Great Dismal Swamp Project

The Great Dismal Swamp (GDS) project is an application of USGS LandCarbon, at the US Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), and is designed to produce local-scale carbon estimates (including fluxes, ecosystem balance, and long-term sequestration rate) to include in an ecosystem service assessment in support of Department of Interior (DOI) land management activities. The project will improve the understanding of the effects of past drainage, logging, farming, and management on carbon sequestration and fire risk in peatlands. Broad Science Questions: How are ecosystem services (including carbon sequestration, wildlife viewing, water quality, and others) impacted by management...

Categories: Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: Atlantic White Cedar, Carbon Flux, Carbon Stock, Disturbance, Ecosystem Services, All tags... Freshwater forested wetland, Great Dismal Swamp, Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Hydrology, LUCAS Model, Lateral West Fire, Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain, Net Ecosystem Carbon Balance, Peatlands, Soil Carbon, Staging, State-and-transition simulation models, USGS, Wetlands, Fewer tags

LUCAS modeling

This research focuses on understanding the rates, causes, and consequences of land change across a range of geographic and temporal scales. Our emphasis is on developing alternative future projections and quantifying the impact on environmental systems, in particular, the role of land-use change on ecosystem carbon dynamics. This project supports the development of the Land-use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS) model. LUCAS tracks changes in land use, land cover, land management, and disturbance, and their impacts on ecosystem carbon storage and flux by combining: A State-and-Transition Simulation Model (STSM) to simulate changes in land-use across a range of geographic scales. A Stock and Flow Model to track...

Categories: Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: California, Carbon flux, Carbon stock, Conterminous United States, Hawaii, All tags... Land use and Land cover, Modeling, Pacific Northwest, Projections, Staging, State-and-transition simulation models, USGS, Fewer tags

Potential future land use threats to California's protected areas

Increasing pressures from land use coupled with future changes in climate will present unique challenges for California’s protected areas. We assessed the potential for future land use conversion on land surrounding existing protected areas in California’s twelve ecoregions, utilizing annual, spatially explicit (250 m) scenario projections of land use for 2006–2100 based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emission Scenarios to examine future changes in development, agriculture, and logging. We calculated a conversion threat index (CTI) for each unprotected pixel, combining land use conversion potential with proximity to protected area boundaries, in order to identify ecoregions and...

Categories: Publication; Types: Journal Citation; Tags: California, Coast Range, Conversion threat index, Ecoregions, Future projections, All tags... IPCC scenarios, Land-use and Land cover, Oak woodlands, Protected areas, Scenarios, State-and-transition simulation models, Fewer tags

State-and-transition simulation models: a framework for forecasting landscape change

1. A wide range of spatially explicit simulation models have been developed to forecast landscape dynamics, including models for projecting changes in both vegetation and land use. While these models have generally been developed as separate applications, each with a separate purpose and audience, they share many common features. 2. We present a general framework, called a state-and-transition simulation model (STSM), which captures a number of these common features, accompanied by a software product, called ST-Sim, to build and run such models. The STSM method divides a landscape into a set of discrete spatial units and simulates the discrete state of each cell forward as a discrete-time-inhomogeneous stochastic...

Categories: Publication; Types: Journal Citation; Tags: Landscape change, State-and-transition simulation models

An integrated approach to modeling changes in land use, land cover, and disturbance and their impact on ecosystem carbon dynamics: a case study in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California

Increased land-use intensity (e.g. clearing of forests for cultivation, urbanization), often results in the loss of ecosystem carbon storage, while changes in productivity resulting from climate change may either help offset or exacerbate losses. However, there are large uncertainties in how land and climate systems will evolve and interact to shape future ecosystem carbon dynamics. To address this we developed the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS) to track changes in land use, land cover, land management, and disturbance, and their impact on ecosystem carbon storage and flux within a scenario-based framework. We have combined a state-and-transition simulation model (STSM) of land change with a stock...

Categories: Publication; Types: Journal Citation; Tags: California, IBIS, Land use and Land cover, Modeling, Scenarios, All tags... Sierra Nevada Mountains, State-and-transition simulation models, Stock and flow model, Terrestrial carbon, Fewer tags