Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Prehistoric Human Ecodynamics In The Rub Al-Khali Desert: Results Of Remote Sensing And Excavations In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jason T. Herrmann

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological investigations in the Emirate of Dubai, UAE conducted by the Dubai Department of Archaeology and the University of Arkansas demonstrate that the desert inland of the Oman Peninsula was occupied not only during the Arabian Neolithic (8000-4400 BC), when the region experienced a moist period referred to as the Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO), but also during the more arid millennia following the decline of the HCO into the Christian Era. During this period, desert settlement clustered near a band of oases, in contrast to the more widespread spatial distribution of remains of nomadic pastoralists from the Neolithic. Excavations at …

Integrated Approach For Hydrogeologic Investigations In Africa: Inferences From Space-Borne And Land-Based Gravity, Aeromagnetic, Gis, And Remote Sensing Data, Mohamed El Sayed Ahmed Ahmed

Dissertations

An integrated (space-borne and land-based gravity, aeromagnetic, GIS, and remote sensing) approach was developed, tested, and applied to investigate the following on regional scales (Africa) or local scales (El Qaa Plain, Sinai): (1) assess the capability of GRACE data (04/2002 to 08/2011) for monitoring elements of hydrologic systems on the sub-basin level (Task 1); (2) address the nature and the controlling factors (e.g., climatic and/or human pressure-related) affecting the inter-annual GRACE-derived Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) trends over a large suite of hydrologic systems and domains in (Africa) (Task 2); and (3) identify the structural, geologic and hydrologic settings as well …

Application Of Gis In Inland Fisheries. Training Manual, Sanjeev Kumar Sahu, Ganesh Chandra

Ganesh Chandra

No abstract provided.

Response Of Inland Lakes To Climate Change Across The Tibetan Plateau Investigated Using Landsat And Icesat Data, Zewen Liu

Masters Theses

The Tibetan Plateau experienced tremendous climate change during the past four decades. Due to the large size, widely distribution of cryosphere, and diverse landforms, different parts of the plateau may experience different climate and cryosphere changing patterns. The changes of inland lakes within the plateau are important indicators of climate change as these lakes are fed by precipitation, permafrost degradation, and glacier melting that are all sensitive to climate change. To examine the spatial and temporal differences of lake variations across the Tibetan Plateau, Landsat images and ICESat/GLAS altimetry data were used to extract the changes in surface areas of …

Remote Sensing-Based Time Series Models For Malaria Early Warning In The Highlands Of Ethiopia, A. Midekisa, G. Senay, G. M. Henebry, P. Semuniguse, M. C. Wimberly

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Background

Malaria is one of the leading public health problems in most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. Almost all demographic groups are at risk of malaria because of seasonal and unstable transmission of the disease. Therefore, there is a need to develop malaria early-warning systems to enhance public health decision making for control and prevention of malaria epidemics. Data from orbiting earth-observing sensors can monitor environmental risk factors that trigger malaria epidemics. Remotely sensed environmental indicators were used to examine the influences of climatic and environmental variability on temporal patterns of malaria cases in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. …

Reappraising The Land Behind Baghdad: Using Corona Satellite Imagery To Reassess The Archaeological Landscape Of The Diyala Plain, Iraq, James Henry Wesolowski

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High-resolution low-cost declassified CORONA spy satellite imagery is used to detect archaeological sites and relict canals in the Diyala Plain to the east of Baghdad, Iraq. This project seeks to improve upon the ground survey conducted there in the 1950s by providing better geographic control and discovering sites and canals that were not included in the original survey. CORONA imagery provides a sub-2-meter spatial resolution and was acquired shortly after the original ground survey was conducted, providing an excellent medium for comparison. CORONA imagery is subject to significant spatial distortions because of its camera technology and the LPS package for …

Prospects For An International Charter "Space And Major Disaster" Remote Sensing Response To Drought Disasters - An Anhui, China Case Study, Joseph Burkhead

Masters Theses

Remote sensing is often leveraged during the response phase of disaster management to improve the situational awareness of decision-makers. The International Charter "Space and Major Disaster" (Charter) provides remote sensing support to non-spacefaring nations facing disasters such as earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. However, the Charter has never activated for a major drought disaster. Since droughts affect over half of the nearly 3 billion people that suffer from natural disasters annually, this study seeks to determine whether satellite remote sensing can be effectively employed according to the intent, capabilities, and limitations of the Charter to benefit officials responding to a major …

Nesting In The Clouds: Evaluating And Predicting Sea Turtle Nesting Beach Parameters From Lidar Data, Kristina H. Yamamoto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans' desire for knowledge regarding animal species and their interactions with the natural world have spurred centuries of studies. The relatively new development of remote sensing systems using satellite or aircraft-borne sensors has opened up a wide field of research, which unfortunately largely remains dependent on coarse-scale image spatial resolution, particularly for habitat modeling. For habitat-specialized species, such data may not be sufficient to successfully capture the nuances of their preferred areas. Of particular concern are those species for which topographic feature attributes are a main limiting factor for habitat use. Coarse spatial resolution data can smooth over details that …

Antarctic Surface Melting Dynamics: Enhanced Perspectives From Radar Scatterometer Data, L. D. Trusel, K. E. Frey, S. B. Das

Geography

Antarctic ice sheet surface melting can regionally influence ice shelf stability, mass balance, and glacier dynamics, in addition to modulating near-surface physical and chemical properties over wide areas. Here, we investigate variability in surface melting from 1999 to 2009 using radar backscatter time series from the SeaWinds scatterometer aboard the QuikSCAT satellite. These daily, continent-wide observations are explored in concert with in situ meteorological records to validate a threshold-based melt detection method. Radar backscatter decreases during melting are significantly correlated with in situ positive degree-days as well as meltwater production determined from energy balance modeling at Neumayer Station, East Antarctica. …

Sparse Coding For Hyperspectral Images Using Random Dictionary And Soft Thresholding, Ender Oguslu, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li, Mark Allen Neifeld (Ed.), Amit Ashok (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Many techniques have been recently developed for classification of hyperspectral images (HSI) including support vector machines (SVMs), neural networks and graph-based methods. To achieve good performances for the classification, a good feature representation of the HSI is essential. A great deal of feature extraction algorithms have been developed such as principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA). Sparse coding has recently shown state-of-the-art performances in many applications including image classification. In this paper, we present a feature extraction method for HSI data motivated by a recently developed sparse coding based image representation technique. Sparse coding consists of a …

Remote Sensing Of Cloud Properties Using Oxygen A-Band Spectral Measurements, Siwei Li

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Clouds play an important role in the climate system through their radiative effects and their vital link in the hydrological cycle. Detailed knowledge of the three dimensional (3-D) distribution of cloud macrophysical and microphysical properties is crucial to properly characterize radiative forcing by clouds and to quantify the response of the climate. In this study, a multi-layer cloud detection algorithm is developed by utilizing photon path length distributions retrieved from oxygen A-band spectral measurements. Case studies from measurements at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site demonstrate that this photon path length method can detect multi-layer clouds …