Modeling Land-Use and Land-Cover Change for the Conterminous United States; Creating Land-Cover Maps for Conservation Planning

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) maps can help biologists understand land-cover change and its impact on water body biodiversity, nutrient inputs and hydrology. Although no land-cover projections can predict the future, modeled LULC can provide a range of potential land-cover conditions to aid in habitat modeling and conservation planning. Recently, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed a unique set of spatially explicit LULC scenarios for the conterminous United States.  Land cover change scenarios consistent with four future climate change storylines were developed using an integrated assessment model, land-use histories from the USGS Land Cover Trends project, and knowledge from regional and topical experts.  The USGS FOREcasting SCEnarios of land-use change (FORE-SCE) model was then used to create spatially explicit annual LULC maps at a 250-meter pixel resolution to show differences in projected land cover change across scenarios. Additional USGS land-cover modeling efforts have begun to model LULC change back in time from 1938-1992 using historical data, that when coupled with the forecasted scenarios creates a 162 year record of yearly modeled LULC data. This poster will present completed scenario-based LULC results for the conterminous United States, as well as regional backcasting results.