LanDAT Reveals Patterns of Landscape Change and Resilience across the United States
Monitoring forests, grasslands, and other vegetated landscapes is a way to stay ahead of threats and assess progress. Although land management objectives and ecological realities differ from place to place, all lands regardless of ownership face threats stemming from land use change, climate change, and disturbances such as wildfire, forest pathogen outbreaks, and invasive species. National imperatives such as the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy strive to restore and maintain resilient landscapes and adaptable communities. Quantifying progress toward goals requires objective and rigorous means of defining and measuring landscape resilience through time. No such system has previously existed. Eastern Threat Center researchers have developed the Landscape Dynamics Assessment Tool (LanDAT) to help users monitor all lands across the conterminous United States and provide a comprehensive year-to-year perspective on emerging landscape dynamics in concert with land management activities. The goal is to enable managers to characterize landscapes and landscape change, and measure the influence of management activities on landscape resilience and adaptive capacity. Project delivery has included an online map viewer displaying data products, a website overviewing LanDAT and showcasing applications, and multiple hands-on, day-long workshops with a wide array of conservation partners and researchers.
Pictured: The Landscape Dynamics Assessment Tool (LanDAT) features an online map viewer that visualizes multiple characteristics of landscapes and their dynamics through time, allowing users to examine any region in the continental United States.
External Partners/Collaborators: University of North Carolina Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center; Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative; NASA Stennis Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory