Data supporting Landsat time series assessment of invasive annual grasses following energy development

To determine if invasive annual grasses increased around energy developments after the construction phase, we calculated an invasives index using Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery for a 34-year time period (1985-2018) and assessed trends for 1,755 wind turbines (from the U.S. Wind Turbine Database) installed between 1988 and 2013 in the southern California desert. The index uses the maximum normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for early season greenness (January-June), and mean NDVI (July-October) for the later dry season. We estimated the relative cover of invasive annuals each year at turbine locations and control sites and tested for changes before and after each turbine was installed. These data were used to make final conclusions in the larger work described above. The GIS shapefile included in this USGS data release includes unique turbine IDs, as well as early season invasive (ESI) values for turbines and corresponding control sites summarized before and after the turbine installation date.

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  "010:12"
]

[
  "geospatial"
]