Effects of land cover and regional climate variations on long-term spatiotemporal changes in sagebrush ecosystems

GIScience and Remote Sensing
By: , and 

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Abstract

This research investigated the effects of climate and land cover change on variation in sagebrush ecosystems. We combined information of multi-year sagebrush distribution derived from multitemporal remote sensing imagery and climate data to study the variation patterns of sagebrush ecosystems under different potential disturbances. We found that less than 40% of sagebrush ecosystem changes involved abrupt changes directly caused by landscape transformations and over 60% of the variations involved gradual changes directly related to climatic perturbations. The primary increases in bare ground and declines in sagebrush vegetation abundance were significantly correlated with the 1996-2006 decreasing trend in annual precipitation.

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Effects of land cover and regional climate variations on long-term spatiotemporal changes in sagebrush ecosystems
Series title GIScience and Remote Sensing
Volume 49
Issue 3
Year Published 2012
Language English
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Contributing office(s) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
Description 19 p.
First page 378
Last page 396
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