Harmonizing the Landsat ground reference with the Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image using space-based bundle adjustment
Rajagopalan Rengarajan, James C. Storey, Michael J. Choate
2020, MDPI Remote Sensing (12)
There is an ever-increasing need to use accurate and consistent geometric ground reference in the processing of remotely sensed data products as it reduces the burden on the end-users to account for the differences between the data products from different missions. In this regard, United States Geological Survey (USGS) initiated...
Ecohydrological responses to surface flow across borders: Two decades of changes in vegetation greenness and water use in the riparian corridor of the Colorado River Delta
Pamela L. Nagler, Armando Barreto-Muñoz, Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni, Christopher J. Jarchow, Marth M. Gómez‐Sapiens, Hamideh Nouri, Stefanie M. Herrmann, Kamel Didan
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 4851-4883
Hydrological and bioclimatic processes that lead to drought may stress plants and wildlife, restructure plant community type and architecture, increase monotypic stands and bare soils, facilitate the invasion of non‐native plant species and accelerate soil erosion. Our study focuses on the impact of a paucity of Colorado River surface flows...
Satellite and airborne remote sensing of gross primary productivity in boreal Alaskan lakes
Catherine D. Kuhn, Matthew J. Bogard, Sarah Ellen Johnston, Aji John, Eric Vermote, Rob Spencer, Mark M. Dornblaser, Kimberly P. Wickland, Robert G. Striegl, David Butman
2020, Environmental Research Letters (10)
In terrestrial and marine ecosystems, remote sensing has been used to estimate gross primary productivity (GPP) for decades, but few applications exist for shallow freshwater ecosystems.Here we show field-based GPP correlates with satellite and airborne lake color across a range of optically and limnologically diverse lakes in interior Alaska. A...
Landsat Collection 2 geometric calibration updates
R. Rengarajan, Michael J. Choate, James C. Storey, Shannon Franks, Esad Micijevic
2020, Conference Paper, Proceedings: Earth observing systems XXV
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) changed the management and delivery of Landsat products to the public in its archive through the implementation of Collections. The Collections process ensures consistent data quality through time and across all the Landsat sensors with a few modifications to the metadata. The consistent data products...
40 years strong—Long-time Geoscience Australia, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) partnership benefits both agencies and the world
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, General Information Product 206
In 1979, the Australian Government chose the city of Alice Springs to host a Landsat Ground Station because of its location in central Australia. This location enables satellite coverage of the entire Australian continent. Its antennas have played a key role in supporting international satellite programs over more than 40...
Solar and sensor geometry, not vegetation response, drive satellite NDVI phenology in widespread ecosystems of the western United States
Jodi R. Norris, Jessica J. Walker
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (249)
Satellite-derived phenology metrics are valuable tools for understanding broad-scale patterns and changes in vegetated landscapes over time. However, the extraction and interpretation of phenology in ecosystems with subtle growth dynamics can be challenging. US National Park Service monitoring of evergreen pinyon-juniper ecosystems in the western US revealed an unexpected winter-peaking...
Landsat 9: Empowering open science and applications through continuity
Jeffery G. Masek, Michael A. Wulder, Brian Markham, Joel McCorkel, Christopher J. Crawford, James C. Storey, Del Jenstrom
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (248)
The history of Earth observation from space is well reflected through the Landsat program. With data collection beginning with Landsat-1 in 1972, the program has evolved technical capabilities while maintaining continuity of land observations. In so doing, Landsat has provided a critical reference for assessing long-term changes to Earth's land...
Mapping croplands of Europe, Middle East, Russia, and Central Asia using Landsat 30-m data, machine learning algorithms and Google Earth Engine
Aparna Phalke, Mutlu Ozdogan, Prasad Thenkabail, Tyler Erickson, Noel Gorelick
2020, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (167) 104-122
Accurate and timely information on croplands is important for environmental, food security, and policy studies. Spatially explicit cropland datasets are also required to derive information on crop type, crop yield, cropping intensity, as well as irrigated areas. Large area defined as continental to global cropland mapping is challenging...
A 36-year record of rock avalanches in the Saint Elias Mountains of Alaska, with implications for future hazards
Erin K. Bessette-Kirton, Jeffrey A. Coe
2020, Frontiers in Earth Science (8)
Glacial retreat and mountain-permafrost degradation resulting from rising global temperatures have the potential to impact the frequency and magnitude of landslides in glaciated environments. Several recent events, including the 2015 Taan Fiord rock avalanche, which triggered a tsunami with one of the highest wave runups ever recorded, have called attention...
Using NASA Earth observations and Google Earth Engine to map winter cover crop conservation performance in the Chesapeake Bay watershed
Alison Thieme, Sunita Yadav, Perry C. Oddo, John M. Fitz, Sean McCartney, LeeAnn King, Jason Keppler, Gregory W. McCarty, W. Dean Hively
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (248)
Winter cover crops such as barley, rye, and wheat help to improve soil structure by increasing porosity, aggregate stability, and organic matter, while reducing the loss of agricultural nutrients and sediments into waterways. The environmental performance of cover crops is affected by choice of species, planting date, planting...
A newly emerging thermal area in Yellowstone
R. Greg Vaughan, Jefferson Hungerford, Bill Keller
2020, Frontiers in Earth Science (8)
Yellowstone is a large restless caldera that contains many dynamic thermal areas that are the surface expression of the deeper magmatic system. In 2018, using a Landsat 8 nighttime thermal infrared image, we discovered the emergence of a new thermal area located near Tern Lake on the northeast margin of...
Investigating the effects of land use and land cover on the relationship between moisture and reflectance using Landsat Time Series
Heather J. Tollerud, Jesslyn F. Brown, Thomas Loveland
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
To better understand the Earth system, it is important to investigate the interactions between precipitation, land use/land cover (LULC), and the land surface, especially vegetation. An improved understanding of these land-atmosphere interactions can aid understanding of the climate system and modeling of time series satellite data. Here, we investigate the...
Corrigendum to "A remote sensing-based model of tidal marsh aboveground carbon stocks for the conterminous United States" [ISPRS J. Photogram. Rem. Sens.139 (2018) 255-271]
Kristin B. Byrd, Laurel Ballanti, Nathan Thomas, Dung Nguyen, James Holmquist, Marc Simard, Lisamarie Windham-Myers
2020, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (166) 63-67
The authors regret that two thirds of the San Francisco Bay biomass data included in the Landsat random forest models were not scaled to the proper units of grams per square meter. This error affects the Landsat-only models in the article, which are models #1-4 shown in Table 6. The...
Departures of rangeland fractional component cover and land cover from landsat-based ecological potential in Wyoming USA
Matthew B. Rigge, Collin G. Homer, Hua Shi, Bruce Wylie
2020, Rangeland Ecology and Management (73) 856-870
Monitoring rangelands by identifying the departure of contemporary conditions from long-term ecological potential allows for the disentanglement of natural biophysical gradients driving change from changes associated with land uses and other disturbance types. We developed maps of ecological potential (EP) for shrub, sagebrush (Artemisia spp.), perennial herbaceous, litter, and bare ground...
Surface soil temperature seasonal variation estimation in a forested area using combined satellite observations and in-situ measurements
Chenyang, Xu, John J. Qu, Xianjun Hao, Zhiliang Zhu, Laurel Gutenberg
2020, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (91)
Surface soil temperature is the soil temperature from the surface to 10 cm in depth. Surface soil temperature plays a significant role in agricultural drought monitoring, ecosystem energy transfer modeling, and global carbon cycle evaluation. Studies have been proposed to estimate surface soil temperature, but surface soil temperature monitoring within forested...
Hydrothermal activity in the southwest Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field
Shaul Hurwitz, R. Blaine McCleskey, Deborah Bergfeld, Sara Peek, David Susong, David A. Roth, Jefferson Hungerford, Erin B White, Lauren Harrison, Behnaz Hosseini, R. Greg Vaughan, Andrew G. Hunt, James B. Paces
2020, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (21)
In the past two decades, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service have studied hydrothermal activity across the Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field (YPVF) to improve the understanding of the magmatic-hydrothermal system and to provide a baseline for detecting future anomalous activity. In 2017 and 2018 we sampled water...
Isolating anthropogenic wetland loss by concurrently tracking inundation and land cover disturbance across the Mid-Atlantic Region, U.S.
Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Jay Christensen, Yen-Ju G. Beal, Ben DeVries, Megan W. Lang, Nora Hwang, Christine Mazzarella, John Jones
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
Global trends in wetland degradation and loss have created an urgency to monitor wetland extent, as well as track the distribution and causes of wetland loss. Satellite imagery can be used to monitor wetlands over time, but few efforts have attempted to distinguish anthropogenic wetland loss from climate-driven variability in...
Effect of spatial resolution of satellite images on estimating the greenness and evapotranspiration of urban green spaces
Hamideh Nouri, Pamela L. Nagler, Sattar Chavoshi Borujeni, Armando Barreto Munez, Sina Alaghmand, Behnaz Noori, Alejandro Galindo, Kamel Didan
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 3183-3199
Urban green spaces (UGS), like most managed land covers, are getting progressively affected by water scarcity and drought. Preserving, restoring and expanding UGS require sustainable management of green and blue water resources to fulfil evapotranspiration (ET) demand for green plant cover. The heterogeneity of UGS with high variation in their...
Quantifying drought’s influence on moist soil seed vegetation in California’s Central Valley through time-series remote sensing
Kristin B. Byrd, Austen Lorenz, James Anderson, Cynthia Wallace, Kara Moore-O'Leary, Jennifer Isola, Ricardo Ortega, Matt Reiter
2020, Ecological Applications (30)
Californias Central Valley, USA is a critical component of the Pacific Flyway despite loss of more than 90% of its wetlands. Moist soil seed (MSS) wetland plants are now produced by mimicking seasonal flooding in managed wetlands to provide an essential food resource for waterfowl. Managers need MSS plant area...
The Landsat Burned Area algorithm and products for the conterminous United States
Todd Hawbaker, Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Gail L. Schmidt, Yen-Ju G. Beal, Joshua J. Picotte, Joshua Takacs, Jeff T. Falgout, John L. Dwyer
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (244)
Complete and accurate burned area map data are needed to document spatial and temporal patterns of fires, to quantify their drivers, and to assess the impacts on human and natural systems. In this study, we developed the Landsat Burned Area (BA) algorithm, an update from the Landsat Burned Area Essential...
Gap fill of Land surface temperature and reflectance products in Analysis Ready Data
Qiang Zhou, George Z. Xian, Hua Shi
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
The recently released Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) over the United States provides the opportunity to investigate landscape dynamics using dense time series observations at 30-m resolution. However, the dataset often contains data gaps (or missing data) because of cloud contamination or data acquisition strategy. We present a new algorithm...
Vegetation‐groundwater dynamics at a former uranium mill site following invasion of a biocontrol agent: A time series analysis of Landsat normalized difference vegetation index data
Christopher J. Jarchow, William J. Waugh, Kamel Didan, Armando Barreto-Munoz, Stefanie M. Herrmann, Pamela L. Nagler
2020, Hydrological Processes (34) 2739-2749
Because groundwater recharge in dry regions is generally low, arid and semiarid environments have been considered well‐suited for long‐term isolation of hazardous materials (e.g., radioactive waste). In these dry regions, water lost (transpired) by plants and evaporated from the soil surface, collectively termed evapotranspiration (ET), is usually the primary discharge...
Implementation of a surface water extent model in Cambodia using cloud-based remote sensing
Christopher E. Soulard, Jessica J. Walker, Roy E. Petrakis
2020, Remote Sensing (12)
Mapping surface water over time provides the spatially explicit information essential for hydroclimatic research focused on droughts and flooding. Hazard risk assessments and water management planning also rely on accurate, long-term measurements describing hydrologic fluctuations. Stream gages are a common measurement tool used to better understand flow and inundation dynamics,...
A within-season approach for detecting early crop stage of corn and soybean using high temporal and spatial resolution imagery
Feng Gao, Martha Anderson, Craig S. T. Daughtry, Arnon Karnieli, W. Dean Hively, William P. Kustas
2020, Remote Sensing of Environment (242)
Crop emergence is a critical stage for crop development and crop growth modeling. Mapping crop emergence using remote sensing data is challenging. Previous remote sensing phenology algorithms showed that crop stages could be detected around the V3-V4 (3 to 4 established leaves) vegetative stage. Traditional approaches have a strong assumption...
Conterminous United States land cover change patterns 2001–2016 from the 2016 National Land Cover Database
Collin G. Homer, Jon Dewitz, Suming Jin, George Z. Xian, Catherine Costello, Patrick Danielson, Leila Gass, Michelle Funk, James Wickham, Steven Stehman, Roger F. Auch, Kurt H. Riitters
2020, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (162) 184-199
The 2016 National Land Cover Database (NLCD) product suite (available on www.mrlc.gov), includes Landsat-based, 30 m resolution products over the conterminous (CONUS) United States (U.S.) for land cover, urban imperviousness, and tree, shrub, herbaceous and bare ground fractional percentages. The release of NLCD 2016 provides important new information on land...