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Future Stability of U.S. High Plains Land Use
Areas of Study/Research Questions
The High Plains contain 100,000 sq. km. of sand dunes and sand sheets, now stable, that were reactivated at least 4 times during the last 10,000 years (below). Questions we are trying to address are:
- In the context of global warming, will there be a significant re-activation of the sands?
Which regions are most at risk?
- What role will the economics of irrigation play in determining the areas of re-activation?
- Have there been significant changes in land use in the last 15 years that establish trends that can be projected into the future and how might they affect surface stability?
- Have there been significant changes in surface albedo that affect surface energy balance and, therefore, regional climate?
Principal Component Image: Used to emphasize parabolic sand dunes south of the South Platte River in Eastern Colorado. Dark, linear features are the parabolic dunes. this image was created by combining Landsat 5 images of path/row 33/32 from August 16, 1998 and September 17, 1998. The two images had to be georectified pixel per pixel to produce a meaningful principal component image. The final composition had to be stretched manually to give the image more contrast. Image processing was performed in ENVI. |
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