Land Use / Land Cover Change
Near-Term (Fiscal Year 2009) Plans

Land Use / Land Cover Change

Overview

Recent Accomplishments

Near-Term Plans

Archived News Postings [November 2002 - July 2005]

Related Sites

Calls for Proposals

CCSP / USGCRP Land Use & Land Cover Change Working Group Members

For long term plans, see chapter on Land Use / Land Cover Change of the Strategic Plan posted on web site of US Climate Change Science Program

Past Accomplishments:

Recent

Fiscal Year 2007

Fiscal Year 2006

Fiscal Years 2004-2005

Fiscal Year 2003

Fiscal Year 2002

Climate Change Science Program.  FY 2008 Scientific Research Budget by USGCRP Research Element

HIGHLIGHTS OF PLANS FOR FY 2009

The NASA-USGS Global Land Survey 2005. In order to quantify changes in land cover around the globe, suitable data sets must be made available to the science community. Landsat data are a very suitable source of satellite imagery to identify and map land-use and land-cover changes. A new global satellite data set—the Global Land Survey 2005 (GLS-2005 previously entitled the Mid-Decadal Global Land Survey)—is being prepared by NASA and USGS. The project team is assembling substantially cloud-free Landsat images for the Earth’s land areas centered on the 2004 to 2007 period, which are processed into an orthorectified data set. This project follows from previous efforts to assemble global Landsat collections centered on 1975, 1990, and 2000, and will provide a basis for rigorous assessment of land-cover changes during the last several years. Initial GLS-2005 products were released in early 2008, with the complete data set to be available at no cost from USGS by the end of 2008. While relying primarily on Landsat-7 and Landsat-5, GLS-2005 will also include imagery from the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) and Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instruments as needed. In addition to the data processing activities, a CCSP agency Land-Use and Land-Cover Change initiative is funding a number of peer-reviewed proposals to generate land cover and land-cover change products and to analyze vegetation dynamics from GLS-2005 as well as the older GLS data from the 1970 to 2000 period.

This activity will address CCSP Goals 1 and 2 and Questions 6.1 and 6.2 of the CCSP Strategic Plan.

Land-Use/Land-Cover Change Effects on Soil and Water. USDA research funded through the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) is developing baseline stratigraphic markers for use in identifying effects of land-use change on riparian soil attributes. The research work will develop a quantitative technique that can be consistently applied over a region to identify layers in riparian soils affected by land-use changes. The ultimate goal is to establish pedologic and floristic changes represented by pollen profiles that are regionally correlated with specific dates and land-use/land-cover changes, and are recognizable from basin to basin. The work is being conducted in the southern New England region of the United States, focusing on Narragansett Bay, the Pawcatuck River, and the Thames River. Other research is developing adaptive agricultural management models that identify the best cropping systems for coping with climate and land-use changes in two watersheds of the Flathead River Basin, Montana. Research objectives include constructing plausible future climate and land-use change scenarios in terms of agriculturally sensitive climate variables, including precipitation, temperature, and CO2 concentrations. Best cropping systems will be determined in terms of profit or net return per unit land area, and water quality and the rate of soil erosion at the edge of the soil mapping unit. By making the model and associated data sets usable and accessible via an interactive website, agricultural producers will be able to adaptively manage their operations for climate and land-use changes.

This activity will address CCSP Goals 1, 2, 3, and 4 and Questions 6.2, 6.4, and 6.5 of the CCSP Strategic Plan.

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Cross-Cuts with Ecosystems and the Global Carbon Cycle. Newly funded USDA research projects through CSREES cut across various CCSP program elements. A new research project has been initiated to integrate the effects of land-use change on invasive plant species distribution into an invasive plant atlas for the mid-southern United States. The project will quantify the relationships of weed distribution and spread with land use, and use that information directly in educating agriculture stakeholders, natural resource managers, and other interested parties on potential human-induced opportunities for invasive species spread. This project addresses objectives of the Land-Use and Land-Cover Change and Ecosystems research elements. Another cross-cutting project has been funded to assess the effects of land-cover and land-use change on carbon stocks in the southern United States, giving special attention to translating site-specific carbon pools to landscape scales. This project will investigate soil carbon in relation to land use, land cover, hydrology, topography, and other landscape attributes. The work addresses issues common to the Land-Use and Land- Cover Change and Global Carbon Cycle research elements. It also addresses USDA’s priority research areas, including spatially explicit soil carbon modeling.

This activity will address CCSP Goals 1, 2, 3, and 4 and Questions 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4 of the CCSP Strategic Plan.

Impacts and Interactions with Socioeconomic Factors. New projects at NSF will focus on the impacts and interactions among socioeconomic factors, including economic globalization, land-use and land-cover change, and climate change, particularly in Arctic and boreal regions.

This activity will address CCSP Goals 1, 2, and 4 and Questions 6.1, 6.2, and 6.5 of the CCSP Strategic Plan.