Landscapes and Biodiversity
This project is oriented at characterizing how landscapes of the central Great Plains have changed over past decades and centuries, and how those changes have in turn driven changes in the biodiversity of the region.
Kansas landscapes have undergone and are continuing to undergo a series of dramatic and large-scale changes. These changes include afforestation, as trees invade what was previously native grassland, driven in large part by fire control. Other changes include reduction in river flow, urbanization, and shifts in farming practices.
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These changes can be tracked and mapped in good detail back to about 1980, thanks to satellite imagery. Aerial photography allows a view back to the middle twentieth century. However, to reach back to the nineteenth century, few resources are available aside from historical photographs and engravings.
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Peterson has accumulated, organized, and georeferenced more than 2000 historical (pre-1950) photos of Kansas landscapes, of which about 26% he has now relocated and rephotographed. This work is ongoing, demanding intensive photography outings, including many drone flights to replicate aerial views and "birdseye" views that were common among early photographs of the region.
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In future analyses, we will integrate information across hundreds of these repeat, historical-present views of landscapes, with the goal of estimating probabilities of different types of transitions (e.g., grassland to forest versus grassland to cropland. If successful, that work will allow retroactive mapping of past land-use patterns. We have also begun relating the present-day distributions of species to present and past land cover types, and have begun to detect and characterize how historical environments shape present distributions of species.