Analysis of Ecosystem Stressors Across Scales Using Remotely Sensed Imagery

ehasl research project The Colorado Plateau project involves the development of procedures for utilizing multi-scale remotely sensed data in the systematic characterization and analysis at the ecosystem level. Remote sensing and scale effects analysis techniques are being used to provide indicators for the characteristic scales of processes and factors affecting spatial patterns on the ecosystem landscape. The project is utilizing the North American Landscape Characterization (NALC) data set. NALC is a cooperative effort between the US EPA, USGS and NASA, which provides standardized Landsat MSS data sets to support investigations of changes in land cover and other biophysical parameters. Shown in Figure 1 is a portion of one of the NALC scenes.

Using remotely sensed data sets from the NALC program as a base data set the 60 m spatial resolution NALC data will be resampled to pixel resolutions across a range of scales appropriate to the analysis of a regional ecosystem. These resolutions will correspond to those of the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensor, a component of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth's Earth Observing System (EOS), which is scheduled for launch in the late 1990's. MODIS resolutions are 250 m, 500 m and 1000 m. Corresponding resampled data will be produced from the 60 m MSS data at 120 m, 240 m, 480 m, and 960 m resolutions. Shown in Figure 2 are the subsets which will be used for preliminary work evaluating resampling algorithms for the image rescaling. The blue outline is the Colorado Plateaus ecosystem boundary, which encompasses portions of western Colorado, eastern and central Utah, and a small portion of northern Arizona.

moab landsat imagery