Developing climate data records and essential climate variables from landsat data
John Dwyer, Thomas P. Dinardo, Douglas M. Muchoney
2011, Conference Paper, 34th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: the GEOSS era : towards operational environmental monitoring : April 10-15, 2011, Sydney, Australia : proceedings.
The series of Landsat missions has compiled the longest record of satellite observation of the Earth’s land surface, extending for more than 38 years for most areas of the globe. Landsat data are particularly important as long term climate data records because the scale of observation is sufficient to differentiate...
Terrestrial essential climate variables (ECVs) at a glance
Susan Stitt, John Dwyer, Dennis Dye, Edward Josberger
2011, Scientific Investigations Map 3155
The Global Terrestrial Observing System, Global Climate Observing System, World Meteorological Organization, and Committee on Earth Observation Satellites all support consistent global land observations and measurements. To accomplish this goal, the Global Terrestrial Observing System defined 'essential climate variables' as measurements of atmosphere, oceans, and land that are technically and...
Enhancing the Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) Approach for Estimating Landscape ET: Validation with the METRIC model
Gabriel B. Senay, Michael E. Budde, James P. Verdin
2011, Agricultural Water Management (98) 606-618
Evapotranspiration (ET) can be derived from satellite data using surface energy balance principles. METRIC (Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration) is one of the most widely used models available in the literature to estimate ET from satellite imagery. The Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) model is much easier...
The users, uses, and value of Landsat and other moderate-resolution satellite imagery in the United States-Executive report
Holly M. Miller, Natalie R. Sexton, Lynne Koontz, John Loomis, Stephen R. Koontz, Caroline Hermans
2011, Open-File Report 2011-1031
Moderate-resolution imagery (MRI), such as that provided by the Landsat satellites, provides unique spatial information for use by many people both within and outside of the United States (U.S.). However, exactly who these users are, how they use the imagery, and the value and benefits derived from the information are,...
Predicting lake trophic state by relating Secchi-disk transparency measurements to Landsat-satellite imagery for Michigan inland lakes, 2003-05 and 2007-08
L. M. Fuller, R.S. Jodoin, R. J. Minnerick
2011, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5007
Inland lakes are an important economic and environmental resource for Michigan. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment have been cooperatively monitoring the quality of selected lakes in Michigan through the Lake Water Quality Assessment program. Sampling for this program began in 2001; by...
DESI-Detection of early-season invasives (software-installation manual and user's guide version 1.0)
Raymond F. Kokaly
2011, Open-File Report 2010-1302
This report describes a software system for detecting early-season invasive plant species, such as cheatgrass. The report includes instructions for installing the software and serves as a user's guide in processing Landsat satellite remote sensing data to map the distributions of cheatgrass and other early-season invasive plants. The software was...
Analysis of change in marsh types of coastal Louisiana, 1978-2001
Robert G. Linscombe, Stephen B. Hartley
2011, Open-File Report 2010-1282
Scientists and geographers have provided multiple datasets and maps to document temporal changes in vegetation types and land-water relationships in coastal Louisiana. Although these maps provide useful historical information, technological limitations prevented these and other mapping efforts from providing sufficiently detailed calculations of areal changes and shifts in habitat coverage....
Detecting Cheatgrass on the Colorado Plateau using Landsat data: A tutorial for the DESI software
Raymond F. Kokaly
2011, Open-File Report 2010-1327
Invasive plant species disrupt native ecosystems and cause economic harm to public lands. In this report, an example of applying the Detection of Early Season Invasives software to mapping cheatgrass infestations is given. A discussion of each step of the DESI process is given, including selection of Landsat images. Tutorial...
Assessment of mangrove forests in the Pacific region using Landsat imagery
Bibek Bhattarai, Chandra Giri
2011, Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (5)
The information on the mangrove forests for the Pacific region is scarce or outdated. A regional assessment based on a consistent methodology and data sources was needed to understand their true extent. Our investigation offers a regionally consistent, high resolution (30 m), and the most comprehensive mapping of mangrove forests...
Status and distribution of mangrove forests of the world using earth observation satellite data
Chandra Giri, E. Ochieng, Larry L. Tieszen, Zhi-Liang Zhu, Ashbindu Singh, Thomas R. Loveland, Jeffery G. Masek, Norm Duke
2011, Global Ecology and Biogeography (20) 154-159
Aim Our scientific understanding of the extent and distribution of mangrove forests of the world is inadequate. The available global mangrove databases, compiled using disparate geospatial data sources and national statistics, need to be improved. Here, we mapped the status and distributions of global mangroves using recently available Global Land...
Landsat imagery: a unique resource
H. Miller, N. Sexton, L. Koontz
2011, Report
Landsat satellites provide high-quality, multi-spectral imagery of the surface of the Earth. These moderate-resolution, remotely sensed images are not just pictures, but contain many layers of data collected at different points along the visible and invisible light spectrum. These data can be manipulated to reveal what the Earth’s surface looks...
Mapping the Philippines' mangrove forests using Landsat imagery
Jordan Long, Chandra Giri
2011, Sensors (11) 2972-2981
Current, accurate, and reliable information on the areal extent and spatial distribution of mangrove forests in the Philippines is limited. Previous estimates of mangrove extent do not illustrate the spatial distribution for the entire country. This study, part of a global assessment of mangrove dynamics, mapped the spatial distribution and...
Characterizing fragmentation of the collective forests in southern China from multitemporal Landsat imagery: A case study from Kecheng district of Zhejiang province
M. Li, Z. Zhu, James E. Vogelmann, D. Xu, W. Wen, A. Liu
2011, Applied Geography (31) 1026-1035
Tropical and subtropical forests provide important ecosystem goods and services including carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. These forests are facing increasing socioeconomic pressures and are rapidly being degraded and fragmented. This analysis focuses on the rate of change and patterns of fragmentation in a collective forest area in Zhejiang province,...
Fire frequency, area burned, and severity: A quantitative approach to defining a normal fire year
J.A. Lutz, Carl H. Key, C.A. Kolden, J.T. Kane, Jan W. Van Wagtendonk
2011, Fire Ecology (7) 51-65
Fire frequency, area burned, and fire severity are important attributes of a fire regime, but few studies have quantified the interrelationships among them in evaluating a fire year. Although area burned is often used to summarize a fire season, burned area may not be well correlated with either the number...
Continuity of Landsat observations: Short term considerations
Michael A. Wulder, Joanne C. White, Jeffery G. Masek, John L. Dwyer, David P. Roy
2011, Remote Sensing of Environment (115) 747-751
As of writing in mid-2010, both Landsat-5 and -7 continue to function, with sufficient fuel to enable data collection until the launch of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) scheduled for December of 2012. Failure of one or both of Landsat-5 or -7 may result in a lack of Landsat...
Estimation of land surface evapotranspiration with A satellite remote sensing procedure
A. Irmak, I. Ratcliffe, P. Ranade, K.G. Hubbard, Ramesh K. Singh, B. Kamble, J. Kjaersgaard
2011, Great Plains Research (21) 73-88
There are various methods available for estimating magnitude and trends of evapotranspiration. Bowen ratio energy balance system and eddy correlation techniques offer powerful alternatives for measuring land surface evapotranspiration. In spite of the elegance, high accuracy, and theoretical attractions of these techniques for measuring evapotranspiration, their practical use over large...
Estimating aboveground forest biomass carbon and fire consumption in the U.S. Utah High Plateaus using data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, Landsat, and LANDFIRE
Xuexia Chen, Shuguang Liu, Zhiliang Zhu, James E. Vogelmann, Zhengpeng Li, Donald O. Ohlen
2011, Ecological Indicators (11) 140-148
The concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been increasing and greatly affecting global climate and socio-economic systems. Actively growing forests are generally considered to be a major carbon sink, but forest wildfires lead to large releases of biomass carbon into the atmosphere. Aboveground forest biomass...
Monitoring landscape change for LANDFIRE using multi-temporal satellite imagery and ancillary data
James E. Vogelmann, Jay R. Kost, Brian Tolk, Stephen M. Howard, Karen Short, Xuexia Chen, Chengquan Huang, Kari Pabst, Matthew G. Rollins
2011, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (4) 252-264
LANDFIRE is a large interagency project designed to provide nationwide spatial data for fire management applications. As part of the effort, many 2000 vintage Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus data sets were used in conjunction with a large volume of field information to generate detailed vegetation type...
A simple and effective method for filling gaps in Landsat ETM+ SLC-off images
Jin Chen, Xiaolin Zhu, James E. Vogelmann, Feng Gao, Suming Jin
2011, Remote Sensing of Environment (115) 1053-1064
The scan-line corrector (SLC) of the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor failed in 2003, resulting in about 22% of the pixels per scene not being scanned. The SLC failure has seriously limited the scientific applications of ETM+ data. While there have been a number of methods developed...
Integration of Palmer Drought Severity Index and remote sensing data to simulate wetland water surface from 1910 to 2009 in Cottonwood Lake area, North Dakota
Shengli Huang, Devendra Dahal, Claudia Young, Gyanesh Chander, Shuguang Liu
2011, Remote Sensing of Environment (115) 3377-3389
Spatiotemporal variations of wetland water in the Prairie Pothole Region are controlled by many factors; two of them are temperature and precipitation that form the basis of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). Taking the 196 km2 Cottonwood Lake area in North Dakota as our pilot study site, we integrated PDSI, Landsat...
Continuous fields of land cover for the conterminous United States using Landsat data: First results from the Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) project
M.C. Hansen, Alexey Egorov, David P. Roy, P. Potapov, J. Ju, S. Turubanova, I. Kommareddy, Thomas R. Loveland
2011, Remote Sensing Letters (2) 279-288
Vegetation Continuous Field (VCF) layers of 30 m percent tree cover, bare ground, other vegetation and probability of water were derived for the conterminous United States (CONUS) using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data sets from the Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) project. Turnkey approaches to land cover characterization were...
Modeling the height of young forests regenerating from recent disturbances in Mississippi using Landsat and ICESat data
Ainong Li, Chengquan Huang, Guoqing Sun, Hua Shi, Chris Toney, Zhiliang Zhu, Matthew G. Rollins, Samuel N. Goward, Jeffery G. Masek
2011, Remote Sensing of Environment (115) 1837-1849
Many forestry and earth science applications require spatially detailed forest height data sets. Among the various remote sensing technologies, lidar offers the most potential for obtaining reliable height measurement. However, existing and planned spaceborne lidar systems do not have the capability to produce spatially contiguous, fine resolution forest height maps...
Classifying the hydrologic function of prairie potholes with remote sensing and GIS
Jennifer R. Rover, C.K. Wright, Ned H. Euliss Jr., David M. Mushet, Bruce K. Wylie
2011, Wetlands (31) 319-327
A sequence of Landsat TM/ETM+ scenes capturing the substantial surface water variations exhibited by prairie pothole wetlands over a drought to deluge period were analyzed in an attempt to determine the general hydrologic function of individual wetlands (recharge, flow-through, and discharge). Multipixel objects (water bodies) were clustered according to their...
Mapping irrigated areas of Ghana using fusion of 30 m and 250 m resolution remote-sensing data
M.K. Gumma, P.S. Thenkabail, F. Hideto, A. Nelson, V. Dheeravath, D. Busia, A. Rala
2011, Remote Sensing (3) 816-835
Maps of irrigated areas are essential for Ghana's agricultural development. The goal of this research was to map irrigated agricultural areas and explain methods and protocols using remote sensing. Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data and time-series Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were used to map irrigated agricultural areas...
Expansion of urban area and wastewater irrigated rice area in Hyderabad, India
K.M. Gumma, Rooijen D. van, A. Nelson, P.S. Thenkabail, Radha V. Aakuraju, P. Amerasinghe
2011, Irrigation and Drainage Systems (25) 135-149
The goal of this study was to investigate land use changes in urban and peri-urban Hyderabad and their influence on wastewater irrigated rice using Landsat ETM + data and spectral matching techniques. The main source of irrigation water is the Musi River, which collects a large volume of wastewater and...