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Across the western U.S., pinyon and juniper trees are expanding into sagebrush and grassland plant communities. This vegetation change has been perceived to have a significant impact on the economic value of these grasslands, which support activities such as livestock grazing and hunting, but expanding pinyon and juniper forests may also lead to increased risk of fire. Over the past several decades pinyon-juniper forests have been removed across large areas of land to improve wildlife habitat and grazing land productivity while reducing risks of wildland fire. What isn’t known is whether these strategies are effective in reaching this goal, especially given that our future climate will likely be hotter and drier...
Categories: Project;
Types: Map Service,
OGC WFS Layer,
OGC WMS Layer,
OGC WMS Service;
Tags: 2022,
CASC,
Data Visualization & Tools,
Data Visualization & Tools,
Forests, All tags...
Forests,
Landscapes,
Landscapes,
Landscapes,
North Central,
North Central,
North Central CASC,
Projects by Region,
Projects by Region,
Science Tools for Managers,
Science Tools for Managers,
Science Tools for Managers, Fewer tags
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This data release presents data used for analyzing spatial and temporal differences in soil surface roughness within selected biocrust communities. These records were collected by ground-based lidar for 121, 1m x 3m soil plots with biological soil crusts (biocrusts). Roughness was estimated from 5 mm resolution data (CloudCompare v. 2.10.2, 2019) for two Great Basin Desert sites (UTTR-1; UTTR-2) in December 2015 and one Chihuahuan Desert site (JER) in February 2016. Data were again collected in June 2018 for UTTR-1 and UTTR-2. Additional field and laboratory data were included within this study to understand differences in soil surface roughness between UTTR and JER as well as between the 2016 and 2018 surveys at...
Categories: Data;
Tags: 5 mm resolution,
Chihuahuan Desert,
Ecology,
Geography,
Geomorphology, All tags...
Great Basin,
Great Basin Desert,
Hill Air Force Base,
Information Sciences,
Jornada Experimental Range,
Las Cruces,
New Mexico,
Remote Sensing,
Salt Lake City,
Soil Sciences,
USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC),
Utah,
biocrust,
biological soil crusts,
biological treatment,
biota,
data release,
digital point cloud,
ecosystem disturbance,
experimental restoration treatments,
field data,
field experiments,
field inventory and monitoring,
field methods,
geoscientificInformation,
ground-based lidar,
habitat alteration and disturbance,
laboratory data,
laboratory experiments,
laboratory methods,
lidar,
plot sampling,
remediation,
soil morphology,
soil plots,
soil resources,
soil surface roughness,
southwestern United States, Fewer tags
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Drylands are integral to the Earth system and the present and future of human society. Drylands encompass more than 40% of the terrestrial landmass and support 34% of the world’s human population. Biocrusts are the “living skin” of Earth’s drylands, sometimes dominating the ground cover and figuring prominently in ecosystem structure and function. Biocrusts are a biological aggregate of cyanobacteria, fungi, algae, lichens and mosses in the surface millimeters of soil. By aggregating soil, biocrusts make sediment less erodible. They also strongly influence the water runoff-infiltration balance. In some ecosystems they generate runoff, whereas in other systems they enhance water capture. Vascular plant germination,...
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