Terry Sohl
Terry Sohl is a Research Physical Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Terry Sohl serves as the acting Chief of the Integrated Science and Applications Branch. After college he began his career with the Defense Intelligence Agency at Bollings Air Force Base in Washington, DC, working with a team exploiting the use of Landsat and classified image sources to support needs of the DoD and Intelligence communities. He began his career at USGS EROS in 1993, serving as a contractor on the original team to help develop the first National Land Cover Database (NLCD) using Landsat imagery. In subsequent years, he also was on the original team that developed the Land Cover Trends project strategy and data products, assessing US land change from 1973 to 2000. With a funded NASA proposal in 2005, he initiated EROS research and development of a land-change modeling capability, developing the Forecasting Scenarios of Land Use (FORE-SCE) framework to model both historical and future land use for time periods when remote sensing data are not available. He moved from the contractor to USGS in 2009, where land-change modeling has been the core of his research interests. He's led the development of many peer-reviewed journal publications and led work on associated applications assessing feedbacks of land use and climate change on biodiversity, hydrology, carbon and greenhouse gases, and regional weather and climate. He has served as the acting Chief for the Integrated Science and Applications Branch since March of 2021, where he has emphasized a broad Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection approach to EROS science that synthesizes research and development activities across multiple projects to provide comprehensive assessments of past, present, and future US land change.
More information on the work of his land-cover modeling group at USGS EROS may be found at:
https://landcover-modeling.cr.usgs.gov/