Lessons from a Regional thru Local look at Forest Canopy Changes and Causal Processes in the Contiguous US: 1984-2005

Karen Schleeweis, UMD, ska1@umd.edu (Presenter)
Chengquan Huang, University of Maryland, cqhuang@umd.edu
Samuel N. Goward, University of Maryland College Park, sgoward@umd.edu
Jeffrey Masek, NASA GSFC, jeffrey.g.masek@nasa.gov
Robert E Kennedy, Oregon State University, robert.kennedy@oregonstate.edu
Gretchen Moisen, US Forest Service, gmoisen@fs.fed.us
Nancy Thomas, University of Maryland, nethomas16@yahoo.com

The history of forest change processes, such as anthropogenic disturbances, natural disturbances, and conversion, underlie the current patterns of forest age and distribution. However, no one data set captures the full disturbance and land use history through time. The best possible suggestion of “truth” or verification of forest canopy change and its causes is the convergence of multiple data sets. This presentation compiles available information sources through time including forest area affected by fire, insects, wind, harvest, and suburbanization and evaluates linkages between observations of forest canopy changes and of forest change processes. Data used include ancillary geospatial data, which provide information on the location and timing of specific disturbance and conversion processes, ground based US Forest Service (USFS) inventories, which have been traditionally used to estimate carbon flux from forest land dynamics, and Landsat-recorded forest canopy change observations from the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project. The NAFD Project, a core project of the North American Carbon Program, has reconstructed landscape level forest change history for the U.S, between 1985-2005, using a dense time series of Landsat observations from sampled locations. Data is compared over 6 USFS regions, to allow comparison with coarser historic data sets, and in local space and time. Evaluating the datasets for convergence highlights their strengths and weaknesses and how the local spatial and temporal overlap of observations and processes impacts our understanding of forest dynamics.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Other   (Wed 10:00 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Goward, Samuel: Role of North America Forest Disturbance and Regrowth In NACP: Integrated Analyzes Of Landsat and U.S. Forest Service FIA Data - Phase 2 ...details

Poster Location ID: 235