Fall NEARC 2024

Climate change has impacted forest growing season length, streamflow quantity, and the intersections of complex forest hydrologic processes. This research explores the geospatial hydrology and forest phenology (e.g. growing season length) change points throughout the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States from 1982-2012. Gridded NDVI data were obtained from NOAA AVHRR satellite imagery and analyzed to determine the growing season length. Hydrology datasets and watershed boundaries were extracted from the USGS HCDN (Hydro Climatic Data Network) dataset, which consists of exclusively natural (non-anthropogenically impacted) watersheds. Hydrology and phenology variables in each watershed were analyzed to determine the year(s) that a change point occurred and to determine the temporal duration between a mean shift in growing season phenology and watershed hydrology.