Caribbean Vegetation and Land Cover
This project conducts remote sensing and landscape ecology research to benefit natural resource sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and disaster management in the Caribbean. Collaborators include the U.S. Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy, and Colorado State University, and scientists, foresters, and land planners from Caribbean countries.
Its objectives are to 1) develop a geospatial data infrastructure on natural and cultural resources, 2) develop remote sensing methods to detect and quantify the spatial distributions of terrestrial ecosystems, their species diversity and their ecosystem processes, and 3) understand the natural and socioeconomic factors influencing them. To accomplish its goals, the team uses remotely sensed imagery and other geospatial data, climate data, forest inventory data and econometric and spatial modeling techniques.
Below are links for more information about these projects:
Caribbean Land Cover Project
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| Eileen Helmer | |
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2008 Integrating Landsat TM and SRTM-DEM derived variables with decision trees for forest type classification in complex tropical landscapes New satellite-image based maps of complex Caribbean islands (Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. ... |
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2002 Mapping the Forest Type and Land Cover of Puerto Rico, a Component of the Caribbean Biodiversity Hotspot The Caribbean is one of the worlds centers of biodiversity and endemism. As in similar regions, many of its islands have complex topography, climate and soils, and ecological zones change over small areas. ... |
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2007 The forest types and ages cleared for land development in Puerto Rico On the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, forest, urban/built-up and pasture lands have replaced most formerly cultivated lands. The extent and age distribution of each forest type that undergoes land development, however, is unknown. ... |
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2008 Distributions of land cover and forest formations for St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, Grenada and Barbados from satellite imagery Satellite image-based mapping of tropical forests is vital to conservation planning. Standard methods for automated image classification, however, limit classification detail in complex tropical landscapes. ... |
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2004 Forest conservation and land development in Puerto Rico In the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, rapid land-use changes over the past century have included recent land-cover conversion to urban/built-up lands. Observations of this land development adjacent to reserves or replacing dense forest call into question how the changes relate to forests or reserved lands. ... |
