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Although giant calderas (“supervolcanoes”) may slumber for tens of thousands of years between eruptions, their abundant earthquakes and crustal deformation reveal the potential for future upheaval. Any eventual supereruption could devastate global human populations, so these systems must be carefully scrutinized. Insight into dormant but restless calderas can be gained by monitoring their output of heat and gas. At Yellowstone, the large thermal and CO2 fluxes require massive input of basaltic magma, which continues to invade the lower to mid-crust, sustains the overlying high-silica magma reservoir, and may result in volcanic hazard for millennia to come. The high flux of CO2 may contribute to the measured deformation...
Abstract: Time series Landsat data have been used to track ecosystem disturbances using an algorithm such as the vegetation change tracker. However, efficiently identifying and separating types of disturbances (e.g., wildfires and harvests) still remain a technical challenge. In this letter, we tested the support vector machine algorithm in separating forest disturbance types, including wildfires, harvests, and other disturbance types (a generalized disturbance class, including insect disease outbreak, tornado, snow damage, and drought-induced mortality) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) using annual Landsat images from 1984 to 2010. The algorithm has been proven to be highly reliable, with overall accuracy...
Although various studies have shown that corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by displacing fossil fuel use, many of these studies fail to include how land-use history affects the net carbon balance through changes in soil carbon content. We evaluated the effectiveness and economic value of corn and cellulosic ethanol production for reducing net GHG emissions when produced on lands with different land-use histories, comparing these strategies with reductions achieved by set-aside programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Depending on prior land use, our analysis shows that C releases from the soil after planting corn for ethanol may in some cases completely offset C gains attributed...
The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) provides a natural experiment regarding the effects of top predators on scavenger species. Fieldwork on the Northern Range of Yellowstone indicates that wolves facilitate carrion acquisition by scavengers, but it is unclear whether this represents a transient or permanent effect of wolf reintroduction. Here we present a wolf-elk model with human elk harvest and use it to investigate the long-term consequences of predator?prey dynamics and hunting on resource flow to scavengers. Our model shows that while wolves reduce the total amount of carrion, they stabilize carrion abundance by reducing temporal variation in the quantity of carrion and extending...
Climate change and the concurrent change in wildfire events and land use comprehensively affect carbon dynamics in both spatial and temporal dimensions. The purpose of this study was to project the spatial and temporal aspects of carbon storage in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) under these changes from 2006 to 2050. We selected three emission scenarios and produced simulations with the CENTURY model using three General Circulation Models (GCMs) for each scenario. We also incorporated projected land use change and fire occurrence into the carbon accounting.
Although various studies have shown that corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by displacing fossil fuel use, many of these studies fail to include how land-use history affects the net carbon balance through changes in soil carbon content. We evaluated the effectiveness and economic value of corn and cellulosic ethanol production for reducing net GHG emissions when produced on lands with different land-use histories, comparing these strategies with reductions achieved by set-aside programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Depending on prior land use, our analysis shows that C releases from the soil after planting corn for ethanol may in some cases completely offset C gains attributed...