Geology Reports⌕ Search

Geology topics

Alisa W. Coffin

Publications and source records attributed to Alisa W. Coffin.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2015

Land-cover change in the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative, 1973 to 2000

This report summarizes baseline land-cover change information for four time intervals from between 1973 and 2000 for the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC). The study used sample data from the USGS Land Cover Trends dataset to develop estimates of change for 10 land-cover classes in the LCC. The results show that an estimated 17.7 percent of the LCC land cover had a change during the 27-year period. Cyclic forest dynamics—of timber harvest and regrowth—are the most extensive types of land conversion. Agricultural land had an estimated net decline of 3.5 percent as cropland and pasture were urbanized and developed and converted to forest use. Urban and other developed land covers expanded from 2.0 percent of the LCC in 1973 to 3.1 percent in 2000. The report also highlights causes and challenges of land-cover change.

Gulf Coastal Plains, Ozarks↗
USGS2013

Monitoring intensity and patterns of off-highway vehicle (OHV) use in remote areas of the western USA

The continued growth of off-highway vehicle (OHV) activities – demonstrated by the dramatic increase in OHV sales, number of users, and areas experiencing OHV use – has elevated concerns about their ecological effects, the impacts on wildlife, and the sustainability of OHV use on secondary and tertiary road networks. Conflicts between visitors and wildlife are raising concerns about system resiliency and sustainable management. In order to quantify the spatial and temporal impacts of OHV use it is imperative to know about the timing and patterns of vehicle use. This study tested and used multiple vehicle-counter types to study vehicular OHV use patterns and volume throughout a mountainous road network in western Colorado. OHV counts were analyzed by time of day, day of week, season, and year. While daily use peaked within a two to three hour range for all sites, the overall volume of use varied among sites on an annual basis. The data also showed that there are at least two distinct patterns of OHV use: one dominated by a majority of use on weekends, and the other with continuous use throughout the week. This project provided important, but rarely captured, metrics about patterns of OHV use in a remote, mountainous region of Colorado. The techniques described here can provide land managers with a quantitative evaluation of OHV use across the landscape, an essential foundation for travel management planning. They also provide researchers with robust tools to further investigate the impacts of OHV use.

Oecologia Australis↗
USGS2012

A spatial analysis of cultural ecosystem service valuation by regional stakeholders in Florida: a coastal application of the social values for ecosystem services (SolVES) tool

Livelihoods and lifestyles of people throughout the world depend on essential goods and services provided by marine and coastal ecosystems. However, as societal demand increases and available ocean and coastal space diminish, better methods are needed to spatially and temporally allocate ocean and coastal activities such as shipping, energy production, tourism, and fishing. While economic valuation is an important mechanism for doing so, cultural ecosystem services often do not lend themselves to this method. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey are working collaboratively with the Florida Sea Grant College Program to map nonmonetary values of cultural ecosystem services for a pilot area (Sarasota Bay) in the Gulf of Mexico. The research seeks to close knowledge gaps about the attitudes and perceptions, or nonmonetary values, held by coastal residents toward cultural ecosystem services, and to adapt related, terrestrial-based research methods to a coastal setting. A critical goal is to integrate research results with coastal and marine spatial planning applications, thus making them relevant to coastal planners and managers in their daily efforts to sustainably manage coastal resources. Using information about the attitudes and preferences of people toward places and uses in the landscape, collected from value and preference surveys, the USGS SolVES 2.0 tool will provide quantitative models to relate social values, or perceived nonmonetary values, assigned to locations by survey respondents with the underlying environmental characteristics of those same locations. Project results will increase scientific and geographic knowledge of how Sarasota Bay residents value their area’s cultural ecosystem services.

Florida↗
USGS2002

Historical Aerial Photography for the Greater Everglades of South Florida: The 1940, 1:40,000 Photoset

Introduction The Greater Everglades Ecosystem comprises a vast swath of wetlands beginning in central Florida with the headwaters of the Kissimmee River and continuing southward through Lake Okeechobee and then to Florida Bay (Davis 1943). The ecosystem runs some 450 km, north to south, and over 100 km east to west, comprising almost 30,000 km2 of total area. Beginning in the late 19th century, a succession of programs were implemented for land reclamation and flood protection (Blake 1980; Steinman and others, 2002). At present, the greater Everglades is the subject of a restoration effort with almost $8 billion dollars of planned expenditures over 20 years. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) sets guidelines and goals for the project. Numerous federal, State of Florida, and local agencies are involved in the restoration process, as are not-for-profit non-governmental organizations. A foundation for Everglades restoration must be a clear understanding of the pre-drainage south Florida landscape (Davis and others, 1994; Fennema 1994). Knowledge of the spatial organization and structure of the pre-drainage landscape communities (mangrove forests, marshes, sloughs, wet prairies, pinelands) is necessary to provide potential endpoints, restoration goals, and performance measures to gauge restoration success. Analyses of information contained in historical aerial photographs of the Everglades can aid in the endeavor. For example, the earliest known aerial photographs are from the mid-to-late 1920s and resulted in the production of what are called T-sheets (for Topographic Sheets) for the coasts and shorelines of far south Florida. The position of the boundary between differing vegetation communities (the ecotone) can be accurately measured. If followed through time, changes in the position of these ecotones could potentially be used to judge effects of drainage on the Everglades ecosystem and also to monitor restoration success (Smith and others, 2002). The Florida Integrated Science Center (FISC), a center of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with USGS Eastern Region Geography, has created digital versions of existing aerial photographs from a survey conducted in early 1940 of south Florida and the Florida Everglades region. Via this Open-File Report, we make available digital versions of the photographs. We have not attempted to rectify, mosaic, or georeference the images. The aspect of our work will be completed in due course and a supplemental Open-File Report will be issued. At present the digital files are available on this website in a manner designed to facilitate access to the product by those intending to integrate the data with other spatial data, particularly those interested in the restoration and management of the Florida Everglades.

Open-File Report↗