Four Decades of Land-Cover Change on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska: Detecting Disturbance-Influenced Vegetation Shifts Using Landsat Legacy Data

Carson A. Baughman, Rachel A. Loehman, Dawn R. Magness, Lisa B. Saperstein and Rosemary L. Sherriff
Additional contact information
Carson A. Baughman: U.S. Geological Survey—Alaska Science Center, 4210 University Dr., Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
Rachel A. Loehman: U.S. Geological Survey—Alaska Science Center, 4210 University Dr., Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
Dawn R. Magness: Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1 Ski Hill Rd., Soldotna, AK 99669, USA
Lisa B. Saperstein: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Region, 1011 East Tudor Rd., Anchorage, AK 99503, USA
Rosemary L. Sherriff: Department of Geography, Environment & Spatial Analysis, Humboldt State University, 1 Harpst St., Arcata, CA 95521, USA

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 10, 1-22

Abstract: Across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, disturbance events have removed large areas of forest over the last half century. Simultaneously, succession and landscape evolution have facilitated forest regrowth and expansion. Detecting forest loss within known pulse disturbance events is often straightforward given that reduction in tree cover is a readily detectable and measurable land-cover change. Land-cover change is more difficult to quantify when disturbance events are unknown, remote, or environmental response is slow in relation to human observation. While disturbance events and related land-cover change are relatively instant, assessing patterns of post-disturbance succession requires long term monitoring. Here, we describe a method for classifying land cover and quantifying land-cover change over time, using Landsat legacy imagery for three historical eras on the western Kenai Peninsula: 1973–2002, 2002–2017, and 1973–2017. Scenes from numerous Landsat sensors, including summer and winter seasons, were acquired between 1973 and 2017 and used to classify vegetation cover using a random forest classifier. Land-cover type was summarized by era and combined to produce a dataset capturing spatially explicit land-cover change at a moderate 30-m resolution. Our results document large-scale forest loss across the study area that can be attributed to known disturbance events including beetle kill and wildfire. Despite numerous and extensive disturbances resulting in forest loss, we estimate that the study area has experienced net forest gain over the duration of our study period due to reforestation within large fire events that predate this study. Transition between forest and graminoid non-forest land cover including wetlands and herbaceous uplands is the most common land-cover change—representing recruitment of a graminoid dominated understory following forest loss and the return of forest canopy given sufficient time post-disturbance.

Keywords: land cover; Landsat; remote sensing; disturbance; land change; time series; Alaska; forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/10/382/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/10/382/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:10:p:382-:d:425460

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().