Eastern Geographic Science Center
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Description of Current Projects |
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Best Management Practices Designed to Improve Developing LandscapesLand use change associated with development alters surface water flow patterns and affects landscape water quality, quantity, and timing, impacting area streams and downstream estuaries and ecosystems. Best Management Practices (BMPs) are specific structures and actions designed to mitigate, or lessen, the negative environmental effects of land use change; however, the individual and collective benefits of these efforts at the local and regional scale are poorly tracked and understood. USGS scientists are working in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, Montgomery County, Maryland, government, and the University of Maryland, to better understand the mitigating effect of local level BMPs on the impacts of development.
Causes and Consequences of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Chesapeake Bay WatershedTeam: Peter Claggett, David Donato, Paul Hearn, Dianna Hogan, Terry Slonecker, Lee De Cola, Lesley Milheim, Roger Barlow, Mike Coan, Cassandra Ladino, John Brakebill, John Aguinaldo, and Huajun Zhang. Problem: The CBP Partners currently identify three “keystone” commitments related to land use and management:
Department of the Interior agencies also have priorities related to sound land use and land preservation. The USFWS has a goal to focus on long-term protection and/or acquisition of sufficient high-quality habitats to restore and maintain sustainable populations of fish and wildlife resources. The NPS recently completed a Special Resource Study that defined a larger role in watershed planning and protecting areas near NPS parks. Despite these commitments, the CBP Partners continue to struggle with developing meaningful measures of land change that relate to water quality and with developing a strategy for mitigating the impact of land change to the Bay. The reasons for this continued struggle are many but include the lack of temporally consistent, multi-scale land use and cover data, lack of understanding of the impacts of land use and cover characteristics and land use and cover change on water quality and ecosystems, and inadequate communication of this information to state and local decision-makers. Objectives:The EGSC, in collaboration with the USEPA, NOAA, USFS, State resource agencies, and universities, will inform local and state decision-makers of the causes and consequences of land change to water quality, habitat, and hazards in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The majority of products and all of the techniques associated with this project are applicable and transferable nationwide. The objectives of this project are based on the USGS Chesapeake Science Plan and directly support the first five of nine geographic research goals detailed in the USGS Science Strategy for Geographic Research (USGS Circular 1281). The objectives also support four of the five themes of the USGS Geographic Analysis and Monitoring Program and several of the priority activities of the USGS Land Remote Sensing Program.
The work of the USGS Chesapeake Bay Program address the following four science themes of the USGS Chesapeake Bay Science Plan: Multidiscipline project plans are being prepared for each theme above and investigators will coordinate activities and synthesize findings between projects to provide integrated science to support effective ecosystem conservation and restoration for Chesapeake Bay and apply the implications to other ecosystems. Research Activities:
Contact: EGSC Land Cover TrendsThis activity is part of the USGS Land Cover Trends Project, which is a joint effort between the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study the types, rates, causes, and consequences of land use and land cover change in the conterminous United States for the 1973 – 2000 period. Eighty-four “ecoregions,” (Figure 1) each containing a geographically distinct assemblage of environmental conditions, natural communities, and species, provide a geographic framework for the project and serve as separate reporting units. A sampling approach using randomly selected 10-km by 10-km sample blocks is used to estimate land cover change in each ecoregion. The goal is to provide estimates within one percent of the actual land change at an 85-percent confidence level. Historical Landsat Multispectral Scanner, Thematic Mapper, and Enhanced Thematic Mapper satellite imagery, along with historical aerial photography, topographic maps, field observations, and socioeconomic data are used to derive land cover maps for five separate dates (1973, 1980, 1986, 1992, and 2000). The sample block land cover data are used to analyze the types, rates, causes, and consequences of land cover change.
Goals and Objectives: Completed work:
Contact Information: EGSC Land Cover Change—National Land Cover Database
These data have a variety of applications. They can be used to project the spread of urbanization, monitor changes taking place in our nation’s farmland and wetlands, predict the flow of pollutants within ecosystems, forecast the spread of wildfires, and model various components leading towards global climate change. There are 65 zones in the conterminous U.S., and 12 in Alaska. As mapping zones are completed they are made available to the public on the MRLC 2001 download Website.
The EGSC is carrying out two activities for the NLCD 2001 Project: (1) mapping land cover characteristics for zones in the lower Mississippi River valley, the northern Appalachian highlands and northwestern Alaska; and (2) assessing the classification accuracy of selected land cover datasets already completed in the lower-48 states. This formal assessment of the quality and accuracy of the NLCD is required as part of the metadata (information about the data) and quality assurance requirements for the national dataset. The accuracy assessment strategy is designed to incorporate multiple objectives, including: (1) error matrices and associated accuracy measures, (2) accuracy of land cover composition, (3) accuracy of percent impervious surface and canopy density, (4) accuracy of net change, (5) analysis of reference data error, and (6) accuracy of map “features” (e.g., polygons). This task involves the exploitation of National Technical Means to derive ground truth data for designated sample areas that are employed in the accuracy assessment process. National Technical Means has the potential to provide timely and cost-effective ground truth data to verify land cover classes, as well as impervious surface and tree canopy densities.
Contact Information:
Enhancements of the SLEUTH Urban-Growth Model for Regional UseThe SLEUTH Model is a cellular-automaton model used to forecast urban growth or plausible scenarios of urban growth based on input images which provide past and present Slope, Land cover, Exclusion, Urbanization, Transportation, and Hillshade. Please visit Project Gigalopolis: Urban and Land Cover Modeling for details and access to source code for various versions of the SLEUTH model. During Fiscal Year 2006, the Eastern Geographic Science Center produced a modified version of SLEUTH for use in modeling regional growth within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This new version incorporates several changes which reduce the computer memory requirements of the SLEUTH model. A change which is necessary for regional modeling because the input images employed for regional modeling are substantially larger than those used in earlier USGS work with SLEUTH. EGSC also modified a number of SLEUTH’s modules to speed up processing during model calibration. Following up on its 2006 work, EGSC will be working on several enhancements to SLEUTH this year. EGSC expects to: 1. Further reduce SLEUTH’s memory requirements,2. Add additional output statistics and metrics, 3. Adjust some of the modeling algorithms, 4. Provide a Web interface to SLEUTH, and 5. Add a suite of new visualizations to SLEUTH in order to allow a broader set of users to see and understand what is going as SLEUTH iterates through scenarios and to visualize the uncertainty in SLEUTH forecasts.
Contact Information: Flint River Vegetation Dynamics and Water AvailabilityIn support of—Land Cover Dynamics and Environmental Processes A complete understanding of linkages among the land surface and the quality of in-stream habitat requires knowledge of the impact that spatially and temporally variable land surface properties have on the hydrologic, geochemical, and energy fluxes of the watershed area that drains to the stream. How important are intra- and inter-annual variations in vegetation condition ("vegetation dynamics") for in-stream water quantity and quality? Can these dynamics be affectively measured using remote sensing and landscape analyses? This task is focused on addressing these questions within the context of interdisciplinary water availability study for the Flint River in Georgia. The primary research issues will be addressed by meeting the following objectives:
2007 Products: Collaborators: Contact Information: Loosely couple the Chesapeake Bay Land Cover Model with the Chesapeake Bay Program Watershed Model, SPARROW, and with Groundwater and Habitat ModelsTeam: Paul Hearn, Diana Hogan, Huajun Zhang, Cassandra Ladino In support of—Land Use and Land Cover Change in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed - Causes and Consequences—Peter Claggett The environmental impact of land use and land use change associated with development in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed has become a pressing concern at both local and regional scales. Land use decisions are often made at the local or county level, and affect not only local ecosystems such as area streams but also regional level ecosystems including the Chesapeake Bay estuary. Numerous local and regional stakeholders including county and state governments and the Chesapeake Bay Program are interested in decision support tools to integrate scientific and socioeconomic factors and to better inform land use, environmental mitigation, and targeted remediation and conservation decisions. This task is focused on the development of Web-based tools to assist local and State decision makers in optimizing strategies for reducing the load of harmful nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) to the Chesapeake Bay. In 2007 this effort established a strategic partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Program to explore merging the modeled output from USGS’s SPARROW model with the Chesapeake Bay Program’s web-based Vortex model. EGSC will utilize SPARROW output to allow users to more easily target areas with high nutrient loads, while utilizing the Vortex software to build scenarios for nutrient management and best management practice strategies. A prototype is expected in the year 2008.
Contact Information: Land Cover Dynamics and Environmental Processes ProjectProblem: Objectives:
Research Endeavors: Contact Information: Land Use Portfolio Modeler—Ecosystems Analysis in South FloridaEGSC Team: Paul Hearn, Dianna Hogan, and David Strong The Ecosystem Portfolio Modeler (EPM), a Web-based tool, will investigate and communicate ecological values of land between the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, in Miami-Dade County, Florida. This tool is being developed in conjunction with partners at the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the University of Florida, and the University of Pennsylvania. The tool will be used to develop, assess, and communicate strategies for restoring and protecting important ecological values of the remaining open land in southern Miami-Dade County. There is intense development pressure in this area that will adversely affect Everglades and Biscayne National Parks, and the land bridge in between them.
Contact Information: National Land Change Community Modeling SystemIn the United States the impact of land-change modeling on public policy has - so far - fallen short of its potential. Among the many reasons, two stand out. First, fragmented research has led to a proliferation of models which do not interoperate, largely because of narrow thematic focuses and lack of technical standards. Second, research has disproportionately favored local extents at the expense of regional and national extents. The USGS Geographic Analysis and Monitoring (GAM) Program has, however, specifically recognized the need to improve the effectiveness of ecological, environmental, and land-change modeling at all scales. To this end, Geographic Analysis and Monitoring now funds research to address the neglected regional scale of land-change models and to foster a vibrant, collaborative, national community of modelers. Our proposed framework for collaboration within this national community is the National Land-Change Community Model (NLCCM). By encouraging the development of software toolkits along with standards for integrating models within and across spatial and temporal scales, the NLCCM will enable modelers: The NLCCM will be both eclectic and inclusive. Mediated by an interactive Web site, the NLCCM will operate much like open-source software development projects. The community of participating researchers and modelers is expected to span all levels of government, the academic community, and non-governmental organizations. As it matures, the NLCCM is expected to evolve into an integrated mosaic of regional and national models which will serve as a bridge between local-extent models and global models. To jump-start interest and participation in the NLCCM, the GAM Program is planning a model inter-comparison event (a model "bake-off") to be held in 2009. We will participate in the event by entering the Chesapeake Bay Land-Change Model (CBLCM), consisting of a local-scale growth-allocation model coupled with a regionalized cellular-automata urban-growth model (SLEUTH3-d). Contact Information: Operation of the Research and Development Computing Cluster (Beowulf)The Eastern Geographic Science Center (EGSC) Research and Development Computing Cluster (RDCC) includes a Beowulf, a networked cluster of commodity computers (figure below) operated to support computationally intensive models, analyses, and research and development activities. The EGSC RDCC (Beowulf) is intended primarily as a national computational resource for USGS projects in computational and quantitative geography, including those interdisciplinary projects with significant geographic components. The Beowulf meets some of the need for general, professionally administered computational systems which has not otherwise been directly addressed since the de-commissioning several years ago of the Data General™ servers and other UNIX®-based systems once operated by the former National Mapping Division’s research branch.
Sudden Salt Marsh DiebackIn support of—Land Cover Dynamics and Environmental Processes Areas of acute/sudden dieback of salt marsh vegetation have been observed recently in the northeast including Connecticut (2003), Cape Cod (2004), and Maine (2004/05). Neither the geographic range nor the extent of sudden salt marsh dieback has been determined. Sudden salt marsh dieback has consequently been identified as an issue of very high priority for both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Park Service (NPS) in this region. This research describes an integrated, comprehensive project among U.S. Department of the Interior partners (USGS, FWS, and NPS) to address this significant threat to the Region’s coast. The goals of this project are to develop satellite-based remote sensing techniques that can be used to accurately determine the regional severity and extent of sudden salt marsh dieback on FWS salt marshes in New England and provide insights regarding causes for salt marsh dieback.
Shenandoah Climate, Vegetation, and Hydrology AnalysisIn support of—Land Cover Dynamics and Environmental Processes Can evidence of climate change impacts on vegetation phenology be found in moderate-resolution satellite imagery? If changes are evident, what is their impact on fluxes of water and nutrients from the headwater streams of the Potomac River? Evolving streamflow and microclimatic conditions that are caused by changing watershed land use make the analysis of relationships among vegetation fluctuations, climate, and hydrology difficult. Because they are protected from direct land use changes, the Potomac Watershed headwaters found in the Shenandoah National Park (SNP) present excellent real-world laboratories for the investigation of relationships among vegetation fluctuations, climate, non-anthropogenic disturbances, and hydrology.
South Florida Landscape DynamicsIn support of—Land Cover Dynamics and Environmental Processes Resource managers in the Everglades region must be able to monitor land surface change, estimate water level conditions in real time, and integrate physical and biological data/information from a broad user community. The primary goal of this study is to provide restoration-critical information regarding past and current characteristics of the Greater Everglades land surface (i.e., ‘landscape dynamics’) using remote sensing and geospatial analysis for improved landscape-scale modeling and restoration monitoring.
Visualizing the Spread of West Nile Virus and Five Other Diseases Across the United StatesTo see how the West Nile Virus (WNV) has and is spreading across the U.S. in five categories (bird, human, mosquito, sentinel, and veterinary), Visit the West Nile Virus - Human - Maps page. The site is updated weekly during the WNV season that typically runs from April to October. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Geological Survey shows the data in easy to understand ways:
Web Application Framework DevelopmentTeam: Paul Hearn, David Strong, John Aguinaldo, Jason Burkhardt, Huajun Zhang Increasingly, decision makers at all levels are challenged not by the lack of information, but by the absence of effective tools to synthesize the large volume of data available and utilize them to frame policy options in a straightforward and understandable manner. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies have been widely applied to this end; however, systems with the necessary analytical power are still largely confined to workstations and are useable only by trained operators. Numerous internet-based systems have been developed, but few offer features beyond simple display of data on map and imagery backgrounds. Within the USGS, as well as other government agencies and academia, development teams often duplicate each others efforts attempting to develop complex dynamic Web-based GIS applications. Many never see the light of day because of the level-of-effort to deploy such an application. A common reusable application framework would benefit many projects within the USGS and elsewhere and help many of these projects reach completion.
Web-based Land Cover Data Retrieval and Classification ToolsTeam: Paul Hearn, John Aguinaldo, Huajun Zhang, Jason Burkhardt In 2006, the Eastern Geographic Science Center began a joint project with eSpatial, a software and consulting company specializing in GIS and Location Services. This effort, will utilize eSpatial’s iSmart5 platform to develop a custom application to provide enhanced public access to USGS’s National Land Cover Database (NLCD). The iSmart5 application will allow users to quickly locate, display, and download NLCD data, including the recently developed NLCD Change Product, which displays changes in land cover between 1992 and 2001. Users will be able to clip, display, and download NLCD data using a variety of polygons, including city, county and watershed boundaries, as well as polygons defined by the user. Additional features will include the ability to display individual land cover classes on top of user selected maps or imagery, and the ability to generate and print reports detailing the land cover composition within selected areas. The new application is expected to be available to the public in late summer 2007. Contact Information: Web Based Tools and Applications: Web Enabling a GIS-Based Decision Support System for Memphis, and Shelby County, Tennessee
The USGS Land Use Portfolio Model (LUPM) is a GIS-based modeling, mapping, and risk communication tool that can assist public agencies and communities in understanding and reducing their natural-hazards vulnerability. The LUPM has been developed into an interactive decision support system (DSS) that stakeholders can use to prioritize locations in which to invest a hazard mitigation budget and evaluate alternative mitigation policies. The DSS is unique in that it allows users to consider various levels of risk tolerance and hazard acceptability and compare the cost effectiveness of different policy alternatives. The program allows users to construct various scenarios by entering different event probabilities, mitigation strategies and costs, and planning horizons. The model computes estimated mitigation costs, asset wealth lost, asset wealth retained, and associated standard deviations of each estimate.
The initial phase of the project (2004-2005) involved an analysis of hypothetical mitigation strategies that compare the benefits and costs of structural mitigation for new commercial buildings. Various scenarios were conducted for ~12,000 vacant commercial parcels, using a hypothetical mix of structures with a total estimated value of $9.6 billion. Scenarios were run with and without geologic risk information, with estimated mitigation costs of 10% and 30% of new building values, and with planning horizons of zero, 20 and 50 years. Preliminary results demonstrate a) that geologic risk information can substantially reduce costs by more effective targeting of mitigation efforts, and b) that the choice of planning horizon markedly affects present-value estimates of mitigation benefits and costs. During the year of 2006, a web-based simplified version of the LUPM was developed to provide local managers access to the tool without having to work with a GIS analyst. Activities in 2007 are focused on enhancing the web-based version and conducting an analysis of the relative costs and benefits of replacing the existing building code in Memphis and Shelby County with the International Building Code. Contact Information: |