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ANALYZING THE CONSEQUENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL SPATIAL PATTERNS ON ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES: THE USE OF LANDSCAPE METRICS GENERATED FROM REMOTE SENSING DATA
Citation:
Jones, K B., A C. Neale, M S. Nash, R. D. van Remortel, J D. Wickham, K. H. Riitters, AND R. V. O'Neill. ANALYZING THE CONSEQUENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL SPATIAL PATTERNS ON ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES: THE USE OF LANDSCAPE METRICS GENERATED FROM REMOTE SENSING DATA. Presented at Geological Congress, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 6-17, 2000.
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
Develop methodologies so that landscape indicator values generated from different sensors on different dates (but in the same areas) are comparable; differences in metric values result from landscape changes and not differences in the sensors;
Quantify relationships between landscape metrics generated from wall-to-wall spatial data and (1) specific parameters related to water resource conditions in different environmental settings across the US, including but not limited to nutrients, sediment, and benthic communities, and (2) multi-species habitat suitability;
Develop and validate multivariate models based on quantification studies;
Develop GIS/model assessment protocols and tools to characterize risk of nutrient and sediment TMDL exceedence;
Complete an initial draft (potentially web based) of a national landscape condition assessment.
This research directly supports long-term goals established in ORDs multiyear plans related to GPRA Goal 2 (Water) and GPRA Goal 4 (Healthy Communities and Ecosystems), although funding for this task comes from Goal 4. Relative to the GRPA Goal 2 multiyear plan, this research is intended to "provide tools to assess and diagnose impairment in aquatic systems and the sources of associated stressors." Relative to the Goal 4 Multiyear Plan this research is intended to (1) provide states and tribes with an ability to assess the condition of waterbodies in a scientifically defensible and representative way, while allowing for aggregation and assessment of trends at multiple scales, (2) assist Federal, State and Local managers in diagnosing the probable cause and forecasting future conditions in a scientifically defensible manner to protect and restore ecosystems, and (3) provide Federal, State and Local managers with a scientifically defensible way to assess current and future ecological conditions, and probable causes of impairments, and a way to evaluate alternative future management scenarios.
Description:
A number of existing and new remote sensing data provide images of areas ranging from small communities to continents. These images provide views on a wide range of physical features in the landscape, including vegetation, road infrastructure, urban areas, geology, soils, and water courses. Despite increases in the spatial and attribute resolution of images over the last few years, we have fallen behind on our ability to move these images beyond pretty pictures to robust environmental assessments. This paper presents a series of methods developed by the US Environmental -Protection Agency to analyze spatial patterns in the environment and the consequences of such patterns on the conditions of ecological resources, including forests,
water, and biota (biological diversity). The methods apply fundamental principles from the fields of landscape ecology and ecological hierarchy theory, and take advantage of new remote sensing databases and advances in geographic information system (GIS) technology. We demonstrate the applications of these approaches relative to three scales: (1) an assessment of forest fragmentation at the global scale, (2) an assessment of water resources at a regional scale, and (3) an assessment of habitat resources (biological diversity) at a watershed or catchment scale.