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Christopher E Soulard

Supervisory Research Geographer

Western Geographic Science Center

Email: csoulard@usgs.gov
Office Phone: 650-439-2317
ORCID: 0000-0002-5777-9516

Supervisor: Susan P Benjamin
Spatially-explicit state-and-transition simulation models of land use and land cover (LULC) increase our ability to assess regional landscape characteristics and associated carbon dynamics across multiple scenarios. By characterizing appropriate spatial attributes such as forest age and land-use distribution, a state-and-transition model can more effectively simulate the pattern and spread of LULC changes. This manuscript describes the methods and input parameters of the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS), a customized state-and-transition simulation model utilized to assess the relative impacts of LULC on carbon stocks for the conterminous U.S. The methods and input parameters are spatially explicit...
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Members from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Patterns in the Landscape - Analyses of Cause and Effect (PLACE) team are releasing monthly surface water maps for the conterminous United States (U.S.) from 2003 through 2019 as 250-meter resolution geoTIFF files. The maps were produced using the Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) algorithm applied to daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery (DSWEmod) (Soulard et al., 2021) - see associated items. The DSWEmod model classifies the landscape (i.e., each MODIS pixel) into different classes of surface water based on quantified levels of confidence, including, i) high-confidence surface water (class 1), ii) moderate-confidence surface water (class...
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Members from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Patterns in the Landscape - Analyses of Cause and Effect (PLACE) team are releasing monthly surface water maps for the conterminous United States (U.S.) from 2003 through 2019 as 250-meter resolution geoTIFF files. The maps were produced using the Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) algorithm applied to daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery (DSWEmod) (Soulard et al., 2021) - see associated items. The DSWEmod model classifies the landscape (i.e., each MODIS pixel) into different classes of surface water based on quantified levels of confidence, including, i) high-confidence surface water (class 1), ii) moderate-confidence surface water (class...
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To determine if invasive annual grasses increased around energy developments after the construction phase, we calculated an invasives index using Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery for a 34-year time period (1985-2018) and assessed trends for 1,755 wind turbines (from the U.S. Wind Turbine Database) installed between 1988 and 2013 in the southern California desert. The index uses the maximum normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for early season greenness (January-June), and mean NDVI (July-October) for the later dry season. We estimated the relative cover of invasive annuals each year at turbine locations and control sites and tested for changes before and after each turbine was installed. These data were used...
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This data release comprises the data files and code necessary to perform all analyses presented in the associated publication. The *.csv data files are aggregations of water extent on the basis of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) Monthly Water History database (v1.0) and the Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) algorithm. The shapefile dataset contains the study area 8-digit hydrologic unit code (HUC) regions used as the basis for analysis. Html files provide an overview of the study workflow and integrated R notebooks (in .Rmd format) for recreating all project results and plots. The R notebook ingest the necessary data files from their online locations. These data support the following publication:...
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