Project Summary
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(In the central Great Plains, fire exclusion has led to encroachment of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) into prairies at estimated rates of 1.1 to 2.3% per year. To combat expansion of redcedar, land managers need to make difficult and cost‐effective decisions about where to prioritize efforts and the type of management actions required for a particular area. Maps of redcedar presence and percent cover are two fundamental tools that can aid in making such decisions. In addition to serving as important spatial tools for land managers, regional‐scale maps of redcedar presence over time could also aid in the understanding of the primary causes and effects of encroachment, which could further support and incentivize prevention. There have recently been some efforts leveraging remote sensing for mapping presence or encroachment of redcedar in the Great Plains. However, at a resolution of 30 m, maps of presence alone lack the ability to address some of the fundamental questions surrounding woody encroachment and its impacts which may vary at different cover levels. Maps of percent redcedar cover over time are still needed to estimate rates of infilling, to quantify the impacts of encroachment, and to aid land management decisions which are density dependent. The proposed work would map percent redcedar cover across Kansas (Phase-II) through the fusion of leaf‐off lidar and Landsat imagery in an approach recently developed by the Vogeler lab at Colorado State University at Nebraska study sites (Phase-I).
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Research Objectives
Objective 1Produce conifer cover maps across lidar acquisition areas in Kansas by filtering leaf‐off lidar collections using a point intensity and density filtering approach developed by the Vogeler lab.
Objective 2Leveraging the lidar‐based conifer maps as reference data, calibrate Landsat based conifer cover prediction models.
Objective 3Apply the Landsat based prediction model across a Landsat time series stack to produce annual conifer cover maps from 1986‐present for further assessment of encroachment patterns and temporal trends.
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Figure 1. Eastern redcedar basal area as a percent of all conifer forest basal area in US counties of the Great Plains according to 2016–2018 FIA state evaluations.
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Project Outputs
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Publications
Filippelli, S.K., Vogeler, J.C., Falkowski, M.J., & Meneguzzo, D.M. (2020). Monitoring conifer cover: Leaf-off lidar and image-based tracking of eastern redcedar encroachment in central Nebraska. Remote Sensing of Environment, 248, p.111961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.111961
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Spatial Data Products
Filippelli, S.K., Vogeler, J.C., Falkowski, M.J., & Meneguzzo, D.M. (2021). Eastern redcedar percent canopy cover in the central Great Plains (1985-2018). Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2021-0037
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Project Team & Funding
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Collaborators
Dr. Dacia Meneguzzo - USDA Forest Service (retired)
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Funding Agency
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