Historical Disturbance Regimes
Summary
This project aims to explore and quantify changes in the disturbance regime of the Adirondack (ADK) Park since 1990. The ADK park is an ideal place to investigate changes in natural disturbance regimes because of its ‘forever’ wild designation - meaning the state owned land within the park boundaries has not been subject to human management since its acquisition by the state of New York.
Changes to disturbance regimes are expected across the northeast in the coming decades due to warming temperatures, changing climactic patterns and increased presence of invasive species. In many places, some changes have already been observed. Because of its important cultural value, desired role in NY GHG offset program and its suitability for this type of study, we wanted to see if similar changes to the disturbance regime could be found in the ADK park.
Satellite based disturbance detection algorithms present a novel way to asses these changes. Before the development of these algorithms (and the opening of the Landsat archive, which made large quantities of high quality satellite images available freely) the only way to asses changes in disturbance regime was through longstanding forest inventory programs. Change detection algorithms allow us to do historical research in the absence of inventory data.
The Landtrendr algorithm is used in numerous other CAFRI projects due to its ease of use and adaptability (open source, implemented on GEE), as well as its accuracy. For these reasons, we are again using the Landtrendr algorithm for this project.
People
- Madeleine Desrochers
- Elizabeth Clippard
- Lucas Johnson
- Colin Beier
Key Papers
- Kennedy, R. E., Yang, Z., & Cohen, W. B. (2010). Detecting trends in forest disturbance and recovery using yearly Landsat time series: 1. LandTrendr — Temporal segmentation algorithms. Remote Sensing of Environment, 114(12), 2897–2910.
- Kennedy, R. E., Yang, Z., Cohen, W. B., Pfaff, E., Braaten, J., & Nelson, P. (2012). Spatial and temporal patterns of forest disturbance and regrowth within the area of the Northwest Forest Plan. Remote Sensing of Environment. 122: 117-133, 122, 117–133.
- Kennedy, R. E., Yang, Z., Cohen, W. B., Pfaff, E., Braaten, J., & Nelson, P. (2012). Spatial and temporal patterns of forest disturbance and regrowth within the area of the Northwest Forest Plan. Remote Sensing of Environment. 122: 117-133, 122, 117–133.