USGS Submissions

Remotely sensed data and technologies are critical for a science-driven emergency response to landslide disasters. Topography derived from lidar, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) , optical imagery, and GPS can provide fundamental information to forecast and respond to landslide activity. High-resolution topography collected before and after landslide movement can be differenced to obtain estimates of deposit thickness.

Trout introduced into remote mountain areas of the American West for sport fishing now occupy 95 percent of large mountain lakes. To escape these predators, some amphibians move to shallow, fishless wetlands to live and breed. The problem is that shallow wetlands are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Caught between climate-induced habitat loss and predation from introduced fish, amphibians are at risk of being squeezed out. Removal of introduced fish is a viable approach for improving  amphibian resilience to climate change.

A biological control agent (tamarisk leaf beetle, Diorhabda spp.) is being used to defoliate and help control the spread of exotic saltcedar or tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) in riparian ecosystems in the western United States.  Although considered a useful tool, saltcedar biocontrol (like other biocontrol methods) has the potential to affect non-target species.

Buffelgrass is a perennial grass that is invasive to the Sonoran Desert, where it threatens desert ecosystems by out-competing native plants and altering fire regimes. Buffelgrass forms a continuous mat of highly flammable vegetation that carries fire quickly and broadly across the landscape; fires fueled by buffelgrass ultimately transform the Sonoran Desert ecosystem from a diverse assemblage of plants to a grassland monoculture.

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) provides critical data for many management and science applications. One example is the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA). The Landsat-based NLCD product provides critical foundation for water-quality assessments and is used for watershed and groundwater site characterizations. A frequently-used application is to spatially distribute county pesticide usage and agricultural census information across selected or grouped agricultural land cover classes.

Currently, no lidar coverage exists for the Tribal lands on the Colville Reservation, Washington. Any existing coverage in the area is outside of Colville Tribal managed lands. A project  to support the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and advance USGS efforts related to The National Map and the National Elevation Dataset will acquire lidar-derived high-resolution elevation data and digital orthophotography for a project area approximately 2,899 square miles covering the Colville Indian Reservation and surrounding areas in Washington.

The Landsat Program is a joint effort of the USGS and NASA to use Earth-observing satellites to capture, process, and freely distribute land-surface image data.  Landsat imagery enables users to derive information about local and global conditions including land use, land cover, irrigation water use, crop vigor, wildfire and flood extent, forest health, surface-water area and quality, invasive plant and insect spread, drought status, and many other image-data applications.

A Cooperative Agreement between the USGS National Geospatial Program and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources was established for acquisition and processing of lidar-derived elevation data covering a 437-square-mile project area on the western portion of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington. Currently, little lidar coverage exists for the western Olympic Peninsula. The existing coverage is of poor quality or outdated, and therefore is not useable.

To help assess the applications and value of Landsat imagery, social scientists at the USGS Policy Analysis and Science Assistance Branch of the Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado are leading a long-term study that includes surveys and case studies of Landsat imagery users. The surveys provide longitudinal data on how the users and uses of the imagery are changing over time in response to changes in the provision of the imagery, which allows analysts to assess the value of the imagery.

Water accounting is becoming critical globally, and balancing consumptive water demands with environmental water requirements is especially difficult in arid and semiarid regions. Within the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) in Australia, riparian water use has not been assessed across broad scales. An existing U.S. riparian ecosystem evapotranspiration (ET) algorithm was applied to the MDB river systems to help  quantify environmental water needs over a wide range of niche conditions.