Publications

Global Percent Tree Cover at a Spatial Resolution of 500 Meters: First Results of the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields Algorithm, Earth Interactions, 1, 7, 2003

In review:

Eastman, J.C., Townshend, J.R.G., Justice, C.O., Sohlberg, R., Tucker, C.J. 2002 Roadless areas and forest fires in the western United States, EOS Transactions (in review).

In press:

Huang, C. and Townshend, J.R.G. 2001, A stepwise regression tree for nonlinear approximation: applications to estimating sub-pixel land cover, International Journal of Remote Sensing, (in press).

DeFries, R., in press. Tropical forests, deforestation, and ecosystem services: Contributions of remote sensing. In: P.S. Roy (Editor), Geoinformatics for Tropical Ecosystems.

Chan, J.W.-C., LaPorte, N. and DeFries, R.: in press, Texture classification of logging using machine learning algorithms. International Journal of Remote Sensing.

Still, C., Berry, J., Collatz, G. and DeFries, R., in press, The global distribution of C3 and C4 plants: Carbon Cycle Implications. Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

DeFries, R., in press, Review of People Managing Forests: The Links between Human Well-Being and Sustainability. edited by Colfer and Byron. Invited book review. Environmental Conservation.

DeFries, R. and Bounoua, L. in press. Consequences of land use change for ecosystem services: A future unlike the past. Geojournal.

Zeng, X., Rao, P., DeFries, R. and Hansen, M.: in press, Interannual variability and decadal trend of global vegetation cover from 1982 to 2000. Journal of Applied Meteorology.

2002:

Townshend, J.R.G. and Justice, C.O. 2002 Towards operational monitoring of terrestrial systems by moderate resolution imaging, Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 351-359.

Justice, C.O., Townshend, J.R.G., Vermote, E., Wolfe, R. El Saleous, N. and Roy, D. 2002. Status of MODIS, its data processing and products for terrestrial science applications, Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 3-15.

DeFries, R., Bounoua, L. and Collatz, G.J., 2002, Human Modification of the Landscape and Surface Climate in the Next Fifty Years. Global Change Biology 8: 438-458.

Townshend, J.R.G., Justice, C.O., Hansen, M., Defries R., Sohlberg, R., Zhan, X., Caroll, M., DiMiceli, C. 2002, The use of EOS data for characterizing and monitoring land cover change in the framework of the program of Global Observations of Forest Cover/Global Observations of Landcover Dynamics, Proceedings of Advanced Training Workshop on Land Use and Land Cover Change Study, Dec 9-20, 2002, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, 357-398

Hansen, M., DeFries, R., Townshend, J.R.G., Sohlberg, R., Dimiceli, C., and Carrol, M. 2002 Towards an operational MODIS continuous field of percent tree cover algorithm: Examples using AVHRR and MODIS, Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 303-319.

DeFries, R., 2002, Past and Future Sensitivity of Primary Production to Human Modification of the Landscape. Geophysical Research Letters 29 (7):36-1 – 36-4.

DeFries, R. 2002. Review of “Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health”. Edited by D. Pimentel, L. Westral, and R. Noss. Invited book review. Environment.

Hansen, M., DeFries, R., Townshend, J.R.G., Marufu, L., and Sohlberg, R. 2002 Development of a MODIS tree cover validation data set for Western Province, Zambia, Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 320-335.

Bounoua, L., DeFries, R., Collatz, G.J., Sellers, P. and Khan, H., 2002, Effects of land cover conversion on surface climate. Climatic Change 52: 29-64.

Descloitres, J., Sohlberg, R., Owens, J., Giglio, L., Justice, C., Carroll, M., Seaton, J., Crisologo, M., Finco, M., Lannom, K., and Bobbe, T. 2002. The MODIS Land Rapid Response Project. IGARSS: IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, Toronto.

Quayle, B., Finco, M., Lannom, K., Sohlberg, R., Descloitres, J., Carroll, M., Norton, J., and Kostyuchenko, D. 2002. USDA Forest Service MODIS active fire mapping and delivery. Proceedings of RS2002: Ninth Biennial Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference, San Diego.

Carroll, M., Descloitres, J., Giglio, L., Sohlberg, R., Finco, M, Quayle, B., Owens, J., Townshend, J., and Justice, C. 2002. MODIS Land Rapid Response activities with the USDA Forest Service: time sensitive data acquisition to support wildfire management. Proceedings of 2002 NASA Science Data Processing Workshop, Greenbelt, Md.

Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R.., Townshend, J.R.G., DiMiceli, C., Carroll, M., Eastman, J.C., Hansen, M., R.S. DeFries, R. S. 2002 Detection of land cover changes using MODIS 250m data, Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 336-350.

DeFries, R., Houghton, R.A., Hansen, M., Field, C., Skole, D., Townshend, J.R.G. 2002 Carbon Emissions from Tropical Land Use Change Based on Satellite Observations for the 1980s and 90s, Proceeding National Academy of Sciences, 99, 14256-14261.

Huang, C., Davis, L. S., and Townshend, J.R.G. 2002, An assessment of support vector machines for land cover classification, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 23, 725-749.

Huang, C. Townshend, J.R.G., Liang, S. Kalluri, S.N.V. and Defries, R.D, 2002. Impact of sensor’s point spread function on land cover characterization, assessment and deconvolution. Remote Sensing of Environment., 80, 203-212.

DeFries, R. and A.S. Belward, 2000, Global and regional land cover characterization from satellite data: An introduction to the special issue, International Journal of Remote Sensing. 21: 1083-1093.

Los, S.O., Sellers, P.J., Collatz, G.J., Malmstrom, C.M., DeFries, R.S., Tucker, C.J., Pollack, N.H., Dazlich, D.A., Bounoua, L., 2000, A global 9-year biophysical landsurface dataset from NOAA AVHRR data. Journal of Hydrometeorlogy: 183-199.

2001:

Sohlberg, R., Descloitres, J., and Bobbe, T., 2001. MODIS Land Rapid Response: Operational Use of Terra Data for USFS Wildfire Management. The Earth Observer, 13(5), 8-10,14.

Townshend, J.R.G., DeFries, R.S., Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R.A., Hansen, M.C., DiMiceli, C., Carroll, M.L., and Eastman, J.C. 2001. MODIS 250m and 500m time series data for change detection and continuous representation of vegetation characteristics. Multitemp 2001, Trento, Italy.

Kalluri, S.N.V., Zhang, Z., JaJa, J., Liang, S. and Townshend, J.R.G. 2001 Characterizing land surface anisotropy from AVHRR data at a global scale using high performance computing, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 22, 2171-2191.

Chan, J.C.-W., Huang, C. and DeFries, R., 2001, Enhanced algorithm performance for land cover classification using bootstrap aggregating (bagging). IEEE Transacations on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 39 (3):693-695.

2000:

Townshend, J.R.G., Huang, C., Kalluri, S.N.V., DeFries, R.S., Liang, S. and Yang, K. 2000. Beware of Per-Pixel Characterization of Land Cover, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21,839-843.

Teillet, P.M., El Saleous, N., Hansen, M.C., Eidenshink, J.C., Justice, C.O. and Townshend, J.R.G., 2000, An Evaluation of the Global 1-km AVHRR Land Data Set, International Journal of Remote Sensing , 21[10], 1987-2022.

Zhan, X. Jiang, Y. and Townshend, J.R.G. 2000, A simple assessment of the expansion of American urban areas from the 1970s to the 1990s using the North American Landscape Characterization Data Set. IGARSS2000, Honolulu, Hawaii, pp. 3060-63.

Kalluri, S.N.V., Ja Ja, J., Bader, D.A. , Zhang, Z., Townshend, J.R.G and Fallah-Adl, H. 2000 High performance computing algorithms for land cover dynamics using remotely sensed data, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21, 1513-1536.

El Saleous, N., Vermote, E., Justice, C. O., Townshend, J. R.G., Tucker, C.J., and Goward, S.N. 2000. Improvements in the global biospheric record from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21, 1251-1278.

Tucker, C. J. and Townshend, J.R.G. 2000. Strategies for tropical forest deforestation assessment using satellite data, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21, 1461-1472.

Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R. S., Townshend, J.R.G. and Sohlberg, R. 2000. Global land cover classification at 1 km spatial resolution using a classification tree approach, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21, 1331-1364.

DeFries, R. and Chan, J., 2000, Multiple criteria for evaluating machine learning algorithms for land cover classification from satellite data. Remote Sensing of Environment. 74:503-515.

DeFries, R. S., Hansen, M. and Townshend, J.R.G. 2000. Global continuous fields of vegetation characteristics: a linear mixture model applied to multi-year 8km AVHRR data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 1389-1414.

DeFries, R., Field, C., Fung, I., Collatz, G. and Bounoua, L., 1999. Combining satellite data and biogeochemical models to estimate global effects of human-induced land cover change on carbon emissions and primary productivity, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 13(3): 803-815.

Justice, C., Townshend, J., Vermote, E., Sohlberg, R., Descloitres, J., Roy, D., Hall, D., Salomonson, V., Riggs, G., Huete, A., Didan, K., Miura, T., Wan, Z., Strahler, A., Schaaf, C., Myneni, R., Running, S., Glassy, J., Nemani, R., El Saleous, N., and Wolfe, R. 2000. Preliminary land surface products from the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). IGARSS: IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, Honolulu.

Huang, C., Townshend, J.R.G., Zhan, X., Hansen, M., DeFries, R., and Sohlberg, R. 2000. Detecting land cover changes based on their trajectories in the spectral space. IGARSS: IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, Honolulu.

Huang, C., Chan, C.W., Townshend, J.R.G., and DeFries, R. 2000 Impact of data dimension on the comparative performance of classification algorithms. IGARSS2000, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Zeng, X., Dickinson, R., Walker, A., Shaikh, M., DeFries, R. and Qi, J. 2000. Derivation and evaluation of global 1-km fractional vegetation cover data for land modeling. Journal of Applied Meteorology. 39: 826-839.

Zhan, X., DeFries, R., Townshend, J.R.G., Dimiceli, C., Hansen, M., Huang, C., and Sohlberg, R. 2000. The 250m global change product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer of NASA’s Earth Observing System, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 21, 1433-1460.

DeFries, R. Hansen, M., Townshend, J.R.G., Janetos, A.C., and Loveland, T.R. 2000. A new global 1km data set of percent tree cover derived from remote sensing. Global Change Biology. 6: 247-254.

1999:

DeFries, R. S., Hansen, M., Townshend, J.R.G, Janetos, A. and Loveland, T. 1999. A New Global 1km Data Set of Percent Tree Cover Derived from Remote Sensing, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 8 (5), 367-379.

Estes, J.E., Belward, A., Loveland, T., Scepan, J., Strahler, A., Townshend, J.R.G. and Justice, C.O. (1999) The IGBP 1 km Land-Cover Data Set: The Way Forward., Photgrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 65 (9), 1099-1106.

Zhan, X., Hansen, M., DeFries, R., Townshend, J.R.G., Huang, C., DiMiceli, C., and Sohlberg, R. 1999. MODIS Enhanced Land Cover and Land Cover Change Product, Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents (ATBD) Version 2.0, EOS Project Science Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. 94 pp.

DeFries, R. and Los, S., 1999. Implications of land cover misclassifications for parameter estimates in global land surface models: An example from the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB2). Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing. 65(9): 1083-1088.

DeFries, R. S., Townshend, J.R.G. and Hansen, M. 1999. Continuous fields of vegetation characteristics at the global scale. J. Geophysical Research, 104, 16911-16923.

1998:

Zhang, Z., Kalluri, S., Ja’ Ja’, J., Liang, S., and Townshend, J.R.G. 1998. High Performance Algorithms for Global Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function Retrieval, IEEE Transactions in Computational Science and Engineering, 5(4), 16-29.

Justice, C. O., Vermote, E., Townshend, J . R. G., DeFries, R., Roy, D., Hall, D. K., Salomonson, V. V., Privette,, J. L., Riggs, G., Strahler, A., Lucht, W., Myneni, R. B., Knyazikhin, Y., Running, S. W., Nemani, R. M. Wan, Z., Huete, A. R., van Leeuwen, W., Wolfe, R. E., Giglio, L., Muller, J.-P., Lewis, P., and Barnsley, M. 1998. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS): Land Remote Sensing for Global Change Research, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 36 (4), 1212-1227.

DeFries, R. S., Hansen, M., Townshend, J.R.G. and Sohlberg, R. 1998. Global land cover classification at 8 km spatial resolution. The use of training data derived from Landsat imagery in decision-tree classifiers. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 19, 3141-3168.

Hansen, M., DeFries, R., DiMiceli, C., Huang, C., Sohlberg, R., Zhan, X., and Townshend, J.R.G. 1998. Red and infrared space partitioning for detecting land cover change, IGARSS: IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, Seattle, 2512-2514.

Zhan, X., Huang, C., Townshend, J.R.G., DeFries, R., Hansen, M., DiMiceli, C., Sohlberg, R., Hewson-Scardelletti, J., and Tompkins, A. 1998. Land cover change detection with change vector in the red and near-infrared reflectance space, IGARSS: IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Proceedings, Seattle, 859-861.

Huang, C., Townshend, J.R.G., Zhan, X., Hansen, M., DeFries, R., and Sohlberg, R. 1998. Developing the spectral trajectories of major land cover change processes, Proceedings of SPIE, Hyperspectral Remote Sensing and Applications, Beijing, 155-162.

1997:

Skole, D.L., Justice, C.O., Townshend, J.R.G. and Janetos, A. C. 1997. A land cover change monitoring program: Strategy for an International effort, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 2, (2-3), 157-175.

DeFries, R., Hansen, M. Steininger, M., Dubayah, R., Sohlberg, R. and Townshend, J.R.G. 1997. Sub-pixel forest cover in Central Africa from multisensor, multitemporal data, Remote Sensing of Environment, 60, 228-246.

DeFries, R. 1997. Global Land Cover Classifications from AVHRR Data. Report to Central Intelligence Agency State Failure Task Force.

DeFries, R., Townshend, J. and Los, S., 1997, Scaling land cover heterogeneity for global atmosphere-biosphere models. In Scale in Remote Sensing and GIS, edited by D. A. Quattrochi and M. F. Goodchild (Boca Raton, FL: CRC/ Lewis Publishers Inc.). pp. 231-246.

Smith, P., Kalluri, S., Prince, S. and DeFries, R., 1997, The NOAA/NASA Pathfinder AVHRR 8-km land data set, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 63, 12-31.

1996:

Hansen, M., Dubayah, R. and DeFries, R., 1996, Classification trees: An alternative to traditional land cover classifiers, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 17, 1075-1081.

1995:

DeFries, R., Field, C.R., Fung. I., Justice, C.O., Los, S., Matson, M.A., Matthews, E.A., Mooney, H.A., Potter, C.S. Prentice, K.A., Sellers, P.J., Townshend, J.R.G., Tucker, C.J., Ustin, S.L. and Vitousek, P.M., 1995 Mapping the land surface for global atmosphere-biosphere models: Towards continuous distributions of vegetation’s functional properties, Journal of Geophysical Research, 100, D10, 20,867-20,882.

DeFries, R., Hansen, M. and Townshend, J.R.G. 1995. Global discrimination of land cover from metrics derived from AVHRR Pathfinder- data sets. Remote Sensing of Environment, 54, 209-222.

Townshend, J.R.G. and Justice, C.O. 1995. Spatial variability of images and the monitoring of changes in the normalized difference vegetation index. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 16 (12), 2187-2196.

Hall, F.G., Townshend, J.R.G. and Ingman, T. 1995 Status of remote sensing algorithms for the estimation of land surface parameters. Remote Sensing of Environment, 51 (1), 138-156.

1994:

Justice, C.O. and Townshend, J.R.G. 1994, Data sets for global remote sensing: lessons learnt, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 15 (17), 3621-3639.

Townshend, J.R.G., Justice C.O., Skole, D.,, C.O., Malingreau, J.-P., Cihlar J., Teillet, P., Sadowski, F. and Ruttenberg, S. 1994. The 1 km resolution global data set: needs of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 15 (17), 3417-3442.

Townshend, J.R.G. 1994. Global data sets for land applications from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer: an introduction, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 15 (17), 3319-3332.

DeFries, R. and Townshend, J.R.G. 1994. NDVI-derived land cover classifications on a global scale. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 15 (17), 3567-3586.

DeFries, R. and Townshend, J. R. G., 1994, Global land cover: Comparison of ground-based data sets to classifications with AVHRR data. In Environmental Remote Sensing from Regional to Global Scales, edited by G. Foody and P. Curran (U.K.: John Wiley and Sons). pp. 84-110.

1992:

Townshend, J.R.G., Justice, C.O., Gurney, C. and McManus, J. 1992. The effect of misregistration on the detection of vegetation change. Trans. Inst. of Electronic and Elec. Engineers, Geosciences and Remote Sensing, 30 (5), 1054-1060.

Townshend, J.R.G. 1992. The European contribution to the application of remote sensing to land cover classification, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 13, 1319-1328.

Quarmby, N.A., Townshend, J.R.G., Settle, J.J., White, K.H., Milnes, M., Hindle, T.L. and Silleos, N. 1992 Linear mixture modelling applied to AVHRR data for crop area estimation. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 13 (3), 415-426.

1991:

Townshend, J.R.G., Justice, C.O., Li, W., Gurney, C., and McManus, J. 1991. Global land classification by Remote Sensing: Present Capabilities and Future Prospects. Remote Sensing of Environment, 35, 243-256.

Justice, C.O., Townshend, J.R.G. and Kalb V.T. 1991. Representation of vegetation by continental data sets derived from AVHRR data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 5, 999-1021.

Presentations:

Townshend, J.R.G., Sohlberg, R.A., DeFries, R.S., Hansen, M.C., Carroll, M.L., DiMiceli, C., and Semeiks, B.M. 2002. The MODIS vegetative cover and change products: validation and analysis. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Bobbe, T., Descloitres, J., Finco, M., Giglio, L., Justice, C., Sohlberg, R., and Townshend, J. 2002. MODIS Land Rapid Response System: implementation with USDA Forest Service and implications for active fire detection and land cover change products from future moderate resolution sensors. NPOESS MAXI Review 2002, Silver Spring, MD.

Eastman, J., Townshend, J., Justice, C., and Sohlberg, R. 2002. Roadless areas and forest fires in the western United States. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Washington, DC.

Hao, W., Kaufman, Y., Descloitres, J., Justice, C., Sohlberg, R., and Bobbe, T. 2002 (invited). Using a MODIS direct broadcast system to monitor fires and smoke and forecast air quality. American Geophyical Union Spring Meeting, Washington, DC.

Hansen, M., DeFries, R.S., Townshend, J.R.G., and Sohlberg, R. 2002 (invited). Continuous fields of tree cover for the United States using multi-resolution satellite Data. RS2002: Ninth Biennial Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference, San Diego.

Finco, M., Sohlberg, R., Descloitres, J., and Giglio, L. 2002. The MODIS Land Rapid Response project. RS2002: Ninth Biennial Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference, San Diego.

Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R.S., Townshend, J.R.G., Sohlberg, R., Carroll, M., and DiMiceli, C. 2002. Global percent tree cover from MODIS data. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Washington, DC.

Descloitres, J., Giglio, L., Sohlberg, R., Owens, J., Justice, C., Townshend, J., Seaton, J., Crisologo, M., Carroll, M., and Finco, M. 2001. The MODIS Land Rapid Response project: a comprehensive suite of products to support U.S.D.A. Forest Service fire management. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Townshend, J.R.G., Sohlberg, R.A., Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R.S. 2001. MODIS vegetation Cover Products for Estimating Tree Cover and Monitoring Change. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Townshend, J.R.G., DeFries, R.S., Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R.A., DiMiceli, C., Carroll, M.L., Hansen, M.C., and Eastman, J.C. 2001. A global alarm product for land cover change: MODIS 250 meter Vegetative Cover Conversion algorithm. IGBP Open Science Conference, Amsterdam.

Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R.S., Townshend, J.R.G., and Sohlberg, R.A. 2001. Using continuous fields of tree cover maps from satellite data to assess degradation within ecoregions, an example from South America. IGBP Open Science Conference, Amsterdam.

DeFries, R. and Hansen, M. 2001. Using MODIS Data to Assess Regional Forest Degradation from Human Activity. Ecological Society of America 2001 annual meeting.

Sohlberg, R., Zhan, X., DiMiceli, C., Carroll, M., Townshend, J., Eastman, J., Hansen, M., and DeFries, R. 2001. Change detection for flood and burning events using MODIS 250m data and the Vegetative Cover Conversion algorithm. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Boston.

Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R.S., Townshend, J.R.G., and Sohlberg, R.A. 2001. Using continuous fields of tree cover to assess degradation within ecoregions: An example from South America. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Boston.

Townshend, J., Hansen, M., DeFries, R., Sohlberg, R., Desch, A., and White, B. 2001. Monitoring the extent of forests on national to global scales. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Boston.

Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R., Townshend, J.R.G., DeFries, R.S., Dimiceli, C., and Hansen, M.C. 2000. Vegetative Cover Conversion product from MODIS 250m data: Early results. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Watson, R.P., Sohlberg, R., Brumby, S.P., and Szymanski, J.J. 2000. Mapping wildfire burn extent and intensity across multi-scale imagery of the Cerro Grande Fire, Los Alamos, New Mexico. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Hansen, M.C., DeFries, R.S., Zhan, X., Sohlberg, R., and Townshend, J.R.G. 2000. Continuous Fields of Vegetation from MODIS data. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco.

Sohlberg, R., Kalluri, S.N.V., DiMiceli, C.M., Vermote, E.F., El Saleous, N.Z., Justice, C.O., and Townshend, J.R.G. 2000. Comparative advantages of MODIS 250m data for earth science applications. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Washington, DC.

DeFries, R., Sohlberg, R., and Steininger, M. 1995. Estimation of African percent forest cover using multi­sensor, multi­resolution data and channel metrics. American Geophysical Union Spring Meeting, Baltimore.