LB 37-308 - Leveraging the Landscape Data Commons to produce rangeland wind erosion estimates for land management

Unprecedented quantities of ecological monitoring data are now collected by government agencies, land managers and researchers to understand where, when and why ecosystems are changing and to inform land use and management. Over the last ~20 years, standardized monitoring methods have been used to collect data on vegetation cover, composition and structure at over 85,000 locations globally in grassland, shrubland and savanna ecosystems and also in some croplands. The Landscape Data Commons was developed as a cyberinfrastructure platform that harmonizes and aggregates these standardized datasets, enables linkages to models, and facilitates analysis and interpretation of data within decision-support tools. Harmonization of these data within the Landscape Data Commons has created new opportunities to leverage ecological monitoring datasets to produce new indicators of ecosystem function. One of the most critical developments has been the recent establishment of two-way data flows between the Landscape Data Commons and wind and water erosion models – the Aeolian EROsion (AERO) model and Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM). These models quantify erosion risks to soil health, carbon and nutrient cycling, and provide early-warning indicators of ecosystem change. Here, we describe the cyberinfrastructure underpinning the big ecological data-erosion model linkages, show how erosion indicators can be interpreted in the context of state-and-transition models (STMs) of ecosystem change, and present two discrete applications that have provided new insights into interactions between soil erosion, invasive species and wildfire. Linking ecological monitoring datasets to erosion models has been transformative in providing ecological context for understanding soil erosion impacts, understanding the ecological implications of soil erosion across dryland ecosystems, and providing land managers with quantitative data needed to mitigate erosion processes that have broad impacts across Earth systems and society.