Thomas Loveland
Science and Products
System analysis of land use and climate effects on ecosystem services affecting C and N exchanges with the atmosphere and water cycles
Current land use practices have affected ecosystem structure and processes in ways that have degraded delivery of key ecosystem services controlling exchanges of carbon and nitrogen with the atmosphere and surface and groundwater systems. These impacts are observed in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and N pollution in our nation’s water systems and coastal areas. Improvements in...
Climate sensitivity to decadal land cover and land use change across the conterminous United States
Transitions to terrestrial ecosystems attributable to land cover and land use change (LCLUC) and climate change can affect the climate at local to regional scales. However, conclusions from most previous studies do not provide information about local climate effects, and little research has directly quantified how LCLUC intensity within different...
Xian, George Z.; Loveland, Thomas; Munson, Seth M.; Vogelmann, James; Zeng, Xubin; Homer, Collin Investigating the effects of land use and land cover on the relationship between moisture and reflectance using Landsat Time Series
To better understand the Earth system, it is important to investigate the interactions between precipitation, land use/land cover (LULC), and the land surface, especially vegetation. An improved understanding of these land-atmosphere interactions can aid understanding of the climate system and modeling of time series satellite data. Here, we...
Tollerud, Heather J.; Brown, Jesslyn F.; Loveland, Thomas Application of a regional climate model to assess changes in the climatology of the Eastern US and Cuba associated with historic landcover change
We examine the annual, seasonal, monthly, and diurnal climate responses to the land use change (LUC) in eastern United States and Cuba during four epochs (1650, 1850, 1920, and 1992) with ensemble simulations conducted with the RegCM4 regional climate model that includes the Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS1e) surface physics package (...
Hostetler, Steven W.; Reker, R; Alder, Jay R.; Loveland, Thomas; Willard, Debra A.; Bernhardt, Christopher E.; Sundquist, Eric T.; Thompson, Renee L. 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. Quality control and assessment of interpreter consistency of annual land cover reference data in an operational national monitoring program
The U.S. Geological Survey Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (USGS LCMAP) initiative is working toward a comprehensive capability to characterize land cover and land cover change using dense Landsat time series data. A suite of products including annual land cover maps and annual land cover change maps will be produced using the...
Pengra, Bruce; Stehman, Stephen V; Horton, Josephine; Dockter, Daryn (Contractor); Schroeder, Todd A.; Yang, Zhiqiang; Cohen, Warren B; Healey, Sean P.; Loveland, Thomas Land cover and land use change
Climate can affect and be affected by changes in land cover (the physical features that cover the land such as trees or pavement) and land use (human management and activities on land, such as mining or recreation). A forest, for instance, would likely include tree cover but could also include areas of recent tree removals currently...
Reidmiller, David; Avery, C. W.; Easterling, D. R.; Kunkel, K. E.; Lewis, K. L. M.; Maycock, T. K.; Stewart, B. C.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Loveland, Thomas; Domke, Grant; Herold, Nate; Wickham, James; Wood, Nathan J. Drought and land-cover conditions in the Great Plains
Land–atmosphere interactions play a critical role in the Earth system, and a better understanding of these interactions could improve weather and climate models. The interaction among drought, vegetation productivity, and land cover is of particular significance. In a semiarid environment, such as the U.S. Great Plains, droughts can have a large...
Tollerud, Heather J.; Brown, Jesslyn F.; Loveland, Thomas; Mahmood, Rezaul; Bliss, Norman B. Effects of contemporary land-use and land-cover change on the carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems in the United States
Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) can have profound effects on terrestrial carbon dynamics, yet their effects on the global carbon budget remain uncertain. While land change impacts on ecosystem carbon dynamics have been the focus of numerous studies, few efforts have been based on observational data incorporating multiple ecosystem types...
Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Liu, Jinxun; Daniel, Colin; Rayfield, Bronwyn; Sherba, Jason T.; Hawbaker, Todd J.; Zhu, Zhiliang; Selmants, Paul; Loveland, Thomas R. 2017 Landsat Science Team Summer Meeting Summary
The summer meeting of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)-NASA Landsat Science Team (LST) was held June 11-13, 2017, at the USGS’s Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center near Sioux Falls, SD. This was the final meeting of the Second (2012-2017) LST.1 Frank Kelly [EROS—Center Director] welcomed the attendees and expressed his thanks to...
Crawford, Christopher J.; Loveland, Thomas R.; Wulder, Michael A.; Irons, James R. Landsat Science Team: 2017 Winter meeting summary
The winter meeting of the NASA-U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat Science Team (LST) was held January 10-12, 2017, at Boston University. LST co-chairs Tom Loveland [USGS’s Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS)—Senior Scientist], Jim Irons [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)—Deputy Director, Earth Sciences Division], and...
Loveland, Thomas; Wulder, Michael A.; Irons, James R. Grand challenges in understanding the interplay of climate and land changes
Half of Earth’s land surface has been altered by human activities, creating various consequences on the climate and weather systems at local to global scales, which in turn affect a myriad of land surface processes and the adaptation behaviors. This study reviews the status and major knowledge gaps in the interactions of land and atmospheric...
Liu, Shuguang; Bond-Lamberty, Ben; Boysen, Lena R.; Ford, James D.; Fox, Andrew; Gallo, Kevin; Hatfield, Jerry L.; Henebry, Geoffrey M.; Huntington, Thomas G.; Liu, Zhihua; Loveland, Thomas R.; Norby, Richard J.; Sohl, Terry L.; Steiner, Allison L.; Yuan, Wenping; Zhang, Zhao; Zhao, Shuqing Optimizing selection of training and auxiliary data for operational land cover classification for the LCMAP initiative
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) initiative is a new end-to-end capability to continuously track and characterize changes in land cover, use, and condition to better support research and applications relevant to resource management and environmental change. Among the LCMAP product suite are...
Zhu, Zhe; Gallant, Alisa L.; Woodcock, Curtis; Pengra, Bruce; Olofsson, Pontus; Loveland, Thomas R.; Jin, Suming; Dahal, Devendra; Yang, Limin; Auch, Roger F.
USGS and NASA Select New Landsat Science Team
The USGS and NASA have selected the scientists and engineers who will serve on the next Landsat Science Team.