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• 1. [Article] Landsat-based monitoring of annual wetland change in the main-stem Willamette River floodplain of Oregon, USA from 1972 to 2012

  Despite holding substantial ecological value, wetlands in the United States have experienced a significant decline in both area and function over the past century with the majority of freshwater wetland ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Landsat-based monitoring of annual wetland change in the main-stem Willamette River floodplain of Oregon, USA from 1972 to 2012 Author: Fickas, Kate, Colleen Despite holding substantial ecological value, wetlands in the United States have experienced a significant decline in both area and function over the past century with the majority of freshwater wetland loss attributed to agricultural conversion. Agriculture is the second largest industry in the State of Oregon and the State places substantial emphasis in its land use planning goals on the preservation of agricultural land. Oregon’s Willamette Valley accounts for the majority of agricultural output with 53% of the valley bottom classified as agricultural land. Additionally, the valley houses 70% of the state's population. The valley was once comprised of extensive wet prairies and abundant riparian forests along the Willamette River floodplain, but native ecosystems have been reduced to a fraction of their original distribution since Euro-American settlement in the mid 1800s. The few wetlands that remain are at high risk to loss and degradation from agricultural activity. Following national wetland conservation policies, Oregon has since attempted to monitor and regulate losses due to disturbance and modification of the State's remaining wetlands through a "no-net-loss" policy aiming to decrease wetland losses and replace disturbed wetlands through mitigation. The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) was designed to produce detailed maps and status reports of the characteristics and extent of the nation's wetlands and help determine the efficacy of no-net-loss policy implementation on the nation’s wetlands. In some cases, the NWI has been found to have low categorical and spatial accuracy and coarse temporal resolution, with some maps over two decades old. Although Landsat satellite imagery was originally found to lack the needed spatial resolution for classification detail and wetness designation that aerial photography provided, Landsat has 40 years of freely available, high quality annual imagery and should be explored for use in annual wetland change detection. Our objectives were to: (1) Quantify and characterize spatial and ecological trends in annual wetland change through gain, loss, and conversion in the Willamette Valley; (2) Evaluate the effect of the no-net-loss federal wetland conservation policy change enacted in 1990 on trends in net wetland area; and (3) Describe a new methodology that reaches back through the over 40-year Landsat archive to map fine scale wetland and related land-use changes from 1972-2012. We used annual Landsat MSS and TM/ETM+ images from 1972 to 2012 to manually interpret loss, gain, and type conversion of wetland area in the two-year inundation floodplain of the Main-Stem Willamette River using TimeSync, Google Earth, and ArcMap. By creating Tasseled Cap Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness indices for MSS data that visually match TM/ETM+ Tasseled Cap images, we were able to construct a complete and consistent annual time series and utilize the entire Landsat archive. Additionally, with an extended time series, we were able to compare trends of annual net change in wetland area before and after the no-net-loss policy established under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act in 1990. We found that wetlands experienced annual loss, gain, and type conversion across the entire study period. Vegetated wetlands (emergent and riparian wetlands) experienced a 314 ha net loss of wetland area across the 40 year study period whereas non-vegetated wetlands (lacustrine and riverine wetlands) experienced a 393 ha net gain. All wetland types combined saw a 79 ha net increase in wetland area across the full study period. The majority of both gain and loss in the study area was attributed to and from agricultural conversion followed by urban land use. Time series analysis of the rate of change of net wetland area was calculated using the Theil-Sen (TS) Slope estimate analysis. For annual change of wetland area before and after 1990 no-net-loss policy implementations, the rate of annual wetland area lost slowed for riparian wetlands and reversed into trends of annual net gain in area of emergent wetlands. The rate of annual net area gained for lacustrine wetlands was slowed post-policy. Accuracy assessment of land use change polygons in the field was only able to capture 12% of our interpretations due to access restrictions associated with private land. In spite of a low sample size (n=45), overall accuracy of land use classification through wetland change polygons was at 80%. This accuracy increased to 91.1% when land use classes were aggregated to either wetland or upland categories, indicating that our methodology was more accurate at distinguishing between general upland and wetland than finer categorical classes. Title: Landsat-based monitoring of annual wetland change in the main-stem Willamette River floodplain of Oregon, USA from 1972 to 2012 Author: Fickas, Kate, Colleen Despite holding substantial ecological value, wetlands in the United States have experienced a significant decline in both area and function over the past century with the majority of freshwater wetland loss attributed to agricultural conversion. Agriculture is the second largest industry in the State of Oregon and the State places substantial emphasis in its land use planning goals on the preservation of agricultural land. Oregon’s Willamette Valley accounts for the majority of agricultural output with 53% of the valley bottom classified as agricultural land. Additionally, the valley houses 70% of the state's population. The valley was once comprised of extensive wet prairies and abundant riparian forests along the Willamette River floodplain, but native ecosystems have been reduced to a fraction of their original distribution since Euro-American settlement in the mid 1800s. The few wetlands that remain are at high risk to loss and degradation from agricultural activity. Following national wetland conservation policies, Oregon has since attempted to monitor and regulate losses due to disturbance and modification of the State's remaining wetlands through a "no-net-loss" policy aiming to decrease wetland losses and replace disturbed wetlands through mitigation. The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) was designed to produce detailed maps and status reports of the characteristics and extent of the nation's wetlands and help determine the efficacy of no-net-loss policy implementation on the nation’s wetlands. In some cases, the NWI has been found to have low categorical and spatial accuracy and coarse temporal resolution, with some maps over two decades old. Although Landsat satellite imagery was originally found to lack the needed spatial resolution for classification detail and wetness designation that aerial photography provided, Landsat has 40 years of freely available, high quality annual imagery and should be explored for use in annual wetland change detection. Our objectives were to: (1) Quantify and characterize spatial and ecological trends in annual wetland change through gain, loss, and conversion in the Willamette Valley; (2) Evaluate the effect of the no-net-loss federal wetland conservation policy change enacted in 1990 on trends in net wetland area; and (3) Describe a new methodology that reaches back through the over 40-year Landsat archive to map fine scale wetland and related land-use changes from 1972-2012. We used annual Landsat MSS and TM/ETM+ images from 1972 to 2012 to manually interpret loss, gain, and type conversion of wetland area in the two-year inundation floodplain of the Main-Stem Willamette River using TimeSync, Google Earth, and ArcMap. By creating Tasseled Cap Brightness, Greenness, and Wetness indices for MSS data that visually match TM/ETM+ Tasseled Cap images, we were able to construct a complete and consistent annual time series and utilize the entire Landsat archive. Additionally, with an extended time series, we were able to compare trends of annual net change in wetland area before and after the no-net-loss policy established under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act in 1990. We found that wetlands experienced annual loss, gain, and type conversion across the entire study period. Vegetated wetlands (emergent and riparian wetlands) experienced a 314 ha net loss of wetland area across the 40 year study period whereas non-vegetated wetlands (lacustrine and riverine wetlands) experienced a 393 ha net gain. All wetland types combined saw a 79 ha net increase in wetland area across the full study period. The majority of both gain and loss in the study area was attributed to and from agricultural conversion followed by urban land use. Time series analysis of the rate of change of net wetland area was calculated using the Theil-Sen (TS) Slope estimate analysis. For annual change of wetland area before and after 1990 no-net-loss policy implementations, the rate of annual wetland area lost slowed for riparian wetlands and reversed into trends of annual net gain in area of emergent wetlands. The rate of annual net area gained for lacustrine wetlands was slowed post-policy. Accuracy assessment of land use change polygons in the field was only able to capture 12% of our interpretations due to access restrictions associated with private land. In spite of a low sample size (n=45), overall accuracy of land use classification through wetland change polygons was at 80%. This accuracy increased to 91.1% when land use classes were aggregated to either wetland or upland categories, indicating that our methodology was more accurate at distinguishing between general upland and wetland than finer categorical classes. Close

• 2. [Article] Virtual constellations for global terrestrial monitoring

  To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Virtual constellations for global terrestrial monitoring Author: Wulder, Michael A., Hilker, Thomas, et al., White, Joanne C. To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/remote-sensing-of-environment/ Title: Virtual constellations for global terrestrial monitoring Author: Wulder, Michael A., Hilker, Thomas, et al., White, Joanne C. To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/remote-sensing-of-environment/ Close

• 3. [Article] Improving Projections of Tidal Marsh Persistence under Climate Change with Remote Sensing and Site-Specific Data

  Tidal marshes are dynamic ecosystems that are threatened by climate change and sea-level rise. To characterize baseline condition and historic climate sensitivities, and improve projections into the future, ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Improving Projections of Tidal Marsh Persistence under Climate Change with Remote Sensing and Site-Specific Data Author: Buffington, Kevin John Tidal marshes are dynamic ecosystems that are threatened by climate change and sea-level rise. To characterize baseline condition and historic climate sensitivities, and improve projections into the future, new methods are required that integrate data from the field and remote sensing platforms. Marsh elevation response models can be calibrated with site-specific data to determine the vulnerability of a marsh to sea-level rise and help guide management decisions. Elevation models are sensitive to initial elevation, the rate of accretion, and aboveground biomass. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to develop techniques to improve these important model inputs and evaluate the range of spatial and temporal variation. Light detection and ranging (lidar) is an invaluable tool for collecting elevation data, however dense vegetation prevents the accurate measurement of the tidal marsh surface. In Chapter 2, I describe the development of a technique to calibrate lidar digital elevation models with survey elevation data using readily available multispectral aerial imagery from the National Agricultural Inventory Program (NAIP). Using survey elevation data across 17 Pacific Coast tidal marshes, I demonstrated the utility of the Lidar Elevation Adjustment with NDVI (LEAN) technique to account for the positive bias in lidar due to vegetation. LEAN reduced error from an average of 23.1 cm to 7.2 cm root mean squared error and removed the positive bias caused by vegetation. This increase in accuracy will facilitate more accurate assessments of current and future vulnerability to sea-level rise. The phenology of aboveground biomass in tidal marsh plants in relation to climate variation has not been explored in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In Chapter 3 I explain how I leveraged the Landsat archive and cloud computing capabilities to assess how Tasseled Cap Greenness (TCG, a proxy for aboveground biomass) in three PNW tidal marshes has responded to recent variation in climate to characterize sensitivity to climate change. Through analysis of over 3700 Landsat images obtained from 1984-2015, I found increased annual precipitation resulted in a higher peak TCG, while warmer May temperatures resulted in an earlier day of peak TCG. These results also demonstrate how time-series analysis of remote sensing data can be used to examine the sensitivity of tidal marsh plants to climate variability and directional change. The range of variation in tidal marsh accretion rates has not been characterized across the PNW. For Chapter 4, I collected and analyzed twenty-two soil cores from eight estuaries to estimate historic accretion rates with radioisotope dating techniques and evaluated the amount and source of variation across estuaries. I found that tidal marshes across the PNW had accretion rates greater than the current rate of sea-level rise, ranging from 2.3 – 7.3 mm yr⁻¹. Using a watershed-scale analysis, I found that long-term average annual fluvial discharge was the top predictor of tidal marsh accretion rates. Additionally, I found that calibrating the Wetland Accretion Rate Model for Ecosystem Resilience (WARMER) with accretion rate data from nearby estuaries can result in uncertainties of up to 41% (50 cm) after 100 years. Finally, in Chapter 5, I demonstrate that a range of 62 cm of error is possible in WARMER models after a 100 year simulation when both uncorrected lidar and non-local accretion rates are used, fundamentally changing the interpretation of the results. Altogether, this dissertation illustrates the importance of collecting site-specific wetland vegetation and elevation data and demonstrates how lidar and multispectral remote sensing data can be leveraged to improve our understanding of how climate variability and change impacts coastal ecosystems. Title: Improving Projections of Tidal Marsh Persistence under Climate Change with Remote Sensing and Site-Specific Data Author: Buffington, Kevin John Tidal marshes are dynamic ecosystems that are threatened by climate change and sea-level rise. To characterize baseline condition and historic climate sensitivities, and improve projections into the future, new methods are required that integrate data from the field and remote sensing platforms. Marsh elevation response models can be calibrated with site-specific data to determine the vulnerability of a marsh to sea-level rise and help guide management decisions. Elevation models are sensitive to initial elevation, the rate of accretion, and aboveground biomass. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to develop techniques to improve these important model inputs and evaluate the range of spatial and temporal variation. Light detection and ranging (lidar) is an invaluable tool for collecting elevation data, however dense vegetation prevents the accurate measurement of the tidal marsh surface. In Chapter 2, I describe the development of a technique to calibrate lidar digital elevation models with survey elevation data using readily available multispectral aerial imagery from the National Agricultural Inventory Program (NAIP). Using survey elevation data across 17 Pacific Coast tidal marshes, I demonstrated the utility of the Lidar Elevation Adjustment with NDVI (LEAN) technique to account for the positive bias in lidar due to vegetation. LEAN reduced error from an average of 23.1 cm to 7.2 cm root mean squared error and removed the positive bias caused by vegetation. This increase in accuracy will facilitate more accurate assessments of current and future vulnerability to sea-level rise. The phenology of aboveground biomass in tidal marsh plants in relation to climate variation has not been explored in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In Chapter 3 I explain how I leveraged the Landsat archive and cloud computing capabilities to assess how Tasseled Cap Greenness (TCG, a proxy for aboveground biomass) in three PNW tidal marshes has responded to recent variation in climate to characterize sensitivity to climate change. Through analysis of over 3700 Landsat images obtained from 1984-2015, I found increased annual precipitation resulted in a higher peak TCG, while warmer May temperatures resulted in an earlier day of peak TCG. These results also demonstrate how time-series analysis of remote sensing data can be used to examine the sensitivity of tidal marsh plants to climate variability and directional change. The range of variation in tidal marsh accretion rates has not been characterized across the PNW. For Chapter 4, I collected and analyzed twenty-two soil cores from eight estuaries to estimate historic accretion rates with radioisotope dating techniques and evaluated the amount and source of variation across estuaries. I found that tidal marshes across the PNW had accretion rates greater than the current rate of sea-level rise, ranging from 2.3 – 7.3 mm yr⁻¹. Using a watershed-scale analysis, I found that long-term average annual fluvial discharge was the top predictor of tidal marsh accretion rates. Additionally, I found that calibrating the Wetland Accretion Rate Model for Ecosystem Resilience (WARMER) with accretion rate data from nearby estuaries can result in uncertainties of up to 41% (50 cm) after 100 years. Finally, in Chapter 5, I demonstrate that a range of 62 cm of error is possible in WARMER models after a 100 year simulation when both uncorrected lidar and non-local accretion rates are used, fundamentally changing the interpretation of the results. Altogether, this dissertation illustrates the importance of collecting site-specific wetland vegetation and elevation data and demonstrates how lidar and multispectral remote sensing data can be leveraged to improve our understanding of how climate variability and change impacts coastal ecosystems. Close