Terrestrial Landscapes: Monitoring and Anticipating the Impacts of Climate Change and Land Use.

Pictured above: Kelso Dunes at Mojave National Preserve.

Pictured above: USGS Climate Impact Meteorological Station (CLIM-MET) at Mojave National Preserve.

Within and adjacent to the National Parks, the USGS Earth Surface Dynamics Program has focused attention on potential impacts of climate change and land use in the arid west and Alaska. Particular attention has been paid to parks in the Mojave Desert and on the Colorado Plateau to address issues such as cheat grass invasions, flood hazards, sediment erosion, dust-storm prediction, and dust-transport effects. The photo above shows Kelso Dunes at Mojave National Preserve. During wetter climates thousands of years ago, the dried-up lake basins of the Basin-and-Range region of the western US were filled with perennial lakes.

Pictured above: Digital image map mosaic generated using LandSat TM satellite images-used to study land conditions and changes during wet and dry years.

In the arid southwestern United States, CLIM-MET stations provide data for scientists studying the ways in which climate (temperature, precipitation, wind direction and strength) and human activities affect geologic processes (such as weathering, erosion, sediment deposition) that modify the landscape. Project scientists also use historical records, repeat photography, and remote-sensing techniques to study regional and sub-regional changes in vegetation and wind-blown (aeolian) deposits. They are developing models to predict landscape response under different conditions of climate and land use.

Active glaciers are scenic resources in many National Park units in Alaska, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Climatic conditions in large part determine the size of a glacier because they control the quantities of snowfall and melt. Seasonal changes in snow cover and decadal changes in glacier area can be monitored regionally and globally with image data from Earth-orbiting satellites. NASA and USGS scientists are also carrying out experimental geodetic airborne, satellite laser altimetry, radar interferometric, and other remote-sensing surveys of glaciers. As our understanding of global processes improves, and our ability to assess changes caused by these processes develops further, we will learn how to use indicators of global change, such as glacier variation, to more wisely manage the use of our finite land and water resources.

Pictured above: A satellite image (LandSat 1 Multi-spectral Scanner) of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

The photograph to the left is a satellite image (LandSat 1 Multispectral Scanner) of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, southeastern Alaska, on 12 Sep. 1973. In the 18th century, early sailing ships reported that Glacier Bay's glaciers extended to Cross Sound, the entrance on the Gulf of Alaska, so that a considerable retreat of glacier ice has occurred during the past two centuries. Light blue colors in the ocean and bay represent sediment from glacial streams. Landsat image 1416-19480 from the U.S. Geological Survey's EROS Data Center. A discussion of this image will be included in the forthcoming publication USGS Prof. Paper 1386-J.