Four decades of land-cover change on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska: Detecting disturbance-influenced vegetation shifts using landsat legacy data
Land
Links
- More information: Publisher Index Page (via DOI)
- Data Release: USGS data release - Land Cover Estimates for the Kenai Peninsula Lowlands; 1973, 2002, and 2017
- Open Access Version: Publisher Index Page
- Download citation as: RIS | Dublin Core
Abstract
Across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, disturbance events have removed large areas of forest over the last half century. Simultaneously, succession and landscape evolution have facilitated forest regrowth and expansion. Detecting forest loss within known pulse disturbance events is often straightforward given that reduction in tree cover is a readily detectable and measurable land-cover change. Land-cover change is more difficult to quantify when disturbance events are unknown, remote, or environmental response is slow in relation to human observation. While disturbance events and related land-cover change are relatively instant, assessing patterns of post-disturbance succession requires long term monitoring. Here, we describe a method for classifying land cover and quantifying land-cover change over time, using Landsat legacy imagery for three historical eras on the western Kenai Peninsula: 1973–2002, 2002–2017, and 1973–2017. Scenes from numerous Landsat sensors, including summer and winter seasons, were acquired between 1973 and 2017 and used to classify vegetation cover using a random forest classifier. Land-cover type was summarized by era and combined to produce a dataset capturing spatially explicit land-cover change at a moderate 30-m resolution. Our results document large-scale forest loss across the study area that can be attributed to known disturbance events including beetle kill and wildfire. Despite numerous and extensive disturbances resulting in forest loss, we estimate that the study area has experienced net forest gain over the duration of our study period due to reforestation within large fire events that predate this study. Transition between forest and graminoid non-forest land cover including wetlands and herbaceous uplands is the most common land-cover change—representing recruitment of a graminoid dominated understory following forest loss and the return of forest canopy given sufficient time post-disturbance.
Suggested Citation
Baughman, C., Loehman, R.A., Magness, D.R., Saperstein, L., Sherriff, R., 2020, Four decades of land-cover change on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska: Detecting disturbance-influenced vegetation shifts using landsat legacy data: Land, v. 9, no. 10, 382, 22 p., https://doi.org/10.3390/land9100382.
Study Area
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Four decades of land-cover change on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska: Detecting disturbance-influenced vegetation shifts using landsat legacy data |
| Series title | Land |
| DOI | 10.3390/land9100382 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 10 |
| Publication Date | October 09, 2020 |
| Year Published | 2020 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Contributing office(s) | Alaska Science Center Geography |
| Description | 382, 22 p. |
| Country | United States |
| State | Alaska |
| Other Geospatial | Kenai Peninsula |