Susan Benjamin (Former Employee)

Anthropogenic land use will likely present a greater challenge to biodiversity than climate change this century in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Even if species are equipped with the adaptive capacity to migrate in the face of a changing climate, they will likely encounter a human-dominated landscape as a major dispersal obstacle. Our goal was to identify, at the ecoregion-level, protected...

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 characteristics consistent with the...

Land-cover change in the conterminous United States was quantified by interpreting change from satellite imagery for a sample stratified by 84 ecoregions. Gross and net changes between 11 land-cover classes were estimated for 5 dates of Landsat imagery (1973, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 2000). An estimated 673,000 km2(8.6%) of the United States’ land area experienced a change in land cover at...

Preface U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Professional Paper 1794–A is the first 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 Western United States between 1973 and 2000. Volumes B, C, and D provide similar analyses for the Great Plains, the Midwest–South...

This chapter has been modified from original material published in Sleeter and Raumann (2006), entitled “Land-cover trends in the Mojave Basin and Range Ecoregion” (U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2006–5098). The Mojave Basin and Range Ecoregion (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997) covers approximately 130,922 km2 (50,549 mi2) in the...

The Central California Valley Ecoregion, which covers approximately 45,983 km2 (17,754 mi2), is an elongated basin extending approximately 650 km north to south through central California (fig. 1) (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997). The ecoregion is surrounded entirely by the Southern and Central California Chaparral and Oak Woodlands Ecoregion, which includes...

Located in south-central Idaho, the Snake River Basin Ecoregion spans 66,063 km2 (25,507 mi2) of mostly sagebrushsteppe (Artemisia tridentata) with some areas of saltbushgreasewood (Atriplex spp. and Sarcobatus spp.) and barren lava fields (fig. 1) (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997). The Snake River is the dominant hydrographic feature extending the full length...

Located in eastern Washington and northern Oregon, the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion is characterized by sagebrush steppe and grasslands with extensive areas of dryland farming and irrigated agriculture. The ecoregion, which is approximately 90,059 km2 (34,772 mi2), is surrounded on all sides by mountainous ecoregions: to the west, the North Cascades Ecoregion and the Eastern Cascades...

The Klamath Mountains Ecoregion covers approximately 47,791 km2 (18,452 mi2) of the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains of northern California and southern Oregon (fig. 1) (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997). The ecoregion is flanked by the Coast Range Ecoregion to the west, the Southern and Central California Chaparral and Oak Woodlands Ecoregion to the south, the...

Global environmental change scenarios have typically provided projections of land use and land cover for a relatively small number of regions or using a relatively coarse resolution spatial grid, and for only a few major sectors. The coarseness of global projections, in both spatial and thematic dimensions, often limits their direct utility at scales useful for environmental management...

As the impacts of land-use and land-cover (LULC) change on carbon dynamics, climate change, hydrology, and biodiversity have been recognized, modeling of this transformational force has become increasingly important. Given the wide variety of applications that rely on the availability of LULC projections, modeling approaches have originated from a variety of disciplines, including...

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change has altered a large part of the earth's surface. Scenarios of potential future LULC change are required in order to better manage potential impacts on biodiversity, carbon fluxes, climate change, hydrology, and many other ecological processes. The U.S. Geological Survey is analyzing potential future LULC change in the United States, using an approach...