On connecting hydro-social parameters to vegetation greenness differences in an evolving groundwater-dependent ecosystem
Matthew R. Lurtz, Ryan R. Morrison, Pamela L. Nagler
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
Understanding groundwater-dependent ecosystems (i.e., areas with a relatively shallow water table that plays a major role in supporting vegetation health) is key to sustaining water resources in the western United States. Groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) in Colorado have non-pristine temporal and spatial patterns, compared to agro-ecosystems, which make it difficult...
Effect of water delivery and irrigation for riparian restoration in the Colorado River Delta, Mexico
Pamela L. Nagler, Ibrahima Sall, Martha Gomez-Sapiens, Karl W. Flessa, Armando Barreto-Muñoz, Kamel Didan
2024, Restoration Ecology
Along Mexico's arid Colorado River Delta, the riparian corridor lacks water due to a reduction in frequent flows, climate change, human infrastructure, and altered riparian landcover from disturbances to invasive species, fire, and high soil and water salinities, which have led to declines in riparian plant health in recent decades....
Application of normalized radar backscatter and hyperspectral data to augment rangeland vegetation fractional classification
Matthew B. Rigge, Brett Bunde, Kory Postma, Simon Oliver, Norman Mueller
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
Rangeland ecosystems in the western United States are vulnerable to climate change, fire, and anthropogenic disturbances, yet classification of rangeland areas remains difficult due to frequently sparse vegetation canopies that increase the influence of soils and senesced vegetation, the overall abundance of senesced vegetation, heterogeneity of...
ECCOE Landsat quarterly Calibration and Validation report—Quarter 4, 2023
Md Obaidul Haque, Rajagopalan Rengarajan, Mark Lubke, Md Nahid Hasan, Ashish Shrestha, Jerad L. Shaw, Alex Denevan, Kathryn Ruslander, Esad Micijevic, Michael J. Choate, Cody Anderson, Kurt Thome, Julia Barsi, Ed Kaita, Raviv Levy, Jeff Miller, Leibo Ding
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1026
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val Team continually...
Concept of a satellite cross-calibration radiometer for in-orbit calibration of commercial optical satellites
Medhavy Thankappan, Jon Christopherson, Simon John Cantrell, Robert Ryan, Mary Pagnutti, Courtney Bright, Denis Naughton, Kathryn Lynn Ruslander, Lan-Wei Wang, David Hudson, Jerad Shaw, Shankar N. Ramaseri Chandra, Cody Anderson
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
The satellite Earth observation (EO) sector is burgeoning with hundreds of commercial satellites being launched each year, delivering a rich source of data that could be exploited for societal benefit. Data streams from the growing number of commercial satellites are of variable quality, limiting the potential for their combined use...
Intercomparison of same-day remote sensing data for measuring winter cover crop biophysical traits
Alison Thieme, Kusuma Prabhakara, Jyoti Jennewein, Brian T Lamb, Gregory T. McCarty, W. Dean Hively
2024, Sensors (24)
Winter cover crops are planted during the fall to reduce nitrogen losses and soil erosion and improve soil health. Accurate estimations of winter cover crop performance and biophysical traits including biomass and fractional vegetative groundcover support accurate assessment of environmental benefits. We examined the comparability of measurements between ground-based and...
SSEBop evapotranspiration estimates using synthetically derived Landsat data from the continuous change detection and classification algorithm
Mikael Peter Hiestand, Heather J. Tollerud, W. Chris Funk, Gabriel B. Senay, Mackenzie Friedrichs, Kate Fickas
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
The operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model has been utilized to generate gridded evapotranspiration data from Landsat images. These estimates are primarily driven by two sources of information: reference evapotranspiration and Landsat land surface temperature (LST) values. Hence, SSEBop is limited by the availability of Landsat data. Here,...
ECCOE Landsat quarterly Calibration and Validation report—Quarter 3, 2023
Md Obaidul Haque, Rajagopalan Rengarajan, Mark Lubke, Md Nahid Hasan, Ashish Shrestha, Jerad L. Shaw, Alex Denevan, Kathryn Ruslander, Esad Micijevic, Michael J. Choate, Cody Anderson, Kurt Thome, Ed Kaita, Julia Barsi, Raviv Levy, Jeff Miller, Leibo Ding
2024, Open-File Report 2024-1017
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val Team continually...
Snow-cover remote sensing of conifer tree recovery in high-severity burn patches
Casey Menick, Wade T. Tinkham, Chad Hoffman, Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Jody C. Vogeler
2024, Remote Sensing of Environment (305)
The number of large, high-severity wildfires has been increasing across the western United States over the last several decades. It is not fully understood how changes in the frequency of large, severe wildfires may impact the resilience of conifer forests,...
Landsat Next
U.S. Geological Survey
2024, Fact Sheet 2024-3005
Landsat Next's launch in the early 2030s will ensure continuity of the longest space-based record of Earth’s land surfaces. The mission will substantially increase the breadth and quality of Earth observation data available to scientists, land managers, and others responsible for managing Earth's natural resources. Landsat Next’s constellation of three...
Characterization of change in tree cover state and condition over the conterminous United States
Francis K Dwomoh, Roger F. Auch
2024, Forests (15)
Variability in the effects of disturbances and extreme climate events can lead to changes in tree cover over time, including partial or complete loss, with diverse ecological consequences. It is therefore critical to identify in space and time the change processes that lead to tree cover change. Studies of...
Physics-based satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) using Landsat OLI images
Minsu Kim, Jeffrey J. Danielson, Curt Storlazzi, Seonkyung Park
2024, Remote Sensing (16)
The estimation of depth in optically shallow waters using satellite imagery can be efficient and cost-effective. Active sensors measure the distance traveled by an emitted laser pulse propagating through the water with high precision and accuracy if the bottom peak intensity of the waveform is greater than the noise...
Monitoring polar ice change in the twilight zone
Theodore A. Scambos, Christopher Shuman, Mark Fahnestock, Tasha Snow, Christopher J. Crawford
2024, Eos, American Geophysical Union
Landsat’s new extended data collection program is mapping Arctic and Antarctic regions year-round, even in polar twilight....
The noise is the signal: Spatio-temporal variability of production and productivity in high elevation meadows in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of North America
Robert C. Klinger, Tom Stephenson, James Letchinger, Logan Stephenson, Sarah Jacobs
2024, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (11)
There are expectations that increasing temperatures will lead to significant changes in structure and function of montane meadows, including greater water stress on vegetation and lowered vegetation production and productivity. We evaluated spatio-temporal dynamics in production and productivity in meadows within the Sierra Nevada mountain range of North America...
The spatially adaptable filter for error reduction (SAFER) process: Remote sensing-based LANDFIRE disturbance mapping updates
Sanath Sathyachandran Kumar, Brian Tolk, Ray Dittmeier, Joshua J. Picotte, Inga P. La Puma, Birgit Peterson, Timothy Duckett Hatten
2024, Fire (7)
LANDFIRE (LF) has been producing periodic spatially explicit vegetation change maps (i.e., LF disturbance products) across the entire United States since 1999 at a 30 m spatial resolution. These disturbance products include data products produced by various fire programs, field-mapped vegetation and fuel treatment activity (i.e., events) submissions from...
Co-registration accuracy between Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 orthorectified products
Rajagopalan Rengarajan, Michael J. Choate, Md Nahid Hasan, Alex Denevan
2024, Remote Sensing of Environment (301)
Landsat orthorectified products use Ground Control Points (GCPs) and Digital Elevation Models (DEM) to improve the geolocation accuracy and temporal consistency, and to account for the relief displacements due to the sensor-target geometry. In Collection-2, to improve the geometric harmonization between Landsat and...
National-scale remotely sensed lake trophic state from 1984 through 2020
Michael Frederick Meyer, Simon Nemer Topp, Tyler Victor King, Robert Ladwig, Rachel M. Pilla, Hilary A. Dugan, Jack R. Eggleston, Stephanie E. Hampton, Dina M Leech, Isabella Oleksy, Jesse Cleveland Ross, Matthew V Ross, Iestyn R Woolway, Xiao Yang, Matthew R. Brousil, Kate Colleen Fickas, Julie C Padowski, Amina Pollard, Jianning Ren, Jacob Aaron Zwart
2024, Scientific Data (11)
Lake trophic state is a key ecosystem property that integrates a lake’s physical, chemical, and biological processes. Despite the importance of trophic state as a gauge of lake water quality, standardized and machine-readable observations are uncommon. Remote sensing presents an opportunity to detect and analyze lake...
Need and vision for global medium-resolution Landsat and Sentinel-2 data products
Volker C. Radeloff, David P. Roy, Mike Wulder, Martha Anderson, Bruce D. Cook, Christopher J. Crawford, Mark Friedl, Feng Gao, Noel Gorelick, Matthew Hansen, Sean Healey, Patrick Hostert, Glynn Hulley, Justin Huntington, Dave Johnson, Christopher Neigh, Alexei Lyapustin, Leo Lymburner, Nima Pahlevan, Jean-Francois Pekel, Theodore A. Scambos, Crystal Schaaf, Peter Strobl, Eric Vermote, Curtis Woodcock, Hankui K. Zhang, Zhe Zhu
2024, Remote Sensing of Environment (300)
Global changes in climate and land use are threatening natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem services people rely on. This is why it is necessary to track and monitor spatiotemporal change at a level of detail that can inform science, management, and policy development. The current constellation of multiple Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites...
Crop water productivity from cloud-Based landsat helps assess California’s water savings
Daniel Foley, Prasad Thenkabail, Adam Oliphant, Itiya Aneece, Pardhasaradhi Teluguntla
2024, Remote Sensing (15)
Demand for food and water are increasing while the extent of arable land and accessible fresh water are decreasing. This poses global challenges as economies continue to develop and the population grows. With agriculture as the leading consumer of water, better understanding how water is used to produce food...
Characterizing urban heat islands across 50 major cities in the United States
George Z. Xian
2023, Fact Sheet 2023-3048
Urban development and associated land-cover and land-use change alters the environment. The continued increase of developed land changes the Earth’s ecosystems and affects the resources provided to society. During the last 40 years, urban population in the United States has increased by more than 6.3 percent, and more...
Monitoring interdecadal coastal change along dissipative beaches via satellite imagery at regional scale
Marcan Graffin, Mohsen Taherkhani, Meredith Leung, Sean Vitousek, George Kaminsky, Peter Ruggiero
2023, Coastal Futures (1)
Coastal morphological changes can be assessed using shoreline position observations from space. However, satellite-derived waterline (SDW) and shoreline (SDS; SDW corrected for hydrodynamic contributions and outliers) detection methods are subject to several sources of uncertainty and inaccuracy. We extracted high-spatiotemporal-resolution (~50 m-monthly) time series of mean high water...
Implementing a dual-spectrometer approach for improved surface reflectance estimation
Mahesh Shrestha, Joshua J. Mann, Emily Maddox, Terry J. Robbins, Jeffrey Irwin, Travis Kropuenske, Dennis Helder
2023, Remote Sensing (15)
Surface reflectance measurement is an integral part of the vicarious calibration of satellite sensors and the validation of satellite-derived top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface reflectance products. A well-known practice for estimating surface reflectance is to conduct a field campaign with a spectrometer and a calibration panel, which is labor-intensive and...
Annual and inter-annual variability in the diffuse attenuation coefficient and turbidity in an urbanized Washington lake from 2013 to 2022 assessed using Landsat-8/9
Jennifer A. Schulien, Tessa Julianne Code, Curtis L. DeGasperi, David Beauchamp, Arielle Tonus Ellis, Arni H. Litt
2023, Remote Sensing (15)
Water clarity, defined in this study using measurements of the downwelling diffuse light attenuation coefficient (Kd) and turbidity, is an important indicator of lake trophic status and ecosystem health. We used in-situ measurements to evaluate existing semi-analytical models for Kd and turbidity, developed a regional turbidity model based on spectral shape,...
Opera Dynamic Surface Water extents for Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (DSWX-HLS) validation activities
Nicholas Arena, Grace Bato, David Bekaert, Matthew Bonnema, Steven Chan, Bruce Chapman, John Jones, Alexander L. Handwerger, Alex Lewandowski, Charlie Marshak, Simran Sangha, Karthik Venkataramani
2023, Conference Paper
We present the validation methodology and results of Dynamic Surface Water eXtent from Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (DSWx-HLS). The DSWx-HLS product is the first of the DSWx suite, comprised of products each which map water from Earth Observation optical and SAR satellites. We detail the generation of high-resolution (3 m) validation...
Monitoring long-term changes of urban surface temperature using time-series land cover and remote sensing data across 50 major cities in the United States
George Z. Xian, Hua Shi, Chase William Mueller, Reza A Hussain, Kristi Sayler, Daniel Howard
2023, Conference Paper, IGARSS 2023 - 2023 IEEE international geoscience and remote sensing symposium
The increase of developed land changes the Earth’s ecosystems and, in doing so, impacts the natural environment and further affects the services it provides to humans. Urban growth and associated land cover transitions alter the thermal and physical properties of the land surface, resulting in surface temperature change in urban...
