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In this paper, we provide an assessment of plantation forests and private land resources potentially available for pine plantation development in 11 southern states of the United States. After a sustained growth for 50 years, plantation forests (softwood and hardwood on both private and public lands) amounted to 18 million ha or 24 percent of all timberlands in these states in 2007. The vast majority of the plantation forests were established on private lands with fast-growing loblolly pines and slash pines. While purposeful hardwood plantations were rare, there were hardwood stands growing on failed pine plantation sites. Using a two-stage Markov land use transition model, we forecast that private forest land in...
In this paper, we provide an assessment of plantation forests and private land resources potentially available for pine plantation development in 11 southern states of the United States. After a sustained growth for 50 years, plantation forests (softwood and hardwood on both private and public lands) amounted to 18 million ha or 24 percent of all timberlands in these states in 2007. The vast majority of the plantation forests were established on private lands with fast-growing loblolly pines and slash pines. While purposeful hardwood plantations were rare, there were hardwood stands growing on failed pine plantation sites. Using a two-stage Markov land use transition model, we forecast that private forest land in...
This report cannot possibly cover all the issues of concern in the Colorado River basin. The basin is vast and diverse geographically, ethnically, and politically. Conflicts over water are part of its history, as water has been the defining resource in the settlement and development of the Colorado River basin. A complex set of laws, a treaty, court decrees, contracts, agreements, regulations and traditions of use have evolved over this past century which have governed water policy and management decisions. Over the last few decades, new social values have emerged in the basin and across the country which reflect an appreciation of the important functions of river systems along with a desire to preserve this natural...
If conservation of biodiversity is the goal, then the protected areas network of the continental US may be one of our best conservation tools for safeguarding ecological systems (i.e., vegetation communities). We evaluated representation of ecological systems in the current protected areas network and found insufficient representation at three vegetation community levels within lower elevations and moderate to high productivity soils. We used national-level data for ecological systems and a protected areas database to explore alternative ways we might be able to increase representation of ecological systems within the continental US. By following one or more of these alternatives it may be possible to increase the...
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This data release is comprised of a set of eight time travel map shapefiles (two tsunami inundation zones and four travel times) for use in GIS software applications and two population exposure by travel time tables (residents and nonresidences) for use in GIS software applications and other standalone spreadsheet applications. The travel time map was generated using the Pedestrian Evacuation Analyst model (version 1.0.1 for ArcGIS 10.5) from the USGS (https://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/vulnerability/tools.html). The travel time analysis uses ESRI's Path Distance tool to find the shortest distance across a cost surface from any point in the hazard zone to a safe zone. This cost analysis considers the direction...
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These data were compiled for investigating the relationship between acoustic backscattering by riverbeds composed of various riverbed substrates (bed sediment), and for developing and testing a probabilistic model for substrate classification based on high-frequency multibeam acoustic backscatter. The model is described in Buscombe et al. (2017). The data consist of various quantities on coincident grids, from various sites along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, including water depth, bed roughness, the area (or footprint) of the acoustic beam, unfiltered and filtered backscatter magnitude, sediment classification (for each location, 1 of 5 sediment classes in a categorical scheme), and the probabilities for...
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The Louisiana State Legislature created Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) in order to conserve, restore, create and enhance Louisiana's coastal wetlands. The wetland restoration plans developed pursuant to these acts specifically require an evaluation of the effectiveness of each coastal wetlands restoration project in achieving long-term solutions to arresting coastal wetlands loss. This data set includes mosaicked aerial photographs for the Highway 384 Hydrologic Restoration (CS-21) project for 2015. This data is used as a basemap land-water classification. It also serves as a visual tool for project managers to help them identify any obvious problems or land loss within their...
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This data set contains shoreline rate of change statistics for New York State coastal wetlands. Analysis was performed using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS), created by U.S. Geological Survey, version 5.0, an extension for ArcMap. A reference baseline was used as the originating point for orthogonal transects cast by the DSAS software. The transects intersect each polyline vector shoreline establishing intersection measurement points, which were then used to calculate the rates of change. End-point rates, calculated by dividing the distance of shoreline movement by the time elapsed between the oldest and the most recent shoreline, were generated for wetlands where fewer than three historic shorelines...
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Barrier islands provide important ecosystem services, including storm protection and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, and tourism (Barbier and others, 2011; Feagin and others, 2010). These islands tend to be dynamic due to their location along the estuarine-marine interface. Besides gradual changes caused by constant forces, such as currents and tides, barrier islands face numerous threats including hurricanes, accelerated sea-level rise, oil spills, and anthropogenic impacts (Pilkey and Cooper, 2014). These threats are likely to influence the future of barrier islands in the latter part of the 21st century, especially as climate-related threats to coastal areas are expected to increase...
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These data were collected as part of a methodologial comparison for collecting riparian vegetation data. Two common methods for collecting vegetation data were used: line-point intercept and 1m2 ocular quadrats (visual cover estimates). At each site and transect, both methods were used to collect cover and composition data by four different observers. The same transects and quadrats were utilized for both methods and all observers. Field data collected included percent cover for total living foliar cover, each plant species encountered, litter, dead plant material that is still standing, and ground cover features (biological soil crust, rock, sand, and fine soil particles). Line-point intercept data were collected...
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Wetland restoration efforts conducted by the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) in Louisiana rely on monitoring efforts to determine the efficacy of these efforts. The Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) was developed to assist in a multiple-reference approach that uses aspects of hydrogeomorphic functional assessments and probabilistic sampling for monitoring. The CRMS program includes a suite of approximately 390 sites that encompass the range of hydrological and ecological conditions for each stratum. As part of CRMS, land and water classifications are created from Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangles (DOQQs) approximately every three years at all CRMS sites. A DOQQ...
This data file contains a list of journal articles found in a recent search for research relevant to studying landscape perceptions. We collected all peer reviewed academic articles containing the keywords “landscape” and “perception” on the web of science resulting in 3497 records. To eliminate studies not directly addressing landscape perception we filtered out medical journal articles (n=1211). We also chose to limit our assessment to journals directly concerned with the landscape perception topic, omitting those with fewer than 5 articles pertaining to these keywords (n=1044). The abstract and title of the remaining articles (n=1242) were further scanned to discard irrelevant studies and evaluate specific methods...
map background search result map search result map Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) 2015 land-water classifications Acoustic backscatter - Data and Python Code Rate of shoreline change statistics for New York State coastal wetlands Highway 384 Hydrologic Restoration (CS-21): 2015 land-water classification Pedestrian tsunami evacuation results for two tsunami-inundation zones (2009 and probable maximum tsunami (PMT)) and four travel speeds (slow walk, fast walk, slow run, and fast run) for American Samoa Riparian vegetation data used for comparing sampling methods along the Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Arizona Modeling barrier island habitats using landscape position information for Dauphin Island, Alabama Highway 384 Hydrologic Restoration (CS-21): 2015 land-water classification Riparian vegetation data used for comparing sampling methods along the Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Arizona Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS) 2015 land-water classifications Acoustic backscatter - Data and Python Code Rate of shoreline change statistics for New York State coastal wetlands