George Z Xian

The importance of monitoring shrublands to detect and understand changes through time is increasingly recognized as critical to management. This dataset focuses on ecological change observation over ten years of field observation at 134 plots within two sites that are located in Southwestern of Wyoming, USA from 2008-2018. At sites 1 and 3, 134 long-term field observation plots were measured annually from 2008 to 2018. General plot locations were selected in 2006 using segments and spectral clusters on QuickBird imagery to identify the best locations for representing the variability of the entire site (one QuickBird image). Ground measurements were conducted using ocular measurements with cover was estimated from...

Categories: Data; Tags: Land Use Change, Landsat Path/Row, Landsat time-series, Southwest Wyoming, U.S., All tags... US, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), United States, WY, Wyoming, climate change, field observation, fractional components, heat flow (earth), image collections, imageryBaseMapsEarthCover, land use change, long-term monitoring, multispectral imaging, plant community, shrubland, shrubland ecosystem, trends, Fewer tags

Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Annual Herbaceous Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018

The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a large portion of the Northern Great Basin, USA, from 1986 to 2016 using a dense Landsat imagery time series. 2012 was excluded from the time-series due to a lack of quality imagery. Our method improved upon the traditional change vector method by considering the legacy of change at each pixel. We evaluate cover trends stratified...

Tags: AZ, Arizona, Arizona Plateau, Black Hills, Blue Mountains, All tags... CA, CO, California, Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado, Colorado Plateau, Columbia Plateau, Grand Canyon, Great Basin, Gunnison, ID, Idaho, MT, Middle Rockies, Montana, ND, NE, NM, NV, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Northern Mountainous, OR, Oregon, Rocky Mountains, SD, Sonoran Desert, South Dakota, Southwest Tablelands, TX, Texas, Three Forks, UT, United States, Utah, WA, WY, Wasatch, Washington, Western US, Wyoming, Yellowstone, annual herbaceous, back-in-time, bare ground, big sagebrush, biota, climate change, environment, geoscientificInformation, grass, grassland change, herbaceous, imageryBaseMapsEarthCover, litter, rangeland, rangeland management, sagebrush, shrub, shrubland, shrubland change, shrubland ecosystems, shrublands, terrestrial ecosystems, time series, trends, vegetation, vegetation change, Fewer tags

Land surface thermal feature (MaxLST) change monitoring in urban and urban wild land interface in 50 cities of CONUS from 1985-2020

We developed an approach to quantify Urban Heat Island (UHI) extent and intensity in 50 cities of CONUS and its surrounding area by using surface temperature from Landsat surface temperature product in a time series manner. Landsat land surface temperature from Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) were used to quantify surface temperature changes from 1985 to 2020. The current study assessed UHI intensity and its variations associated with urban development in an annual basis. Two datasets, over the study period, show that the maximum surface temperature in the high intensity urban area significantly increased while no significant trend was found in surrounding non-urban areas. These released datasets were spatially...

Tags: CONUS, CONUS, Landsat ARD, Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD), United States, All tags... United States, climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere, environment, heat flow (earth), image collections, land use change, maximum land surface temperature, multispectral imaging, urban heat island, Fewer tags

Decadal shifts in grass and woody plant cover are driven by prolonged drying and modified by topo-edaphic properties

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.1389/full): Woody plant encroachment and overall declines in perennial vegetation in dryland regions can alter ecosystem properties and indicate land degradation, but the causes of these shifts remain controversial. Determining how changes in the abundance and distribution of grass and woody plants are influenced by conditions that regulate water availability at a regional scale provides a baseline to compare how management actions alter the composition of these vegetation types at a more local scale and can be used to predict future shifts under climate change. Using a remote-sensing-based approach, we assessed the balance between grasses and woody plants...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Aridity, Drought, Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, National CASC, Sonoran Desert, All tags... climate change, desert land degradation, shrub encroachment, Fewer tags

Remote Sensing Shrub/Grass National Land Cover Database (NLCD) Back-in-Time (BIT) Litter Products for the Western U.S., 1985 - 2018

The need to monitor change in sagebrush steppe is urgent due to the increasing impacts of climate change, shifting fire regimes, and management practices on ecosystem health. Remote sensing provides a cost-effective and reliable method for monitoring change through time and attributing changes to drivers. We report an automated method of mapping rangeland fractional component cover over a large portion of the Northern Great Basin, USA, from 1986 to 2016 using a dense Landsat imagery time series. 2012 was excluded from the time-series due to a lack of quality imagery. Our method improved upon the traditional change vector method by considering the legacy of change at each pixel. We evaluate cover trends stratified...

Tags: AZ, Arizona, Arizona Plateau, Black Hills, Blue Mountains, All tags... CA, CO, California, Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado, Colorado Plateau, Columbia Plateau, Grand Canyon, Great Basin, Gunnison, ID, Idaho, MT, Middle Rockies, Montana, ND, NE, NM, NV, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Northern Mountainous, OR, Oregon, Rocky Mountains, SD, Sonoran Desert, South Dakota, Southwest Tablelands, TX, Texas, Three Forks, UT, United States, Utah, WA, WY, Wasatch, Washington, Western US, Wyoming, Yellowstone, annual herbaceous, back-in-time, bare ground, big sagebrush, biota, climate change, environment, geoscientificInformation, grass, grassland change, herbaceous, imageryBaseMapsEarthCover, litter, rangeland, rangeland management, sagebrush, shrub, shrubland, shrubland change, shrubland ecosystems, shrublands, terrestrial ecosystems, time series, trends, vegetation, vegetation change, Fewer tags