopy cover, as existing maps of Arctic vegetation provide little information about the density of
Authors
David J. Selkowitz
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Alaska Science Center

Modeling and measuring snow for assessing climate change impacts in Glacier National Park, Montana

A 12-year program of global change research at Glacier National Park by the U.S. Geological Survey and numerous collaborators has made progress in quantifying the role of snow as a driver of mountain ecosystem processes. Spatially extensive snow surveys during the annual accumulation/ablation cycle covered two mountain watersheds and approximately 1,000 km2 . Over 7,000 snow depth and snow water e
Authors
Daniel B. Fagre, David J. Selkowitz, Blase Reardon, Karen Holzer, Lisa L. Mckeon

Science and Products

*Disclaimer: Listing outside positions with professional scientific organizations on this Staff Profile are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement of those professional scientific organizations or their activities by the USGS, Department of the Interior, or U.S. Government