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Kristi Sayler

Kristi Sayler is a physical scientist with the US Geological Survey at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD.

Kristi Sayler is a physical scientist with the US Geological Survey at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD. She has worked on numerous projects involving mapping land cover and land use change using remotely sensed data. She was one of the original team members on the Land Cover Trends project, helping both with project design and land cover mapping activities. In 2010, this project completed one of the first ever assessments of 1973-2000 land-cover change for the conterminous U.S. She has also helped with the development of a scenario-based land-cover projection model called Forecasting Scenarios of Land-use Change (FORE-SCE). The model has been successfully used for applications examining the impacts of projected land cover change on carbon dynamics, climate, and regional hydrology. She has more recently become involved with the Land Change Monitoring Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) science team contributing to the Assessment Team’s analysis of current and historical processes of cover and change. In 2016, Kristi also took on a supervision role for members of the Integrated Science and Application Branch at EROS. In April 2020, Kristi became the Project Manager for the LSDS Science Research and Development (LSRD) project. This project provides science consultation and support across the formulation, development, and operations phases of the Landsat missions which includes performing algorithm development and validation for the generation of advanced science data products to enable monitoring of land surface change, conducting and evaluating technology investigations related to new sensor and science data processing capabilities,  and producing and distributing provisional science products for community evaluation to facilitate product generation capabilities from research to operations. The LSRD project also maintains the Landsat Missions Website and conducts Landsat user community outreach to communicate Landsat mission objectives, capabilities, and accomplishments.

 

Education and Certifications

  • 1994  Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, with Computer Science minor, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

  • 1998  Master of Science in Geography, South Dakota State University

     

Science and Products

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Image of Land Cover Trends map for conterminous U.S.

Land Cover Trends and Assessments

Land Cover Trends was a research project focused on understanding the rates, trends, causes, and consequences of contemporary U.S. land use and land cover change.
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
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Land Cover Trends and Assessments

Land Cover Trends was a research project focused on understanding the rates, trends, causes, and consequences of contemporary U.S. land use and land cover change.
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National Land Cover Database

Land Cover Trends

Land Cover Trends was a research project focused on understanding the rates, trends, causes, and consequences of contemporary U.S. land use and land cover change. The project spanned from 1999 to 2011. The research was supported by the Climate and Land Use Change Research and Development Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and was a collaborative effort with the U.S. Environmental...
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Western Geographic Science Center
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Land Cover Trends

Land Cover Trends was a research project focused on understanding the rates, trends, causes, and consequences of contemporary U.S. land use and land cover change. The project spanned from 1999 to 2011. The research was supported by the Climate and Land Use Change Research and Development Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and was a collaborative effort with the U.S. Environmental...
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Modeled 2030 land cover for the Northern Glaciated Plains ecoregion

Land use and land cover (LULC) change occurs at a local level within contiguous ownership and management units (parcels), yet LULC models primarily use pixel-based spatial frameworks. The few parcel-based models being used overwhelmingly focus on small geographic areas, limiting the ability to assess LULC change impacts at regional to national scales. We developed a modified version of the Foreca
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Land Cover Trends Dataset, 2000-2011

U.S. Geological Survey scientists, funded by the Climate and Land Use Change Research and Development Program, developed a dataset of 2006 and 2011 land use and land cover (LULC) information for selected 100-km2 sample blocks within 29 EPA Level 3 ecoregions across the conterminous United States. The data was collected for validation of new and existing national scale LULC datasets developed from
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
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Improving temporal frequency of Landsat surface temperature products using the gap-filling algorithm

Remotely sensed surface temperature (ST) has been widely used to monitor and assess landscape thermal conditions, hydrologic modeling, and surface energy balance. Landsat thermal sensors have continuously measured the Earth surface thermal radiance since August 1982. The thermal radiance measurements are atmospherically compensated and converted to Landsat STs and delivered as part of the U.S. Geo
Authors
George Xian, Hua Shi, Saeed Arab, Chase Mueller, Reza Hussain, Kristi Sayler, Danny Howard
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Conterminous United States land-cover change (1985-2016): New insights from annual time series

Sample-based estimates augmented by complete coverage land-cover maps were used to estimate area and describe patterns of annual land-cover change across the conterminous United States (CONUS) between 1985 and 2016. Most of the CONUS land cover remained stable in terms of net class change over this time, but a substantial gross change dynamic was captured by the annual and cumulative time interval
Authors
Roger F. Auch, Danika Fay Wellington, Janis L. Taylor, Stephen V Stehman, Heather J. Tollerud, Jesslyn F. Brown, Thomas Loveland, Bruce Pengra, Josephine Horton, Zhe Zhu, Alemayehu Midekisa, Kristi Sayler, George Xian, Christopher Barnes, Ryan R. Reker
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Core Science Systems Mission Area, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection

Land change monitoring, assessment, and projection

There is a pressing need to monitor and understand the rapid land change happening around the world. The U.S. Geological Survey is developing a new capability, called Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP), to innovate the understanding of land change. This capability is the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center's foundation for an integrated U.S. Geological Survey-wid
Authors
Jennifer Rover, Jesslyn F. Brown, Roger F. Auch, Kristi Sayler, Terry L. Sohl, Heather J. Tollerud, George Xian
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection

Lessons learned implementing an operational continuous U.S. national land change monitoring capability: The LCMAP approach

Growing demands for temporally specific information on land surface change are fueling a new generation of maps and statistics that can contribute to understanding geographic and temporal patterns of change across large regions, provide input into a wide range of environmental modeling studies, clarify the drivers of change, and provide more timely information for land managers. To meet these need
Authors
Jesslyn F. Brown, Heather J. Tollerud, Christopher Barber, Qiang Zhou, John L. Dwyer, James Vogelmann, Thomas Loveland, Curtis Woodcock, Stephen V Stehman, Zhe Zhu, Bruce Pengra, Kelcy Smith, Josephine Horton, George Xian, Roger F. Auch, Terry L. Sohl, Kristi Sayler, Alisa L. Gallant, Daniel Zelenak, Ryan R. Reker, Jennifer R. Rover
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection

Parcels versus pixels: modeling agricultural land use across broad geographic regions using parcel-based field boundaries

Land use and land cover (LULC) change occurs at a local level within contiguous ownership and management units (parcels), yet LULC models primarily use pixel-based spatial frameworks. The few parcel-based models being used overwhelmingly focus on small geographic areas, limiting the ability to assess LULC change impacts at regional to national scales. We developed a modified version of the Forecas
Authors
Terry L. Sohl, Jordan Dornbierer, Steve Wika, Kristi Sayler, Robert Quenzer
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Use Land Cover Modeling

Status and trends of land change in the Eastern United States—1973 to 2000

PrefaceU.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Professional Paper 1794–D is the fourth in a four-volume series on the status and trends of the Nation’s land use and land cover, providing an assessment of the rates and causes of land-use and land-cover change in the Eastern United States between 1973 and 2000. Volumes A, B, and C provide similar analyses for the Western United States, the Great Plains of the
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center

Modeled historical land use and land cover for the conterminous United States

The landscape of the conterminous United States has changed dramatically over the last 200 years, with agricultural land use, urban expansion, forestry, and other anthropogenic activities altering land cover across vast swaths of the country. While land use and land cover (LULC) models have been developed to model potential future LULC change, few efforts have focused on recreating historical land
Authors
Terry L. Sohl, Ryan R. Reker, Michelle A. Bouchard, Kristi Sayler, Jordan Dornbierer, Steve Wika, Robert Quenzer, Aaron M. Friesz
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Use Land Cover Modeling

Regional differences of urbanization in the conterminous U.S. on upland forest land cover, 1973-2011

In this U.S. Geological Survey study of forest land cover across the conterminous U.S. (CONUS), specific proportions and rates of forest conversion to developed (urban) land were assessed on an ecoregional basis. The study period was divided into six time intervals between 1973 and 2011. Forest land cover was the source of 40% or more of the new urban land in 35 of the 84 ecoregions located within
Authors
Roger F. Auch, Mark A. Drummond, George Xian, Kristi Sayler, William Acevedo, Janis Taylor
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Status and trends of land change in selected U.S. ecoregions - 2000 to 2011

U.S. Geological Survey scientists developed a dataset of 2006 and 2011 land-use and land-cover (LULC) information for selected 100-km2 sample blocks within 29 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Level III ecoregions across the conterminous United States. The data can be used with the previously published Land Cover Trends Dataset: 1973 to 2000 to assess landuse/land-cover change across a 37
Authors
Kristi Sayler, William Acevedo, Janis Taylor
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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Modelling regional land change scenarios to assess land abandonment and reforestation dynamics in the Pyrenees (France)

Over the last decades and centuries, European mountain landscapes have experienced substantial transformations. Natural and anthropogenic LULC changes (land use and land cover changes), especially agro-pastoral activities, have directly influenced the spatial organization and composition of European mountain landscapes. For the past sixty years, natural reforestation has been occurring due to a de
Authors
Laure Vacquie, Thomas Houet, Terry L. Sohl, Ryan R. Reker, Kristi Sayler
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Land Use Land Cover Modeling

The Southern Piedmont’s continued land-use evolution, 1973–2011

The southern Piedmont in the U.S. was an important farming region during the 19th century, but by the end of the 20th century, agricultural land use had decreased substantially with forest becoming the majority land cover by the 1970s. Geographical literature has documented this change but has not concentrated on the region’s contemporary land uses. The Piedmont currently has three main types of l
Authors
Roger F. Auch, Darrell E. Napton, Kristi Sayler, Mark A. Drummond, Steven Kambly, Daniel G. Sorenson
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Land cover trends dataset, 1973-2000

The U.S. Geological Survey Land Cover Trends Project is releasing a 1973–2000 time-series land-use/land-cover dataset for the conterminous United States. The dataset contains 5 dates of land-use/land-cover data for 2,688 sample blocks randomly selected within 84 ecological regions. The nominal dates of the land-use/land-cover maps are 1973, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 2000. The land-use/land-cover maps
Authors
Christopher E. Soulard, William Acevedo, Roger F. Auch, Terry L. Sohl, Mark A. Drummond, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Daniel G. Sorenson, Steven Kambly, Tamara S. Wilson, Janis L. Taylor, Kristi Sayler, Michael P. Stier, Christopher A. Barnes, Steven C. Methven, Thomas R. Loveland, Rachel Headley, Mark S. Brooks
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Western Geographic Science Center, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Science and Products