Satellite

Mineral resources are essential to the national security and economic prosperity of the United States. The Nation’s heavy reliance on imports of critical minerals increases its vulnerability to events that disrupt the supply chain. Novel methods to characterize new mineral resources are required to meet expected national and global demands and an anticipated shift to a renewable energy economy. 

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Fire Danger Forecast Program generates several products that forecast the potential for large fires to occur across the conterminous United States. The Wildland Fire Potential Index (WFPI), which quantifies fire risk given fuel and weather conditions, is derived using satellite-based vegetation data, forecast weather data, and land cover classifications.

Fire perimeter databases provide critical geospatial information that land managers use for a variety of purposes, including documenting fire occurrence, determining historical reference conditions and fire regimes, planning fuels treatments and fire management operations, and assessing potential vulnerability of infrastructure and resources.

The conversion of natural land cover to built-up surfaces has been widely documented as the main determinant of warming across urban areas, since buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorb and reemit heat from the Sun more than natural landscapes. This land conversion process influences both canopy and surface urban heat intensities, resulting in urban heat islands (UHIs).

Mercury is a neurotoxin and environmental pollutant that endangers the health of humans and wildlife. When mercury flows into aquatic environments like San Francisco Bay (SFB), it can be converted by microorganisms to methylmercury (MeHg), which is the most poisonous of mercury compounds. MeHg bioaccumulates in aquatic food webs and can cause a wide range of impairments in fish, birds, and humans.

Fusing remote sensing products from different satellite sensors allows the development of enhanced maps of the distribution of coastal wetland plants and more accurate models of coastal elevations. This critical information about vulnerability to sea-level rise and hurricane flooding is being used by Department of Interior partners and State and local agencies to improve management in a changing climate.

Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs) are ecologically distinct areas with similar bird populations, ecological characteristics, and natural resource management concerns. Understanding vegetation distributions and dynamics may guide land management and conservation decisions, but current information available in the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts Bird Conservation Region (BCR 33) are insufficient due to the area’s low vegetative cover and complex vegetation communities, and the disconti

Understanding species status and forecasting range shifts for plants and animals requires accurate species distribution information, particularly at the margins of species ranges. However, most distribution studies rely on depauperate species occurrence datasets from herbarium records and public databases, along with statistically derived “pseudoabsences”. True absence data are rarely available. Most distribution analyses rely on statistical species distribution models (SDM).

The substantial distributional expansion and infill of pinyon (Pinus monophylla) and juniper (Juniperus sp.) trees (hereafter, "conifer") into sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems since the late 1800s threatens the ecological function and economic viability of these ecosystems and represents a major contemporary challenge facing land and wildlife managers. The ecological consequences of the expansion are influenced by the proportion of coniferous cover within the ecosystem.

California recently experienced one of the most severe droughts in its history, resulting in extensive dieback of chaparral vegetation in the State’s Mediterranean regions. Though chaparral species are adapted to annual summer drought, the duration or intensity of a drought may exceed the adaptive capabilities of even these plants. The impacts of the recent severe drought were further exacerbated in many chaparral ecosystems by the occurrence of wildfires.