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South Dakota Scientists Document Land-Use Changes

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 10:26 CDT

HOWARD, S.D. (AP) -- Scientists from the EROS Data Center are leading a project to document changing landscapes in South Dakota and elsewhere by matching three decades of satellite images with what is happening on the ground.

"The thing that the satellite images don't do is tell us what's underlying that change ... what's the story behind it all," said researcher Tom Loveland. "That's what we get from going out in the field."

Loveland works with fellow researchers Darrell Napton and Roger Auch to see the land at ground level, take photographs and record signs of change with their Global Positioning System coordinates.

They have divided the country into 84 regions. Sioux Falls is in the Western Corn Belt Plains. Then they picked 40 random squares of 100 square kilometers for ground surveys in each region.

At 40,000 miles, Loveland has logged the most miles for the project.

"I'm sure there have been many people pass by when we've been pulled over to the side of the road who thought, 'These guys are the craziest tourists we've ever seen,'" Auch said.

Some early results of the project show the fastest change in vegetation is in commercial forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast.

Residential and industrial development is fastest in the Piedmont - between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta - and in the Puget Lowlands, near Seattle.

Many acres in the Southeast have been converted from crops to pine plantations, creating "the world's most significant industrial forest," said Napton, a South Dakota State University geographer. "The cotton belt is now the pine belt," he said.

Closer to home, agricultural biotechnology has allowed the corn belt to spread westward into central North Dakota and South Dakota, at the expense of native grassland.

The Land Cover Trends Study also will help predict what's coming, Loveland said.

A computer model is being developed by EROS scientists to take past measurements of change and make future projections. For example, researchers could study how a change in government subsidies would reduce the acres of grassland converted to corn and soybean production in South Dakota.

The model also will help predict climate change, said Loveland.

Napton said the study takes a wide enough view to see the big changes people miss when they stay in one place most of their lives.

"Most people just see their own town or farm. We stop and move on," he said. "By moving on, we get to see the connections ... these threads that weave us all together."

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Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com

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