Vegetation shifts in boreal Alaska

This project is an investigation of species composition shifts under climate change in interior Alaska. By combining Landsat imagery with field data from the Cooperative Alaska Forest Inventory (CAFI) and leveraging AI, we are producing spatial predictions of biomass and basal area over the past ~15 years.

Hana Matsumoto (M.S. student), Wesley Rancher (M.S. student) and Melissa Lucash

Additionally, we are comparing LANDIS-II projections to our machine learning-derived predictions of biomass. This comparison provides insights into the similarities and differences between the two approaches and helps to identify key environmental drivers of biomass change over time.

Wesley Rancher (M.S. student) and Melissa Lucash

Funded by UO and the National Science Foundation, 2024- present