Earth ID: 12051

25 Years of Forest Dynamics

Released on April 27, 2018

Forests are living, ever changing ecosystems, affected by aging, natural disasters and human interventions.

Annual maps of the lower-48 United States produced from satellite data illustrate how these dynamic systems changed from 1986-2010. Logging and hurricanes play a significant role in the Southeast, and fires and insect invasion damage forest canopy in the West.

Trees are one of the world's best absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Understanding how trees and forests change through time is one of the first steps to understanding how active they are in pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which is of profound interest to scientists monitoring climate change.

Developed for the North American Forest Dynamics study, scientists combined 25 years of satellite data from the joint U.S. Geological Survey/NASA Landsat satellite program with information from the U.S. Forest Service to highlight where forest canopy was disturbed.

To learn more about the project and get data, visit: https://daac.ornl.gov/NACP/guides/NAFD-NEX_Forest_Disturbance.html

Short clip from longer video on US forest dynamics. This section shows forest disturbance across the contiguous United States from 1986-2010. Dark green pixels had no disturbance during those years. Yellow shows where a disturbance happened in a particular year.

Short clip from longer video on US forest dynamics. Protected areas around Broken Bow Lake in southeast Oklahoma remain largely undisturbed compared to the surrounding region, which flickers with the tell-tale patches of timber harvesting.

Short clip from longer video on US forest dynamics. Hurricane Hugo knocked down trees across four and a half million acres when it made landfall in South Carolina in September of 1989. The disturbance of the forest is visible in the 1990 data.

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Credits

Matthew R. Radcliff (USRA): Lead Producer
Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Jeffrey Masek (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Jeffrey Masek (NASA/GSFC): Writer
Matthew R. Radcliff (USRA): Writer
Chengquan Huang (University of Maryland): Scientist
Feng Zhao (University of Maryland): Scientist
Joy Ng (USRA): Lead Producer

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12051

Mission:
Landsat

This item is part of these series:
Geophysical Changes Over Time
Narrated Movies
Landsat

Keywords:
SVS >> Carbon Sink
SVS >> HDTV
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Biosphere >> Terrestrial Ecosystems >> Forests
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Human Dimensions >> Habitat Conversion/Fragmentation >> Deforestation
NASA Science >> Earth
SVS >> Presentation

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0