U.S. Department of the Interior
The USGS National Land Imaging Program (NLIP) has built a long-term capacity to collect and analyze land imaging user requirements to advance the Nation’s operational and science objectives and better serve the land imaging community. The USGS documents the land imaging requirements of U.S.
In late May, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the LANDFIRE (Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools) Program was the recipient of the 2017 DOI "Environmental Dream Team" award. The award recognizes the program team as exceptional environmental champions and agents of change. Led by the DOI and the U.S.
The Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) Program developed the original LANDFIRE National product suite using Landsat data (circa 2001) to identify disturbances on the landscape. Although these products were updated regularly (LF 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014), the base layers themselves are now more than 15 years old. To make the base data current, LANDFIRE is remapping the United States to produce a new product suite.
High-resolution digital elevation models generated from airborne lidar are often used for studying dynamics specific to barrier islands, including assessing morphology, extracting shorelines, and mapping habitats. While airborne lidar data have revolutionized the spatial scale for which elevations can be realized, elevation uncertainty limitations are often magnified in digital elevation models in coastal settings. For instance, researchers have found digital elevation models produced from airborne lidar can have a vertical uncertainty as high as 60 centimeters in densely vegetated marsh.
The OSMRE Western Region worked with the State of Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining to monitor reclamation efforts at Cottonwood-Wilberg Mine in Emery County, Utah, using remote sensing change detection of historical photography and land use records. OSMRE purchased high-resolution lidar and orthophotography from Juniper Unmanned of the site before major earthw
Snow cover strongly influences the energy budget and regional climate of higher latitudes and elevations. The seasonal freeze-thaw (FT) transition is coupled with snowpack melt dynamics and impacts ecological processes, surface-water mobility, and the energy budget. However, understanding of the seasonal transition in the Arctic and boreal region (ABR) is constrained by the sparse distribution of regional weather stations and in-situ observations.
There are 88 NPS park units designated as Ocean and Coastal Parks that encompass 11,000 shoreline miles and 2.5 million acres of ocean and Great Lakes waters. Due to the large and complex nature of these park units, managing natural and cultural resources can be difficult. Benthic (meaning ocean floor or lake bottom) habitat maps are a spatially explicit way to identify submerged features.
Documenting bird and bat migration is challenging because migration activity is sporadic, and nocturnal migrants (most aerial vertebrate migrants) are difficult to observe.
In the United States alone, there are currently over 100,000 miles of canal and levee embankments and approximately 79,000 earthen dams on the national inventory list. Many of these structures are reaching or have surpassed their initial design life.
Documenting bird and bat migration is challenging because migration activity is sporadic and nocturnal migrants (i.e., most aerial migrants) are difficult to observe. The FWS uses avian radar to monitor the timing, duration, and activity patterns of birds and bats as they move through the Great Lakes (https://www.fws.gov/radar). Each radar unit has a horizontal antenna that scans 360° just above the horizon and a vertical antenna that scans a vertical slice of the sky.