Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Land Surface Anomalies Preceding The 2010 Russian Heat Wave And A Link To The North Atlantic Oscillation, C. K. Wright, K. M. De Beurs, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

The Eurasian wheat belt (EWB) spans a region across Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, and Northern Kazakhstan; accounting for nearly 15% of global wheat production. We assessed land surface conditions across the EWB during the early growing season (April–May–June; AMJ) leading up to the 2010 Russian heat wave, and over a longer-term period from 2000 to 2010. A substantial reduction in early season values of the normalized difference vegetation index occurred prior to the Russian heat wave, continuing a decadal decline in early season primary production in the region. In 2010, an anomalously cold winter followed by an abrupt shift to …

A New Approach For The Analysis Of Hyperspectral Data: Theory And Sensitivity Analysis Of The Moment Distance Method, E.A. L. Salas, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We present the Moment Distance (MD) method to advance spectral analysis in vegetation studies. It was developed to take advantage of the information latent in the shape of the reflectance curve that is not available from other spectral indices. Being mathematically simple but powerful, the approach does not require any curve transformation, such as smoothing or derivatives. Here, we show the formulation of the MD index (MDI) and demonstrate its potential for vegetation studies. We simulated leaf and canopy reflectance samples derived from the combination of the PROSPECT and SAIL models to understand the sensitivity of the new method to …

Detecting The Influence Of Best Management Practices On Vegetation Near Ephemeral Streams With Landsat Data, Matthew Rigge, Alexander Smart, Bruce Wylie, Kendall De Van Kamp

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Various best management practices (BMPs) have been implemented on rangelands with the goals of controlling nonpoint sourcepollution, reducing the impact of livestock in ecologically important riparian areas, and improving grazing distribution.Providing off-stream water sources to livestock in pastures, cross-fencing, and rotational grazing are common rangeland BMPsthat have demonstrated success in drawing livestock grazing pressure away from streams. We evaluated the effects of rangelandBMP implementation with six commercial-scale pastures in the northern mixed-grass prairie. Four pastures received a BMPsuite consisting of off-stream water, cross-fencing, and deferred-rotation grazing, and two pastures did not receive BMPs. Wehypothesized that the BMPs increased the quantity …

Land Surface Phenologies And Seasonalities Using Cool Earthlight In Mid-Latitude Croplands, Woubet G. Alemu, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Phenology deals with timing of biotic phenomena and seasonality concerns temporal patterns of abiotic variables. Studies of land surface phenology (LSP) and land surface seasonality (LSS) have long been limited to visible to near infrared (VNIR) wavelengths, despite degradation by atmospheric effects and solar illumination constraints. Enhanced land surface parameters derived from passive microwave data enable improved temporal monitoring of agricultural land surface dynamics compared to the vegetation index data available from VNIR data. LSPs and LSSs in grain growing regions of the Volga River Basin of Russia and the spring wheat belts of the USA and Canada were characterized …

Evaluation Of A Coupled Event-Driven Phenology And Evapotranspiration Model For Croplands In The United States Northern Great Plains, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry, D. P. Roy, B. Adusei, M. Hansen, G. Senay, D. M. Mocko

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

A new model coupling scheme with remote sensing data assimilation was developed for estimation of daily actual evapotranspiration (ET). The scheme consists of the VegET, a model to estimate ET from meteorological and water balance data, and an Event Driven Phenology Model (EDPM), an empirical crop specific model trained on multiple years of flux tower data transformed into six types of environmental forcings that are called “events” to emphasize their temporally discrete character, which has advantages for modeling multiple contingent influences. The EDPM in prognostic mode supplies seasonal trajectories of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); whereas in diagnostic mode, it …

Remote Sensing-Based Time Series Models For Malaria Early Warning In The Highlands Of Ethiopia, A. Midekisa, G. Senay, G. M. Henebry, P. Semuniguse, M. C. Wimberly

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Background

Malaria is one of the leading public health problems in most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. Almost all demographic groups are at risk of malaria because of seasonal and unstable transmission of the disease. Therefore, there is a need to develop malaria early-warning systems to enhance public health decision making for control and prevention of malaria epidemics. Data from orbiting earth-observing sensors can monitor environmental risk factors that trigger malaria epidemics. Remotely sensed environmental indicators were used to examine the influences of climatic and environmental variability on temporal patterns of malaria cases in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. …

Change And Persistence In Land Surface Phenologies Of The Don And Dnieper River Basins, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

The formal collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 produced major socio-economic and institutional dislocations across the agricultural sector. The picture of broad scale patterns produced by these transformations continues to be discovered. We examine here the patterns of land surface phenology (LSP) within two key river basins—Don and Dnieper—using AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) data from 1982 to 2000 and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data from 2001 to 2007. We report on the temporal persistence and change of LSPs as summarized by seasonal integration of NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) time series using accumulated …

Dual Scale Trend Analysis Distinguishes Climatic From Anthropogenic Effects On The Vegetated Land Surface, K. M. De Beurs, C. K. Wright, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We present a dual scale trend analysis for characterizing and comparing two contrasting areas of change in Russia and Kazakhstan that lie less than 800 km apart. We selected a global NASA MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) product (MCD43C4 and MCD43A4) at a 0.05◦ (∼5.6 km) and 500 m spatial resolution and a 16-day temporal resolution from 2000 to 2008. We applied a refinement of the seasonal Kendall trend method to the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) image series at both scales. We only incorporated composites during the vegetative growing season which was delineated by start of season and end …