
John RoganClark University · School of Geography
John Rogan
About
143
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Introduction
John Rogan currently works at the School of Geography, Clark University.
Publications
Publications (143)
Understanding vegetation recovery after fire is critical for predicting vegetation-mediated ecological dynamics in future climates. However, information characterizing vegetation recovery patterns after fire and their determinants over large geographical extents is limited. This study uses Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) leaf...
Understanding vegetation recovery after fire is critical for predicting vegetation-mediated ecological dynamics in future climates. However, information characterizing vegetation recovery patterns after fire and their determinants are lacking over large geographical extents. This study uses Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) leaf...
Context
Urban tree canopy (UTC) in parks is shaped by complex interactions between social and ecological processes over decades. To understand UTC change in parks, it is critical to identify and characterize the unique set of social processes that drive long-term change.
Objectives
We sought to uncover the feedbacks between social processes and lo...
The Selva Maya represents the largest expanse of tropical forest in Mesoamerica, encompassing parts of Belize, northern Guatemala, and south-eastern Mexico. Patterns and processes of forest loss in Belize are less comprehensively studied than other regions in the Selva Maya. Hence, this research tracks twenty years of forest loss in relation to Pro...
Despite the importance of preserving contiguous tropical forest areas to maintain biodiversity and terrestrial carbon stocks, methodological challenges continue to hinder broad-scale analysis of threats to these forests. Emerging Hot Spot Analysis (EHSA) is a spatial-statistical method that conveys complex information about the temporal dynamics of...
Present-day spatial patterns of urban tree canopy (UTC) are created by complex interactions between various human and biophysical drivers; thus, urban forests represent legacies of past processes. Understanding these legacies can inform municipal tree planting and canopy cover goals while also addressing urban sustainability and inequity. We examin...
This study examines the post-fire biogeophysical and biochemical dynamics after several high-severity wildfires that occurred in mixed conifer and ponderosa pine forest types in the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains regions between 1986 and 2017. We found a consistent pattern of reduced leaf area index (LAI) in the first year after fire, followed...
Pressure to facilitate the flow of commodities and capital across global and national markets has translated into narratives and programs prioritizing integration and development of forested regions. The 2009 World Bank Development Report argues that to reduce distance, infrastructure development is crucial. The infrastructure imperative, however,...
Mature urban tree canopy cover disrupts the local effects of urban heat islands and provides important ecosystem services such as energy savings through evaporation and shading, pollution removal, storm runoff control, and carbon sequestration. Sustainable urban tree canopy relies on the planting of juvenile trees. Typically, tree planting programs...
In contrast to abrupt changes caused by land cover conversion, subtle changes driven by a shift in the condition, structure, or other biological attributes of land often lead to minimal and slower alterations of the terrestrial surface. Accurate mapping and monitoring of subtle change are crucial for an early warning of long-term gradual change tha...
Smallholder farmers commonly use fire for land clearing and agricultural maintenance in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The southern Yucatán Peninsular Region (SYPR) has experienced increasing fire frequency since the 1960s due to expanding smallholder agriculture and recurrent droughts. Beginning in January 2019, a government-subsidized programme...
Human activities, exacerbated by periods of armed conflict, have impacted the biodiversity-rich forests in Western Rwanda during recent decades, creating a need to enhance forest protection and restoration policies that address widespread environmental degradation in this mountainous region. Contrasting observations and the lack of recent forest-co...
Forest disturbances greatly affect the ecological functioning of natural forests. Timely information regarding extent, timing and magnitude of forest disturbance events is crucial for effective disturbance management strategies. Yet, we still lack accurate, near-real-time and high-performance remote sensing tools for monitoring abrupt and subtle fo...
Landsat-8 derived Land Surface Temperature (LST) is used to measure Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) patterns and intensity in Worcester, MA, USA. Additionally, near-surface air temperature variability is measured using in-situ sensors to further contextualize the urban-to-rural land-cover driven thermal patterns in the study area. Despite the wide...
Understanding forest regeneration in the wake of large-scale wildfire events is critically important because these disturbances are expected to occur more frequently given future climate projections. While the impacts of individual management prescriptions on prevention, mitigation, and response to severe fire events have been studied, the influenc...
Forest disturbances greatly affect the ecological functioning of natural forests. Timely information regarding extent, timing and magnitude of forest disturbance events is crucial for effective disturbance management strategies. Yet, we still lack an acute, near-real-time and high-performance remote sensing tools for monitoring abrupt and subtle fo...
Remote sensing, or Earth Observation (EO), is increasingly used to understand Earth system dynamics and create continuous and categorical maps of biophysical properties and land cover, especially based on recent advances in machine learning (ML). ML models typically require large, spatially explicit training datasets to make accurate predictions. T...
Predictions about the spatial distribution of environmental impacts related to extractive industries have commonly assumed an inverse relationship between the severity of impact and distance from the site of extraction. However, because of the salience of water to both extractive industries and other livelihood strategies, many severe externalities...
The role of remote sensing in understanding earth systems is growing rapidly, in part due to advances in new machine learning (ML) techniques. These approaches typically rely on large, spatially extensive training datasets to predict categories or continuous quantities. These training data are typically collected by digitizing polygons from high sp...
The rise of globalization and global increases in temperature have prompted the spread of invasive species, which poses a major threat to the ecosystem benefits provided by urban forests. Stakeholders such as urban residents, policy-makers, and forestry industry professionals deem these risks differently because they place value on threatened goods...
The Asian longhorned beetle (ALB, Anoplophora glabripennis) is an invasive pest species currently infesting major port cities in North America and Europe. There is limited knowledge regarding the pathways of movement across heterogeneous landscapes at local scales. This study models dispersal pathways using circuit theory in Worcester, Massachusett...
During the mid-2000s, Honduras and El Salvador implemented mining moratoria. By 2017 El Salvador had legislated a globally unprecedented ban on all forms of metal mining, while in Honduras mining was expanding aggressively. These neighboring countries present the explanatory challenge of understanding the distinct trajectories of mining policy and...
Significance
While infrastructure expansion has been broadly investigated as a driver of deforestation, the impacts of extractive industry and its interactions with infrastructure investment on forest cover are less well studied. These challenges are urgent given growing pressure for infrastructure investment and resource extraction. We use geospat...
Many factors influence yard care in urban and suburban areas, but the explicit difference between front versus back yards is one factor that has not been fully examined. This paper introduces the Landscape Mullet concept. The two key components of this concept are: (1) social norms are an important driver of yard management; and (2) the influence o...
Deciduousness in dry tropical forests results in substantial seasonal changes to canopy gap fractions. The characterization of such structural properties over large areas is necessary for understanding energy and nutrient distribution within forest ecosystems. However, a spatial extrapolation of measurements from relatively few, spatially-concentra...
The expansion of tree plantations in tropical forests for commercial rubber cultivation threatens biodiversity which may affect ecosystem services, and hinders ecosystem productivity, causing net carbon emission. Numerous studies refer to the challenge of reliably distinguishing rubber plantations from natural forest, using satellite data, due to t...
This paper explores predictors of juvenile tree mortality in a newly planted cohort in Worcester, MA, following an episode of large-scale tree removal necessitated by an Asian Longhorned Beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis, ALB) eradication program. Trees are increasingly seen as important providers of ecosystem services for urban areas, including: cl...
En este informe investigativo se muestran resultados que ponen a la luz de la dinámica política actual de Honduras, y se sacan recomendaciones para la administración del sector minero, la promoción de medios de vida rurales sustentables, y los esfuerzos de reducción de la pobreza.
Tropical Dry Forest (TDF) deciduousness is a behavioral response to climate conditions that determines ecosystem-level carbon uptake, energy flux, and habitat conditions. It is regulated by factors related to stand age, and landscape scale variability in deciduous phenology may affect ecosystem functioning in forests throughout the tropics. This st...
Fire is one of the earliest and most common tools used by humans to modify the earth surface. Landscapes in the Yucatán Peninsula are composed of a mosaic of old growth subtropical forest, secondary vegetation, grasslands, and agricultural land that represent a well-documented example of anthropogenic intervention, much of which involves the use of...
Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu is located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, which has experienced some of the highest rates of global sea-level rise over the past 60 years. Atoll islands are low-lying accumulations of reef-derived sediment that provide the only habitable land in Tuvalu, and are considered vulnerable to the myriad possible impacts of clima...
Anoplophora glabripennis, the Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB), is an invasive species of high economic and ecological relevance given the potential it has to cause tree damage, and sometimes mortality, in the United States. Because this pest is introduced by transport in wood-packing products from Asia, ongoing trade activities pose continuous risk o...
Aims
The 20th century has been marked by dramatic changes in land use, disturbance regimes and climate, which have interacted to affect global ecological patterns and dynamics, including changes in the extent, composition and structure of forest cover. Although much research has highlighted dramatic, short‐term ecological change, on‐going trends of...
Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) plays an important role in moderating the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) effect, which poses threats to human health due to substantially increased temperatures relative to rural areas. UTC coverage is associated with reduced urban temperatures, and therefore benefits both human health and reducing energy use in cities. Me...
Food flow data provide unique insights into the debates surrounding the sustainability of land based production and consumption at multiple scales. Trade flows disguise the spatial correspondence of production and consumption and make their connection to land difficult. Two key components of this spatial disjuncture are land use displacement and ec...
While the influence on vegetative vigor of climatic variables like precipitation and temperature relates to the type and condition of land cover, the isolation of this variability independent of discrete land cover change is a major challenge of the geographic information science, remote sensing, and land change science communities. In the heteroge...
Since the 1983 implementation of its Economic Recovery Program, Ghana’s extraction industry has come to account for 40% of the country’s total exports. A negative consequence of this increase is extraction-related conflict due to competition over mineral-rich land between large and small-scale mining operations. This paper characterizes extraction-...
AbstractForest fragmentation has been studied extensively with respect to biodiversity loss, disruption of ecosystem services, and edge effects although the relationship between forest fragmentation and human activities is still not well understood. We classified the pattern of forests in Massachusetts using fragmentation indicators to address thes...
In heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes, there is a need for systematic monitoring over space and time, and human-occupied landscapes inherently represent the composite of innumerable natural and anthropogenic processes. In the context of natural disturbace events, the forces shaping the observable patterns of land change must be ascribable to thei...
Abstract for an undergraduate thesis on urban forestry and ecosystem services completed on May 2015.
Land managers responsible for invasive species removal in the USA require tools to prevent the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) (ALB) from decimating the maple-dominant hardwood forests of Massachusetts and New England. Species distribution models (SDMs) and spread models have been applied individually to predict the invasion dist...
We suggest the value of considering Pacific Latin America and the South Pacific in relationship to each other in contexts of climate change and investment in extractive industry. The paper explores the interactions between extractive industry, climate change and environmental governance through the lenses of double exposure, double movements, resil...
Land cover classifications of coarse-resolution data can aid the identification and quantification of natural variability and anthropogenic change at regional scales, but true landscape change can be distorted by misrepresentation of map classes. The Lerma-Chapala-Santiago (LCS) is biophysically diverse and heavily modified by urbanization and agri...
This study explores the temporal and spatial variability and change in rainfall across southeastern Mexico and the mechanisms by which smallholder farmers adapt to this variability, especially droughts. Members of 150 households in 10 communities were interviewed to investigate adaptation strategies among swidden maize smallholders, linked to their...
Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinkers who can transcend disciplinary boundaries, work collaboratively, and handle complexity and obstacles. This paper explores how educators can train undergraduates in these skills through applied community-based research, using the example of an interdis...
Land-use-change drivers related to institutional dynamics, including historical path dependencies and political dynamics associated with urban land transformation, are difficult to relate to specific spatial locations and thus are not easily included in spatial models of urban land-use change. In this paper we describe a land-use model with variabl...
Warmer conditions over the past two decades have contributed to rapid expansion of bark beetle outbreaks killing millions of trees over a large fraction of western United States (US) forests. These outbreaks reduce plant productivity by killing trees, and transfer carbon from live to dead pools where carbon is slowly emitted to the atmosphere via h...
Arctic soils contain three times as much carbon (C) as all aboveground biomass distributed globally, much of which is stored in permafrost soils. Here, we (1) determine the predictability of estimating soil organic carbon (SOC) using different satellite data, classifications, and methods; (2) estimate the quantity and distribution of SOC for the to...
Increases in the intensity and spatial extent of dry season deciduousness in the tropical dry forests of the Mexican Yucatán may impact biosphere-atmosphere interactions. Issues of data scale affect characterization of the relationship between precipitation and vegetation leaf canopy condition using remotely sensed measurements of precipitation. Th...
Taking the cases of Perú and Ghana, this paper examines overlaps between the extraction of minerals, oil and gas on the one hand, and river basins, agricultural land use, and protected areas on the other hand. In particular the paper considers how far such overlaps can be revealed and analyzed on the basis of (relatively) accessible and affordable...
Since the early 2000s, the Madre de Dios Region of southern Peru has experienced rapid expansion of both licit and illicit mining activities, in the form of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). ASM typically takes place in remote, inaccessible locations and is therefore difficult to monitor in situ. This paper explores the utility of Landsat-5 i...
Invasive species pose a significant threat to com- munities and ecosystems around the world affecting social, political and ecological conditions. The Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) is one such pest that has affected parts of North America, including central Massachusetts. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) felled more than 30,000 tr...
Invasive species pose a significant threat to communities and ecosystems around the world affecting social, political and ecological conditions. The Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) is one such pest that has affected parts of North America, including central Massachusetts. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) felled more than 30,000 tree...
Background/Question/Methods
The objective of this paper is to quantify gains and losses in urban forest ecosystem services following tree removal and subsequent replanting. Increasingly common threats to urban green space, such as invasive pest outbreak, new urban development, and severe weather events can rapidly change forest structure, reducin...
Large surface mining operations typically involve not only multiple pits but also the creation of new “mountains” of tailings. These operations dramatically change the local watershed topography and expose downslope agricultural fields and forest to tailings runoff. Given that most mine tailings expose large quantities of surface area to oxidation...
Wildfire is a major disturbance in the Arctic tundra and boreal forests, having a significant impact on soil hydrology, carbon cycling, and permafrost dynamics. This study explores the use of the microwave Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique to map and quantify ground surface subsidence caused by the Anaktuvuk River fire on t...