Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The US Geological Survey, Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC), is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU Partner for research investigating changes in vegetation greenness and water use in western U.S.A. riparian zones, which include measuring timeseries data from 2000-2025 and continued monitoring of changes to the mix of native and non-native riparian plants that make up the riparian corridors adjacent to ca. 15 Lower Colorado River Basin rivers.  This funding opportunity is related to remotely-sensed measurements of riparian ecosystem changes that may occur in part due to drought, as well as anthropogenic management choices.  Ongoing monitoring may reveal reasons for landscape change in these narrow corridors that may be due to wither or both natural and anthropogenic riparian changes in plant greenness, density and acreage, so this study accounts for these spatiotemporal changes in the riparian ecosystems of the Lower Colorado River Basin.  Monitoring of restoration activities along these tributary streams is also a priority as USGS seeks to measure changes in greenup and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) using satellite images.