Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-11210-009-078-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 15, 2018
End Date: Aug 14, 2023
Objective:
The objective of this research is to integrate remote sensing and national rangeland monitoring datasets with a model to evaluate the impacts of regional ecosystem change on North American wind erosion and dust emissions.
Approach:
The ARS will work with Cardiff University to develop a new remote sensing model to estimate land surface aerodynamic properties, wind erosion and dust emission. Cardiff University will lead the model development and the ARS will collect and provide data from the National Wind Erosion Research Network for model calibration and contribute to the model development. The ARS will develop a workflow to integrate and calculate ecological indicators from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) and NRCS National Resources Inventory (NRI) rangeland monitoring data that can be used to interpret modelled wind erosion and dust emission responses to ecological state transitions and regional ecosystem change. Together, Cardiff University and the ARS will analyze spatial and temporal patterns of North American wind erosion and dust emission in relation to the ecological indicators to assess how the processes are responding to ecosystem change and identify potential climate and management drivers.
