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Geography Research Programs in Alaska
Geographic Analysis and Monitoring, and Land Remote Sensing Program Activities

The Alaska Geographic Science Office of the USGS Alaska Science Center, conducts investigations into the use of remote sensing and GIS technologies for characterizing terrestrial ecosystems and land processes in the Arctic region. Many of these projects directly support the U.S. Geological Survey Global Change Research Program, an operational component of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Alaskan and Arctic research activities described in this page relate primarily to the USGS theme of Land Surface Characterization and Land Remote Sensing.

Research projects being supported at the Alaska Geographic Science Office:

* Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
* Alaska Ecoregions Mapping
* Lands Characteristics Datasets for Alaska and North America
* Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map
* Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna
* Forest Health Monitoring
* High-Latitude Climate Transect Datasets
* Multi-Resolution Land Characterization

* Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
The AGDC is a node of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse providing a pathway to find information about spatially referenced data available for Alaska.

Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse | Back to Top 


* Alaska Ecoregions Mapping
The Alaska Geographic Science Office has been involved in a number of cooperative projects to develop ecologically-based datasets (ecoregions) that represent an integration of natural and anthropogenic processes across the Alaskan landscape. These maps represent the past and current state of the art ecoregion mapping using strategies as reported by Bailey (USFS) and Omernik (EPA), as well as a combination of the two methodologies.

Alaska Ecoregions Mapping | Back to Top 


* Lands Characteristics Datasets for Alaska and North America
The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Alaska Geographic Science Office in conjunction with the Earth Resources Observation System (EROS) Data Center are generating lands characteristics datasets for use in a wide-range of environmental research and modeling applications. The lands characterization effort is part of the GIS and remote sensing research in support of global change studies in the Arctic and the USGS lands characterization program.

Lands Characteristics Datasets  | Back to Top 


* Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map
Cooperative research project with the University of Colorado - Boulder, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey for arctic vegetation mapping. 

Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Mapping Project  | Back to Top 


* Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna
The Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) initiative involves collaboration among eight Arctic nations for more effective research, conservation managemant, and sustainable use of northern resources. The United States has agreed to develop a prototype geographic information system (GIS) for Alaska, which would potentially be a model for a circumpolar GIS.

Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna   | Back to Top


* Forest Health Monitoring
A USFS/USGS cooperative project to develop a spatial resource data base of forest health management related information for use by Alaska land managers and the science community. Alaska has over 129 million acres of forest land, yet the state is virtually inaccessible with less than 4000 miles of roads and ownership is intermixed in large blocks. These facts make coordinated information gathering and sharing difficult. However, Alaska has many positive aspects for coordinated information sharing including excellent working relationships among all Federal agencies and major land owners. Currently many land managing agencies and owners are dealing with GIS data bases, these efforts are to be linked and built upon to further enhance the data base for all users. 

Forest Health Monitoring  | Back to Top 


* High-Latitude Climate Transect Datasets
This project makes datasets available for several High-Latitude Climate-Feedback Transects. These datasets cover Alaska, Eastern and Central Siberia. Within a transect, all of the datasets are the same size and co-registered with each other. The cell size (resolution) is approximately 1km, but varies between transects. 

High Latitude Climate Transect Datasets  | Back to Top 


* Multi-Resolution Land Characterization
Supporting an Alaska component of the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) data base.

The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) project was established to provide multi-resolution landcover data of the conterminous United States and Alaska from local to regional scales. The Alaska portion is scheduled for 2004 using Landsat 7 ETM+ data.

Multi-Resolution Land Characterization  | Back to Top 


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U.S. Department of the Interior - U.S. Geological Survey
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