Probabilistic estimates of landscape change in Alaska (1984 to 2015)
Dates
Publication Date
2018-03-30
Start Date
1984-01-01
End Date
2015-12-31
Citation
Pastick, N.J., Jorgenson, M.T., Goetz, S.J., Jones, B.M., Wylie, B.K., Minsley, B.J., Genet, H., Knight, J.F., Swanson, D.K., and Jorgenson, J.C., 2018, Probabilistic estimates of landscape change in Alaska (1984 to 2015): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/F7DV1J6N.
Summary
Contemporary climate change in Alaska has resulted in amplified rates of press and pulse disturbances that drive ecosystem change with significant consequences for socio-environmental systems. Despite the vulnerability of Arctic and boreal landscapes to change, little has been done to characterize landscape change and associated drivers across northern high-latitude ecosystems. Here we characterize the historical sensitivity of Alaska’s ecosystems to environmental change and anthropogenic disturbances using expert knowledge, remote sensing data, and spatiotemporal analyses and modeling. Time-series analysis of moderate– and high-resolution imagery was used to characterize land and water-surface dynamics across Alaska. Some 400,000 [...]
Summary
Contemporary climate change in Alaska has resulted in amplified rates of press and pulse disturbances that drive ecosystem change with significant consequences for socio-environmental systems. Despite the vulnerability of Arctic and boreal landscapes to change, little has been done to characterize landscape change and associated drivers across northern high-latitude ecosystems. Here we characterize the historical sensitivity of Alaska’s ecosystems to environmental change and anthropogenic disturbances using expert knowledge, remote sensing data, and spatiotemporal analyses and modeling. Time-series analysis of moderate– and high-resolution imagery was used to characterize land and water-surface dynamics across Alaska. Some 400,000 interpretations of ecological and geomorphological change were made using historical air photos and satellite imagery, and corroborate land surface greening, browning, and wetness/moisture trend parameters derived from peak-growing season Landsat imagery acquired from 1984 to 2015. The time series of change metrics were incorporated into a modeling framework to develop a map of change processes throughout Alaska.
The data were used to identify change processes that have occurred across Alaska over the last 32 years. For this study, change was defined as an alteration to surface conditions due to disturbance, or ecological or geomorphological processes (i.e. fluvial, coastal, and lacustrine dynamics, erosion and deposition, wildland fires, insect damage, succession, glacial retreat and expansion, shrub expansion, thermokarst, human impacts) at the Landsat pixel scale. Areas with no change are defined as the lack of alteration to surface features at the 30m pixel scale. This data can be used to identify areas that have likely undergone change from 1984 to 2015. The data are available in a GeoTIFF format that can be displayed in a Geographical Information System.
