COMPUTER VISUALIZATION OF FOREST COVER CHANGE: HUMAN IMPACTS IN NORTHEASTERN KANSAS AND NATURAL DISTURBANCE IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Matt D. Dunbar , Research Assistant, MA Candidate, mdunbar@ku.edu L. Monika Moskal , Research Assistant, PhD Candidate, moskal@ku.edu Mark E. Jakubauskas , Assistant Research Scientist, mjakub@ku.edu Jerome E. Dobson, Research Professor, dobson@ku.edu Edward A. Martinko, Director, martinko@ku.edu Kansas Applied Remote Sensing Program and Department of Geography University of Kansas, 2335 Irving Hill Road, Lawrence, KS 66045 ABSTRACT The merging of remote sensing, GIS and visualization techniques was applied to demonstrate the potential for realistic computer visualizations depicting the dynamic nature of forested environments. Scientific visualizations can aid in environmental and forest management decision making as a support tool and in landscape ecology to relay the findings of studies. While visualization software and methods have already been developed to recreate natural landscapes, little has been done to investigate the potential for illustrating land cover change through temporal data acquired from the real world. High resolution imagery and aerial photography in conjunction with object oriented image analysis as well as pre-existing land cover datasets were used in the placement of trees and other vegetation in the visualized landscape, providing an accurate representation of reality at various points in time. 3D Nature’s Visual Nature Studio was used to construct a variety of realistic stills and animations depicting forest cover change in two distinct settings. Visualizations from Yellowstone National Park focused on the dramatic natural impact of the 1988 fire upon a lodgepole pine forest. In Kansas, visualization techniques were used to explore the continuous human-land interactions between 1941 and 2002 impacting the eastern deciduous forest and tallgrass prairie ecotone. The resulting visualizations demonstrate which techniques and scales are most appropriate for visualizing and exploring change in forested environments. These products provide the means for users, from researchers to resource managers and the public, to demonstrate concepts and develop new hypothesis in these two environments. INTRODUCTION Yellowstone Over 80% of the United States first National Park, Yellowstone, is covered by mountainous forest, composed primarily of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta ). Fire is an important natural agent of change in this ecosystem. The large fires of 1988 in Yellowstone National Park demonstrated how dramatically and rapidly the vegetation and consequently the state of an ecosystem can change. The 250,000 ha of burnt forest created a striking mosaic of burn severities on the landscape of the park. Both the ecological and economic impacts of these fires have been significant (YNP 1993; Polzin et al. 1993). As the burns have begun to naturally regenerate with lodgepole pine seedlings (Reed et al. 1999), the patchwork left upon the landscape has inspired numerous efforts to document and analyze the impacts of this natural disturbance (Stevens, 1990; Renkin and Despain, 1992; Turner et al ., 1994; Hardy-Short and Short, 1995). Northeastern Kansas The prairie biome, which once covered a vast expanse of the American Midwest, is now greatly diminished (Whitney, 1994). Prior to European settlement, habitats within the prairie’s eastern ecotone were an interlocking pattern of forest and prairie, determined largely by the interaction of fire, topography, moisture, soil type, and biotic factors (Anderson, 1990). Human interaction with the landscape has since modified several of these controlling