USGS Submissions

In the 21st century, accelerated sea-level rise and coastal development are expected to greatly alter coastal landscapes across the globe. The future of mangrove forests, salt marshes, and salt flats (i.e., tidal saline wetlands, collectively) is uncertain, and coastal environmental managers are increasingly challenged to develop conservation strategies that will increase the resilience of these valuable ecosystems. One strategy for preparing for the effects of sea-level rise is to ensure that there is space available for tidal saline wetlands to adapt to sea-level rise.

Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) technology provides an economical method of measuring and monitoring impacts of restoration in bottomland forest sites of northeastern Indiana.

During the spring of 2014, 130 million m³ of water were released from Morelos Dam on the lower Colorado River, allowing water to reach the Gulf of California for the first time in 13 years.  Nearly two years later, scientists continue to analyze the effects of this historic experiment, the result of a new U.S.-Mexico agreement. To assess the response of vegetation to the pulse flows, remote sensing techniques were used to measure greenup and evapotranspiration (ET) of vegetation within the delta’s riparian corridor.

High-resolution hydrographic mapping, which provides essential data for flood mitigation and planning,  is being completed on thirteen 12-digit hydrologic units near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A lidar-derived digital elevation model is being processed using selective drainage methods to hydro-enforce culvert locations into the modeled drainage network. While some culverts had been inventoried prior to this study, many additional culverts were inventoried as a part of this study, and still more culvert locations are being identified using selective drainage processing.

Restoration of coastal ecosystems has emerged as a high priority management issue because these lands, which are highly vulnerable to climate change, provide valuable ecosystem services. The Mississippi barrier islands are dynamic coastal landforms that are the first line of defense between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi mainland coast. These islands are experiencing changes in structure (land area and habitat) and geomorphic processes (erosion and accretion) due to frequent intense storms, relative rise in sea level, and changes in sediment supply.

In the semiarid grasslands of southeastern Arizona, historical degradation and uncertainty about local responses to future climate change threaten the continued productivity of the region. Land managers are implementing watershed restoration measures to promote climate change resilience and preserve ecological function while allowing traditional land uses such as livestock grazing.

The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center National Land Cover Database team in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is producing the most comprehensive remote sensing based quantification of western United States shrublands to date.  Nine individual products are being developed that represent the primary shrubland components: percent shrub, percent sagebrush, percent big sagebrush, percent herbaceous, percent annual herbaceous, percent litter, percent bare ground, shrub height, and sagebrush height.  This approach relies on three major steps:

The USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) is producing a seamless vegetation map of Great Smoky Mountains (GRSM) National Park.  The UMESC has been conducting vegetation mapping for the National Park Service (NPS) for over a decade.  These highly accurate and highly detailed vegetation maps are used by individual parks to manage lands and conduct research.  High-resolution (0.305-m or better) 4-band digital imagery was collected during peak fall color.  For GRSM, this meant three separate flights for the entire park to capture the progression of fall c

Biocrusts (communities of mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria) are ecologically important in arid lands for their role in stabilizing soils and reducing erosion, fixing carbon, and cycling nutrients, but their condition and extent are difficult to determine in remote and rugged areas like Utah’s Canyonlands. Trampling by livestock and humans can cause irreparable damage to biocrusts; therefore, small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) provide an ideal platform for remote monitoring of these fragile communities.

The typical assessment of vegetation condition focuses on the relative proportion of living and dead material, which provides no information on the key element of vegetation structure (i.e., density and orientation). Canopy structure information is critical for monitoring ecosystem status and trends, and is essential in climate, weather, and ecological studies. A three-dimensional description of canopy structure improves water flow estimates, advances optical condition and change mapping, and advances fire burn dynamics and emission projections.