James A Falcone
Biography
Education
- Ph.D., Geography and GeoInformation Science, 2010, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
- MS, Remote Sensing, 2002, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
- MS, Geographic and Cartographic Sciences, 1999, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
- BA, Environmental Sciences, 1979, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Work History
- 2013 – present: Physical Scientist. USGS, National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, Surface Water Trends team. Location: Reston, Virginia.
- 2002 – 2013: Physical Scientist. USGS, NAWQA Program, Ecological National Synthesis team. Location: Reston, Virginia.
- 1999 – 2001: Remote Sensing Specialist. Orkand Corporation contracting to USGS Human Health Initiative Program. Location: Reston, Virginia.
- 1979 – 1998: Programmer/Analyst/Image Specialist. Several software companies contracting to the Department of Defense: PRC Inc., Sterling Software Inc., Inco Inc., Analytic Services, Inc. Locations: Washington, DC; Heidelberg, Augsburg, Ramstein, Stuttgart, Germany; Molesworth, England.
Selected publications
Falcone, J.A. and Wong, D.W., 2012. Mapping urban land uses in the United States by census zone using nationally available data, Journal of Land Use Science. DOI:10.1080/1747423X.2012.679749. Online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2012.679749.
Falcone, J.A., 2011. GAGES-II: Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow. Digital spatial data set. URL: http://water.usgs.gov/GIS/metadata/usgswrd/XML/gagesII_Sept2011.xml.
Falcone, J.A., 2010. A zone-based approach to automated mapping of urban land uses using nationally-available data, Ph.D. dissertation, George Mason University. Online at: http://digilib.gmu.edu:8080/dspace/handle/1920/5870.
Science and Products
Changes in imperviousness for U.S. urban areas, 1974-2012
This product consists of two sets of imperviousness calculations for 3,535 urban areas and urban clusters in the conterminous United States. Imperviousness is given as the percent of the area covered by impervious surfaces, such as roads, buildings, or parking lots.
U.S. Geological Survey GAGES-II time series data from consistent sources of land use, water use, agriculture, timber activities, dam removals, and other historical anthropogenic influences
This product is a series of ten datasets containing tabular data from historical time series sources for the 9,067 conterminous United States sites in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow II (GAGES-II) dataset.
Changes in anthropogenic influences on streams and rivers in the conterminous U.S. over the last 40 years, derived for 16 data themes
This product consists of time-series calculations of anthropogenic characteristics derived for 16 data themes for multiple scales covering the conterminous United States. The characteristics are those which (a) have consistent data sources, and (b) have the potential to affect the water quality of streams and rivers. All 16 data themes are provided for Hydrologic Unit Code level-10 %
Estimates of Road Salt Application across the Conterminous United States, 1992-2015
Annual estimates of road salt application were developed for the conterminous United States for the calendar years 1992 through 2015. The final dataset consists of 24 rasters in Geostationary Earth Orbit Tagged Image File Format (GeoTIFF), one for each year from 1992 through 2015. The final estimates (in pounds) were derived from several data sources, which include road density and p
Coefficient-based consistent mapping of imperviousness in the conterminous U.S. at 60-m resolution for 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012
Anthropogenic impervious surfaces affect hydrology, water quality, and ecological health and are widely studied. Previous studies have been limited, however, by a lack of consistent representation of imperviousness nationally as a time series prior to 2001. This product presents estimated imperviousness at 60-meter spatial resolution, for the time periods 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002%
Old vs. new urban: U.S. national mapping of the year of “first development” for urban areas, from 1940-2010.
This product is a 100-meter resolution raster which classifies urban lands in the conterminous United States by the year in which they were “first developed.” The classification is based on housing density by era for 1940-2010 developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison SILVIS lab. The classification was applied by identifying a housing unit density threshold which matched
Conterminous U.S. mapping of household income at the block group scale adjusted for cost-of-living for the period 2013-2014
Household income is a potential predictor for a number of environmental influences, for example, application of urban pesticides. This product is a U.S. conterminous mapping of block group income derived from the 2010-2014 Census American Community Survey (ACS), adjusted by a 2013 county-level Cost-of-Living index obtained from the Council for Community and Economic Research. The resul
U.S. national categorical mapping of building heights by block group from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data
This dataset is a categorical mapping of estimated mean building heights, by Census block group, in shapefile format for the conterminous United States. The data were derived from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which collected “first return” (top of canopy and buildings) radar data at 30-m resolution in February, 2000 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Th
Mapping enhanced grazing potential based on the NAWQA Wall-to-wall Anthropogenic Land-use Trends (NWALT) product, 1974-2012
This dataset provides an additional "Grazing Potential" land use class to the previously published U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Program (NAWQA) Wall-to-Wall Anthropogenic Land-use Trends (NWALT) product (Falcone, 2015, USGS Data Series 948). As with the NWALT, the dataset consists of five national 60-m land use grids, for the years 1974, 198
National 1-kilometer rasters of selected Census of Agriculture statistics allocated to land use for the time period 1950 to 2012
This dataset consists of a series of rasters covering the conterminous United States. Each raster is a one kilometer (km) grid for 18 selected Census of Agriculture statistics mapped to land use pixels for the time period 1950 to 2012. A supplemental set of 9 statistics mapped at the entire county level are also provided as 1-km rasters. The rasters are posted as ArcGIS grids. The statistics...
Landscape drivers of dynamic change in water quality of US rivers
Water security is a top concern for social well-being and dramatic changes in the availability of freshwater have occurred as a result of human uses and landscape management. Elevated nutrient loading and perturbations to major ion composition have resulted from human activities and have degraded freshwater resources. This study addresses the...
Stets, Edward G.; Sprague, Lori A.; Oelsner, Gretchen P.; Johnson, Henry M.; Murphy, Jennifer C.; Ryberg, Karen R.; Vecchia, Aldo V.; Zuellig, Robert E.; Falcone, James A.; Riskin, Melissa L. Regional patterns of anthropogenic influences on streams and rivers in the conterminous United States, from the early 1970s to 2012
This paper introduces a dataset containing consistent time-series measurements of anthropogenic activities potentially affecting stream quality across the conterminous United States and summarizes the most noteworthy trends from 61 variables in 16 categories. Data include measures of atmospheric deposition, agricultural production, livestock,...
Falcone, James A.; Murphy, Jennifer C.; Sprague, Lori A. Assessing water-quality changes in U.S. rivers at multiple geographic scales using results from probabilistic and targeted monitoring
Two commonly used approaches for water quality monitoring are probabilistic and targeted. In a probabilistic approach like the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Rivers and Streams Assessment, monitoring sites are selected using a statistically representative approach. In a targeted approach like that used by many monitoring...
Sprague, Lori A.; Mitchell, Richard M; Pollard, Amina I.; Falcone, James A.
Water-quality trends in the nation’s rivers and streams, 1972–2012—Data preparation, statistical methods, and trend results
Since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, Federal, State, and local governments have invested billions of dollars to reduce pollution entering rivers and streams. To understand the return on these investments and to effectively manage and protect the Nation’s water resources in the future, we need to know how and why water quality has been...
Oelsner, Gretchen P.; Sprague, Lori A.; Murphy, Jennifer C.; Zuellig, Robert E.; Johnson, Henry M.; Ryberg, Karen R.; Falcone, James A.; Stets, Edward G.; Vecchia, Aldo V.; Riskin, Melissa L.; De Cicco, Laura A.; Mills, Taylor J.; Farmer, William H.
U.S. conterminous wall-to-wall anthropogenic land use trends (NWALT), 1974–2012
This dataset provides a U.S. national 60-meter, 19-class mapping of anthropogenic land uses for five time periods: 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012. The 2012 dataset is based on a slightly modified version of the National Land Cover Database 2011 (NLCD 2011) that was recoded to a schema of land uses, and mapped back in time to develop datasets for...
Falcone, James A.
The quality of our Nation’s waters--ecological health in the Nation's streams, 1993-2005
This report summarizes a national assessment of the ecological health of streams done by the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA). Healthy functioning stream ecosystems provide society with many benefits, including water purification, flood control, nutrient recycling, waste decomposition, fisheries,...
Carlisle, Daren; Meador, Michael R.; Short, Terry M.; Tate, Cathy M.; Gurtz, Martin E.; Bryant, Wade L.; Falcone, James A.; Woodside, Michael D. Generation of a U.S. national urban land use product
Characterization of urban land uses is essential for many applications. However, differentiating among thematically-detailed urban land uses (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, recreational, etc.) over broad areas is challenging, in part because image-based solutions are not ideal for establishing the contextual basis for...
Falcone, James A.; Homer, Collin G. GAGES: A stream gage database for evaluating natural and alteredflow conditions in the conterminous United States
Stream flow is a controlling element in the ecology of rivers and streams. Knowledge of the natural flow regime facilitates the assessment of whether specific hydrologic attributes have been altered by humans in a particular stream and the establishment of specific goals for stream-flow restoration. Because most streams are ungaged or have been...
Falcone, James A.; Carlisle, Daren; Wolock, David M.; Meador, Michael R. Quantifying human disturbance in watersheds: Variable selection and performance of a GIS-based disturbance index for predicting the biological condition of perennial streams
Characterizing the relative severity of human disturbance in watersheds is often part of stream assessments and is frequently done with the aid of Geographic Information System (GIS)-derived data. However, the choice of variables and how they are used to quantify disturbance are often subjective. In this study, we developed a number of disturbance...
Falcone, James A.; Carlisle, Daren; Weber, Lisa C. Predicting the natural flow regime: Models for assessing hydrological alteration in streams
Understanding the extent to which natural streamflow characteristics have been altered is an important consideration for ecological assessments of streams. Assessing hydrologic condition requires that we quantify the attributes of the flow regime that would be expected in the absence of anthropogenic modifications. The objective of this study was...
Carlisle, D.M.; Falcone, J.; Wolock, D.M.; Meador, M.R.; Norris, R.H. Predicting the biological condition of streams: Use of geospatial indicators of natural and anthropogenic characteristics of watersheds
We developed and evaluated empirical models to predict biological condition of wadeable streams in a large portion of the eastern USA, with the ultimate goal of prediction for unsampled basins. Previous work had classified (i.e., altered vs. unaltered) the biological condition of 920 streams based on a biological assessment of macroinvertebrate...
Carlisle, D.M.; Falcone, J.; Meador, M.R. Biological assessments of Appalachian streams based on predictive models for fish, macroinvertebrate, and diatom assemblages
We developed empirical models for fish, macroinvertebrate, and diatom assemblages to assess the biological condition of 268 streams sampled from 1993 to 2002 in 7 major river basins in the Appalachian region of the USA. These models estimate the expected taxonomic composition at each site based on observed variation in taxonomic composition at...
Carlisle, D.M.; Hawkins, C.P.; Meador, M.R.; Potapova, M.; Falcone, J.
Estimates of areal extent of U.S. parking lots now available
Parking lots may be a significant source of pollution, but up until now there has been no quantitative estimate of the areal extent of parking lots in the U.S.
Massive changes over last 50 years in human influences that affect water quality
Some of the major human influences on water quality, in particular the ways we use land, water, and chemicals, have undergone dramatic changes over the last five decades, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Program. Patterns of urbanization, chemical use, and...