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A recent article in Environmental Management by All argued that flood flows in North America’s Colorado River do not reach the Gulf of California because they are captured and evaporated in Laguna Salada, a below sea-level lakebed near the mouth of the river. We refute this hypothesis by showing that (1) due...

No abstract available....

The northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) has become an area of active petroleum exploration during the past five years. Recent leasing and exploration drilling in the NPRA requires the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to manage and monitor a variety of surface activities that...

Description Fact sheet introduces the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) with images from a section of the mosaic over McMurdo Station, descriptions of the four versions of LIMA, where to access and download LIMA, and a brief explanation of the Antarctic Web portal....

The U.S. Geological Survey has developed and is implementing the Land Cover Trends project to estimate and describe the temporal and spatial distribution and variability of contemporary land-use and land-cover change in the United States. As part of the Land Cover Trends project, the purpose of this study was to...

Introduction: ASTER data and logical operators were successfully used to map phyllic and argillic-altered rocks in the southeastern part of Afghanistan. Hyperion data were used to correct ASTER band 5 and ASTER data were georegistered to orthorectified Landsat TM data. Logical operator algorithms produced argillic and phyllic byte ASTER images...

In 2005, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency contracted with the U.S. Geological Survey to perform assessments of the natural resources within Afghanistan. The assessments concentrate on the resources that are related to the economic development of that country. Therefore, assessments were initiated...

The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge hosts seven species of migratory shorebirds listed as highly imperiled or high priority by the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan and five species listed as Birds of Conservation Concern by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. During the first comprehensive shorebird survey...

Jeff Eidenshink, Brian Schwind, Ken Brewer, Zhi-Liang Zhu, Brad Quayle, and Elected officials and leaders of environmental agencies need information about the effects of large wildfires in order to set policy and make management decisions. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), which implements and coordinates the National Fire Plan...

A new quantitative coastal land gained-and-lost method uses image analysis of topographic maps and Landsat thematic mapper short-wave infrared data to document accelerated coastal land loss and thermokarst lake expansion and drainage. The data span 1955-2005 along the Beaufort Sea coast north of Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve...

Land-cover mapping efforts within the USGS Gap Analysis Program have traditionally been state-centered; each state having the responsibility of implementing a project design for the geographic area within their state boundaries. The Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project (SWReGAP) was the first formal GAP project designed at a regional, multi-state scale....

Burn severity is mapped after wildfires to evaluate immediate and long-term fire effects on the landscape. Remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery has the potential to provide important information about fine-scale ground cover components that are indicative of burn severity after large wildland fires. Airborne hyperspectral imagery and ground data were collected...

The effects of fire on vegetation vary based on the properties and amount of existing biomass (or fuel) in a forest stand, weather conditions, and topography. Identifying controls over the spatial patterning of fire-induced vegetation change, or fire severity, is critical in understanding fire as a landscape scale process. We...

People believe what they can see. The Poles exist as a frozen dream to most people. The International Polar Year wants to break the ice (so to speak), open up the Poles to the general public, support current polar research, and encourage new research projects. The IPY officially begins in March,...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the term palustrine wetland to describe vegetated wetlands traditionally identified as marsh, bog, fen, swamp, or wet meadow. Landsat TM imagery was combined with image texture and ancillary environmental data to model probabilities of palustrine wetland occurrence in Yellowstone National Park using classification...

The Thematic Mapper (TM) is a multi-spectral electro-optical sensor featured onboard both the Landsat 4 (L4) and Landsat 5 (L5) satellites. TM sensors have seven spectral bands with center wavelengths of approximately 0.49, 0.56, 0.66, 0.83, 1.65, 11.5 and 2.21 μm, respectively. The visible near-infrared (VNIR) bands are located on...

Aim Our aim was to produce a uniform ‘regional’ land-cover map of South and Southeast Asia based on ‘sub-regional’ mapping results generated in the context of the Global Land Cover 2000 project.Location The ‘region’ of tropical and sub-tropical South and Southeast Asia stretches from the Himalayas and the southern border...

Comparison of classified Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite imagery acquired before and after the landfalls of Hurricanes Katrina (August 29, 2005) and Rita (September 24, 2005) demonstrated that water area increased by 217 mi2 (562 km2) in coastal Louisiana. Approximately 82 mi2 (212 km2) of new water areas were in...

A multiple-database approach that combined remotely sensed data from Radarsat-1 and Landsat Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imagery was used to map Hurricane Katrinainduced flooding and to identify offshore oil slicks. Maps depicting the areal extent of flooding, oil slicks, and floating debris provide vital information to emergency managers for directing...

The Landsat-5 (L5) Thematic Mapper (TM) detectors of the short wave infrared (SWIR) bands 5 and 7 are maintained on cryogenic temperatures to minimize thermal noise and allow adequate detection of scene energy. Over the instrument's lifetime, gain oscillations are observed in these bands that are caused by an ice-like...

NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS) are seeking to generate a map of the entire globe using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor data from the "mid-decadal" period of 2004 through 2006. The global map is comprised of thousands of scene...

Forest fires leave behind a changed ecosystem with a patchwork of surface cover that includes ash, charred organic matter, soils and soil minerals, and dead, damaged, and living vegetation. The distributions of these materials affect post-fire processes of erosion, nutrient cycling, and vegetation regrowth. We analyzed high spatial resolution (2.4??m...

The Landsat archive provides more than 35 years of uninterrupted multispectral remotely sensed data of Earth observations. Since 1972, Landsat missions have carried different types of sensors, from the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) camera to the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). However, the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensors on Landsat 4...

This paper examines the contemporary land-cover changes in two western Great Plains ecoregions between 1973 and 2000. Agriculture and other land uses can have a substantial effect on grassland cover that varies regionally depending on the primary driving forces of change. In order to better understand change, the rates, types,...

Launched in April 1999, Landsat-7 ETM+ continues to acquire data globally. The Scan Line Corrector in failure in 2003 has affected ground coverage and the recent switch to Bumper Mode operations in April 2007 has degraded the internal geometric accuracy of the data, but the radiometry has been unaffected. The...