Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Large Scale Climate Oscillation Impacts On Temperature, Precipitation And Land Surface Phenology In Central Asia, Kirsten M. De Beurs, Geoffrey Henebry, Braden C. Owsley, Irina N. Sokolik

GSCE Faculty Publications

Central Asia has been rapidly changing in multiple ways over the past few decades. Increases in temperature and likely decreases in precipitation in Central Asia as the result of global climate change are making one of the most arid regions in the world even more susceptible to large-scale droughts. Global climate oscillations, such as the El Ni ̃no–Southern Oscillation, have previously been linked to observed weather patterns in Central Asia. However, until now it has been unclear how the different climate oscillations act simultaneously to affect the weather and subsequently the vegetated land surface in Central Asia.We fit well-established land …

Changing Snow Seasonality In The Highlands Of Kyrgyzstan, Monika Tomaszewska, Geoffrey Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Few studies have examined changing snow seasonality in Central Asia. Here, we analyzed changes in the seasonality of snow cover across Kyrgyzstan (KGZ) over 14 years from 2002/03–2015/16 using the most recent version (v006) of MODIS Terra and Aqua 8 day snow cover composites (MOD10A2/MYD10A2). We focused on three metrics of snow seasonality—first date of snow, last date of snow, and duration of snow season—and used nonparametric trends tests to assess the significance and direction of trends. We evaluated trends at three administration scales and across elevation. We used two techniques to assure that our identification of significant trends was …

Changing Snow Seasonality In The Highlands Of Kyrgyzstan, Monika Tomaszewska, Geoffrey Henebry

NASA Land-Cover Land-Use Change Data Sets

Few studies have examined changing snow seasonality in Central Asia. Here, we analyzed changes in the seasonality of snow cover across Kyrgyzstan (KGZ) over 14 years from 2002/03–2015/16 using the most recent version (v006) of MODIS Terra and Aqua 8 day snow cover composites (MOD10A2/MYD10A2).We focused on three metrics of snow seasonality—first date of snow, last date of snow, and duration of snow season—and used nonparametric trends tests to assess the significance and direction of trends. We evaluated trends at three administration scales and across elevation. We used two techniques to assure that our identification of significant trends was not …

Investigation Of The Fire Radiative Energy Biomass Combustion Coefficient - A Comparison Of Polar And Geostationary Satellite Retrievals Over The Conterminous United States, Fangjun Li, Xiaoyang Zhang

Global Land Surface Season Data Sets

The data is for the article "Investigation of the Fire Radiative Energy Biomass Combustion Coefficient - A Comparison of Polar and Geostationary Satellite Retrievals Over the Conterminous United States", which has been submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

The data file contains a total of 20 files in 10 folders that are associated to the figures and tables in the article. General instruction for viewing output data for the paper can be found in the "Readme" text file.

Expansion Of Major Urban Areas In The Us Great Plains From 2000 To 2009 Using Satellite Scatterometer Data, Lan H. Nguyen, Son V. Nghiem, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

A consistent dataset delineating and characterizing changes in urban environments will be valuable for socioeconomic and environmental research and for sustainable urban development. Remotely sensed data have been long used to map urban extent and infrastructure at various spatial and spectral resolutions. Although many datasets and approaches have been tried, there is not yet a universal way to map urban extents across the world. Here we combined a microwave scatterometer (QuikSCAT) dataset at ~1 km posting with percent impervious surface area (%ISA) data from the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) that was generated from Landsat data, and ambient population data …

Quantifying Undisturbed (Native) Lands In Northwestern South Dakota: 2013, Pete Bauman, Benjamin Carlson, Tanner Butler, Brad Richardson

Quantifying Undisturbed (Native) Lands in Northwestern South Dakota: 2013

We employed simple GIS methods primarily utilizing the South Dakota Farm Service Agency’s Common Land Unit (CLU) data layers from 2013 and the 2012 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) county mosaic aerial imagery to evaluate 7,347,812 acres of land in northwestern South Dakota. The analysis area includes: Harding, Perkins, and Butte counties along with portions of Lawrence and Meade counties outside of the Black Hills Core Highlands and Plateau Ecoregions.

We utilized the FSA CLU data layer queried to show current and former cropland to identify and remove any areas with cropping history regardless …

Satellite Remote Sensing Of Woody And Herbaceous Leaf Area For Improved Understanding Of Forage Resources And Fire In Africa, Milkah Njoki Kahiu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) tree-grass systems commonly referred to as savannas dominating drylands, play a critical role in social, cultural, economic and environmental systems. These coupled natural-human systems support millions of people through pastoralism, are important global biodiversity hotspots and play a critical role in global biogeochemical cycles. Despite the importance of SSA savannas, they have been marginalized for years as most governments neglect dryland resources in favor of agricultural research and development assistance. Hence, lack of spatially and temporally accurate information on the status and trends in savanna resources has led to poor planning and management. This scenario calls …

A Study Of African Savanna Vegetation Structure, Patterning, And Change, Christoffer R. Axelsson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

African savannas cover roughly half of the continent, are home to a great diversity of wildlife, and provide ecosystem services to large populations. Savannas showcase a great diversity in vegetation structure, resulting from variation in climatic, edaphic, topographic, and biological factors. Fires play a large role as savannas are the most frequently burned ecosystems on Earth. To study how savanna vegetation structure shifts with environmental factors, it is necessary to gather site data covering the full gradient of climatic and edaphic conditions. Several earlier studies have used coarse resolution satellite remote sensing data to study variation in woody cover. These …

Mapping And Risk Assessment Of Juniper Encroachment Into A Prairie Landscape, Kyle D. Kaskie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Juniper encroachment is a considerable threat to the prairie ecosystems of the Great Plains because it has the potential to alter native grasslands by changing soil characteristics, limiting herbaceous biomass, and hindering native community regeneration. Accurate maps of juniper cover and predictions of areas at risk for future expansion are needed to support proactive management measures. Therefore, our objectives are to: (1) Develop a practical workflow for large-scale juniper mapping using Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery and partial unmixing techniques, (2) Compare the classification accuracies from the resulting map based on different juniper density thresholds and different types …

Vulnerability Of Protected Areas To Human Encroachment, Climate Change And Fire In The Fragmented Tropical Forests Of West Africa, Francis Kwabena Dwomoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Upper Guinean region of West Africa is home to some of the most globally significant tropical biodiversity hotspots, providing ecosystem services that are crucial for the region’s socio-economic and environmental wellbeing. Nonetheless, following decades of human-caused destruction of natural habitats, protected areas currently remain the only significant refugia of original vegetation relics in landscapes that are highly fragmented. Aside from having strong geographic variation in land use, climate, vegetation, and human population, the region has also experienced remarkable biophysical and socio-economic changes in recent decades. All these factors influence the fire regime and the vulnerability of forests within protected …

Quantification Of Understory Fuels In The Superior National Forest Using Lidar Data, Jeffrey R. Irwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fire is a natural part of the ecosystems in the Great Lakes region. Several factors including harvesting, insect outbreaks, and fire suppression have had an impact on these ecosystems. Of particular concern is the rise in the proportion of shade tolerant species, such as balsam fir. Because of its resinous bark and easily ignited needles, balsam fir is flammable. Additionally, balsam fir is vulnerable to spruce budworm infestation, which leads to additional fuel loading from needle cast. Detecting increases in fire risk is important to fire managers in Superior National Forest for many reasons. Determining the amount and extent of …

Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (Nefi): Facing The Challenges And Pathways Of Global Change In The Twenty-First Century, Pavel Groisman, Herman Shugart, David Kicklighter, Geoffrey Henebry, Nadezhda Tchebakova, Shamil Maksyutov, Erwan Monier, Garik Gutman, Sergey Gulev, Jiaguo Qi, Alexander Prishchepov, Elena Kukavskaya, Boris Porfiriev, Alexander Shiklomanov, Tatiana Loboda, Nikolay Shiklomanov, Son Nghiem, Kathleen Bergen, Jana Albrechtová, Jiquan Chen, Maria Shahgedanova, Anatoly Shvidenko, Nina Speranskaya, Amber Soja, Kirsten De Beurs, Olga Bulygina, Jessica Mccarty, Qianlai Zhuang, Olga Zolina

GSCE Faculty Publications

During the past several decades, the Earth system has changed significantly, especially across Northern Eurasia. Changes in the socio-economic conditions of the larger countries in the region have also resulted in a variety of regional environmental changes that can have global consequences. The Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI) has been designed as an essential continuation of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), which was launched in 2004. NEESPI sought to elucidate all aspects of ongoing environmental change, to inform societies and, thus, to better prepare societies for future developments. A key principle of NEFI is that these developments …

Examination Of Sentinel-2a Multi-Spectral Instrument (Msi) Reflectance Anisotropy And The Suitability Of A General Method To Normalize Msi Reflectance To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Jian Li, Hankui Zhang, Lin Yan Dr., Haiyan Huang, Zhongbin Li

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Sentinel-2A multi-spectral instrument (MSI) acquires multi-spectral reflective wavelength observations with directional effects due to surface reflectance anisotropy and changes in the solar and viewing geometry. Directional effects were examined by considering two ten day periods of Sentinel-2A data acquired close to the solar principal and orthogonal planes over approximately 20° × 10° of southern Africa. More than 6.6 million (January 2016) and 10.6 million (April 2016) pairs of reflectance observations sensed 3 or 7 days apart in the forward and backscatter directions in overlapping Sentinel-2A orbit swaths were considered. The Sentinel-2A data were projected into the MODIS sinusoidal projection …

Land Surface Phenology And Seasonality Using Cool Earthlight In Croplands Of Eastern Africa And The Linkages To Crop Production, Woubet G. Alemu, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Across Eastern Africa, croplands cover 45 million ha. The regional economy is heavily dependent on small holder traditional rain-fed peasant agriculture (up to 90%), which is vulnerable to extreme weather events such as drought and floods that leads to food insecurity. Agricultural production in the region is moisture limited. Weather station data are scarce and access is limited, while optical satellite data are obscured by heavy clouds limiting their value to study cropland dynamics. Here, we characterized cropland dynamics in Eastern Africa for 2003–2015 using precipitation data from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and a passive microwave dataset of land …

Using The 500 M Modis Land Cover Product To Derive A Consistent Continental Scale 30 M Landsat Land Cover Classification, Hankui Zhang, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Classification is a fundamental process in remote sensing used to relate pixel values to land cover classes present on the surface. Over large areas land cover classification is challenging particularly due to the cost and difficulty of collecting representative training data that enable classifiers to be consistent and locally reliable. A novel methodology to classify large volume Landsat data using high quality training data derived from the 500 m MODIS land cover product is demonstrated and used to generate a 30 m land cover classification for all of North America between 20°N and 50°N. Publically available 30 m global monthly …

A Global Analysis Of Sentinel-2a, Sentinel-2b And Landsat-8 Data Revisit Intervals And Implications For Terrestrial Monitoring, Jian Li, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Combination of different satellite data will provide increased opportunities for more frequent cloud-free surface observations due to variable cloud cover at the different satellite overpass times and dates. Satellite data from the polar-orbiting Landsat-8 (launched 2013), Sentinel-2A (launched 2015) and Sentinel-2B (launched 2017) sensors offer 10 m to 30 m multi-spectral global coverage. Together, they advance the virtual constellation paradigm for mid-resolution land imaging. In this study, a global analysis of Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B metadata obtained from the committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) Visualization Environment (COVE) tool for 2016 is presented. A global equal area projection grid defined …

Comparisons Of Global Land Surface Seasonality And Phenology Derived From Avhrr, Modis And Viirs Data, Xiaoyang Zhang

Global Land Surface Season Data Sets

The data set in this collection is for the paper Comparisons of Global Land Surface Seasonality and Phenology Derived from AVHRR, MODIS and VIIRS Data which will be published in the "Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences."

Impacts Of Thermal Time On Land Surface Phenology In Urban Areas, Cole Krehbiel, Xiaoyang Zhang, Geoffrey Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Urban areas alter local atmospheric conditions by modifying surface albedo and consequently the surface radiation and energy balances, releasing waste heat from anthropogenic uses, and increasing atmospheric aerosols, all of which combine to increase temperatures in cities, especially overnight, compared with surrounding rural areas, resulting in a phenomenon called the “urban heat island" effect. Recent rapid urbanization of the planet has generated calls for remote sensing research related to the impacts of urban areas and urbanization on the natural environment. Spatially extensive, high spatial resolution data products are needed to capture phenological patterns in regions with heterogeneous land cover and …

Examination Of The Potential Of Terrestrial Laser Scanning And Structure-From-Motion Photogrammetry For Rapid Nondestructive Field Measurement Of Grass Biomass, Sam D. Cooper, David P. Roy, Crystal B. Schaaf, Ian Paynter

GSCE Faculty Publications

Above ground biomass (AGB) is a parameter commonly used for assessment of grassland systems. Destructive AGB measurements, although accurate, are time consuming and are not easily undertaken on a repeat basis or over large areas. Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) are two technologies that have the potential to yield precise 3D structural measurements of vegetation quite rapidly. Recent advances have led to the successful application of TLS and SfM in woody biomass estimation, but application in natural grassland systems remains largely untested. The potential of these techniques for AGB estimation is examined considering 11 grass plots with …

Grand Challenges In Understanding The Interplay Of Climate And Land Changes, Shuguang Liu, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Lena R. Boysen, James D. Ford, Andrew Fox, Kevin Gallo, Jerry Hatfield, Geoffrey M. Henebry, Thomas G. Huntington, Zhihua Liu, Thomas R. Loveland, Richard J. Norby, Terry Sohl, Allison L. Steiner, Wenping Yuan, Zhao Zhang, Shuqing Zhao

GSCE Faculty Publications

Half of Earth’s land surface has been altered by human activities, creating various consequences on the climate and weather systems at local to global scales, which in turn affect a myriad of land surface processes and the adaptation behaviors. This study reviews the status and major knowledge gaps in the interactions of land and atmospheric changes and present 11 grand challenge areas for the scientific research and adaptation community in the coming decade. These land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC)-related areas include 1) impacts on weather and climate, 2) carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, 3) biospheric emissions, 4) the water cycle, …

Forest Inventory Data, Izaya Numata, Mark Cochrane, Jeppe Kjaersgaard, Sonaira Souza Da Silva

Drought in Amazonia Data Sets

Forest inventory was conducted in Acre, the southwestern Amazon, in July-August in 2014. Field data was collected in four fragmented forest areas. In addition, this forest inventory includes data in forest areas burned in 2005 and 2010 and unburned forest areas. Forest inventory includes information on vegetation species and stem diameter at breast height (DBH) at each plot of 25m x 25m. All trees with DBH ≥ 10cm were measured at 25m x 25m plots and those with DBH< 10cm and lianas were measured at 10m x 10m and 5m x 5m subplots within each 25m x 25m plot.

Exploration Of Scaling Effects On Coarse Resolution Land Surface Phenology, Xiaoyang Zhang, Jianmin Wang, Feng Gao, Yan Liu, Crystal Schaaf, Mark Friedl, Yunyue Yu, Senthilnath Jayavelu, Joshua Gray, Lingling Liu, Dong Yan, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Numerous land surface phenology (LSP) datasets have been produced from various coarse resolution satellite data and different detection algorithms from regional to global scales. In contrast to field-observed phenological events that are defined by clearly evident organismal changes with biophysical meaning, current approaches to detecting transitions in LSP only determine the timing of variations in remotely sensed observations of surface greenness. Since activities to bridge LSP and field observations are challenging and limited, our understanding of the biophysical characteristics of LSP transitions is poor. Therefore, we set out to explore the scaling effects on LSP transitions at the nominal start …

Integrating Malaria Surveillance With Climate Data For Outbreak Detection And Forecasting: The Epidemia System, Christopher L. Merkord, Yi Liu, Abere Mihretie, Teklehaymanot Gebrehiwot, Worku Awoke, Estifanos Bayabil, Geoffrey M. Henebry, Gebeyaw T. Kassa, Mastewal Lake, Michael C. Wimberly

GSCE Faculty Publications

Background: Early indication of an emerging malaria epidemic can provide an opportunity for proactive interventions. Challenges to the identification of nascent malaria epidemics include obtaining recent epidemiological surveillance data, spatially and temporally harmonizing this information with timely data on environmental precursors, applying models for early detection and early warning, and communicating results to public health officials. Automated web-based informatics systems can provide a solution to these problems, but their implementation in real-world settings has been limited.
Methods: The Epidemic Prognosis Incorporating Disease and Environmental Monitoring for Integrated Assessment (EPIDEMIA) computer system was designed and implemented to integrate disease surveillance with …

Multi-Year Modis Active Fire Type Classification Over The Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome, David P. Roy, S. S. Kumar

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome (BTMFB) spans almost 4 million km² and is subject to extensive annual fires that have been categorized into deforestation, maintenance, and forest fire types. Information on fire types is important as they have different atmospheric emissions and ecological impacts. A supervised classification methodology is presented to classify the fire type of MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active fire detections using training data defined by consideration of Brazilian government forest monitoring program annual land cover maps, and using predictor variables concerned with fuel flammability, fuel load, fire behavior, fire seasonality, fire annual frequency, proximity …

Examination Of The Potential Of Structure-From-Motion Photogrammetry And Terrestrial Laser Scanning For Rapid Nondestructive Field Measurement Of Grass Biomass, Sam D. Cooper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Above ground biomass (AGB) is a parameter commonly used for assessment of grassland systems. While destructive sampling of AGB is highly accurate, it is time consuming and often precludes repeat temporal sampling or sampling in sensitive ecosystems. Consequently, a number of nondestructive techniques that relate grass structural properties to AGB have been developed. This study investigated the application of two recent technologies, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Structurefrom- Motion (SfM), in the development of rapid nondestructive AGB estimation of grassland plots. TLS and SfM volume metrics generated using a rasterized surface differencing method were linearly related to destructively measured total …

Russian Real Estate Purchases In Finland, 1990-2016, Mika Hasanen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Foreign real estate ownership has been a frequent topic in the Finnish public discourse in the 2010s. Real estate purchases by Russian citizens have received lots of negative attention. In this thesis, the spatial distribution of real estate bought by Russians was studied. Purchases between January 1990 and August 2016 were mapped and analyzed using Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis. The home addresses of the buyers were also geocoded to find out where the majority of buyers live, and geodetic distances to their properties were calculated. Buildings on these properties were analyzed to examine motives for the purchases.

A Comparison Of Land Use And Land Cover In Public Lands Of The Northwestern Great Plains And High Plains Ecoregions And The Implications For Grassland Birds, Dawn L. Siemonsma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loss and degradation of grassland habitat are driving forces that contribute to widespread declines of grassland birds in the United States. Many studies have evaluated habitat needs for the conservation of grassland birds, but the relative contribution of public lands in representing and maintaining avian biodiversity remains poorly understood. Having a better understanding of the role that publicly managed grasslands play in the conservation of grassland bird habitat is important for assessing the value of the investment the American public makes in these lands. Therefore, I investigated spatial relations among variations in amounts and distributions of publicly owned and managed …

Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper Reflectance And Ndvi 27-Year Time Series Inconsistencies Due To Satellite Orbit Change, Hankui Zhang, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor provided the longest single mission terrestrial remote sensing data record but temporally sparse station keeping maneuvers meant that the Landsat 5 orbit changed over the 27 year mission life. Long-term Landsat 5 TM reflectance inconsistencies may be introduced by orbit change induced solar zenith variations combined with surface reflectance anisotropy, commonly described by the Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF). This study quantifies the local overpass time and observed solar zenith angle changes for all the Landsat 5 TM images available at two latitudinally separated locations along the same north-south Landsat path (27) in …

Characterizing Cropland Phenology In Major Grain Production Areas Of Russia, Ukraine, And Kazakhstan By The Synergistic Use Of Passive Microwave And Visible To Near Infrared Data, Woubet G. Alemu, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

We demonstrate the synergistic use of surface air temperature retrieved from AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on Earth observing satellite) and two vegetation indices (VIs) from the shorter wavelengths of MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) to characterize cropland phenology in the major grain production areas of Northern Eurasia from 2003–2010. We selected 49 AMSR-E pixels across Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan, based on MODIS land cover percentage data. AMSR-E air temperature growing degree-days (GDD) captures the weekly, monthly, and seasonal oscillations, and well correlated with station GDD. A convex quadratic (CxQ) model that linked thermal time measured as growing degree-days to …

Characterization Of Landsat-7 To Landsat-8 Reflective Wavelength And Normalized Difference Vegetation Index Continuity, David P. Roy, V. Kovalskyy, Hankui Zhang, Eric F. Vermote, Lin Yan Dr., Sanath Sathyachandran Kumar, Alexey V. Egorov

GSCE Faculty Publications

At over 40 years, the Landsat satellites provide the longest temporal record of space-based land surface observations, and the successful 2013 launch of the Landsat-8 is continuing this legacy. Ideally, the Landsat data record should be consistent over the Landsat sensor series. The Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) has improved calibration, signal to noise characteristics, higher 12-bit radiometric resolution, and spectrally narrower wavebands than the previous Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM +). Reflective wavelength differences between the two Landsat sensors depend also on the surface reflectance and atmospheric state which are difficult to model comprehensively. The orbit and sensing geometries …