Kristi Sayler
Biography
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.
Science and Products
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.
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...
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...
Rover, Jennifer; Brown, Jesslyn F.; Auch, Roger F.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Sohl, Terry L.; Tollerud, Heather J.; Xian, George Z.
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...
Brown, Jesslyn F.; Tollerud, Heather J.; Barber, Christopher; Zhou, Qiang; Dwyer, John L.; Vogelmann, James; Loveland, Thomas; Woodcock, Curtis; Stehman, Stephen V; Zhu, Zhe; Pengra, Bruce; Smith, Kelcy; Horton, Josephine; Xian, George Z.; Auch, Roger F.; Sohl, Terry L.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Gallant, Alisa L.; Zelenak, Daniel; Reker, Ryan R.; Rover, Jennifer R. 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...
Sohl, Terry L.; Dornbierer, Jordan; Wika, Steve; Sayler, Kristi L.; Quenzer, Robert
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...
Sayler, Kristi L.; Acevedo, William; Taylor, Janis 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...
Sohl, Terry L.; Reker, Ryan R.; Bouchard, Michelle A.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Dornbierer, Jordan; Wika, Steve; Quenzer, Robert; Friesz, Aaron M. 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...
Auch, Roger F.; Drummond, Mark A.; Xian, George Z.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Acevedo, William; Taylor, Janis 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...
Sayler, Kristi L.; Acevedo, William; Taylor, Janis 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,...
Vacquie, Laure; Houet, Thomas; Sohl, Terry L.; Reker, Ryan R.; Sayler, Kristi L. 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...
Auch, Roger F.; Napton, Darrell E.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Drummond, Mark A.; Kambly, Steven; Sorenson, Daniel G.
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,...
Soulard, Christopher E.; Acevedo, William; Auch, Roger F.; Sohl, Terry L.; Drummond, Mark A.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Sorenson, Daniel G.; Kambly, Steven; Wilson, Tamara S.; Taylor, Janis L.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Stier, Michael P.; Barnes, Christopher A.; Methven, Steven C.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Headley, Rachel; Brooks, Mark S. Spatially explicit modeling of 1992-2100 land cover and forest stand age for the conterminous United States
Information on future land-use and land-cover (LULC) change is needed to analyze the impact of LULC change on ecological processes. The U.S. Geological Survey has produced spatially explicit, thematically detailed LULC projections for the conterminous United States. Four qualitative and quantitative scenarios of LULC change were developed, with...
Sohl, Terry L.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Bouchard, Michelle; Reker, Ryan R.; Friesz, Aaron M.; Bennett, Stacie L.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Sleeter, Rachel R.; Wilson, Tamara; Soulard, Christopher E.; Knuppe, Michelle; Van Hofwegen, Travis Land-use and land-cover change in three corn belt ecoregions: Similarities and differences
Land use categorical changes, though not as numerous as one might suspect, vary by type within the three designated ecozones of the Corn Belt with the westernmost zone showing the most temporary change vis-a-vis the more permanent changes taking place in the eastern and central zones.
Auch, Roger F.; Laingen, Chris R.; Drummond, Mark A.; Sayler, Kristi L.; Reker, Ryan R.; Bouchard, Michelle A.; Danielson, Jeffrey J.