Northern Colorado Plateau Network Landscape Dynamics Monitoring

Thoma, David

Landscape structure supports the natural diversity of ecosystems and species. The composition, configuration, and connectivity of land-cover types determine habitat availability, energy and material flows, and the movement of organisms on a landscape. Large changes in landscape structure occur in response to natural and human-caused disturbances. Natural disturbances are largely driven by climate; human-induced changes, such as agricultural production and housing development on lands adjacent to parks, as well as management activities within parks can impact energy and material flows across park ecosystems. Disturbance-based changes in landscape structure can be detected by evaluating imagery representing conditions across many years. Using a time series of remotely sensed imagery collected annually from Landsat satellites, it is now possible, with newly developed image analysis techniques, to determine spatial extent, rate, direction, duration, and relative magnitude of vegetation-cover change for some land-cover types. Detectable changes include both rapid and gradual change due to fire and drought stress, as well as growth and recovery processes. That information will allow managers to determine unambiguous trends related to climate change, disease, and encroachment over long-time intervals. The imagery also clearly demonstrates abrupt changes like those caused by fire, as well as the range of seasonal and annual phenological change driven by short-term variations in weather.

Northern Colorado Plateau Network Landscape Dynamics Monitoring

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