Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

Landscape-Scale Geophysics At Tel Shimron, Jezreel Valley, Israel, Rachel Grap

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry were used at Tel Shimron, an archaeological site in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. GPR primarily measures electric properties while magnetometry measures magnetic properties, making them complementary methods for subsurface prospection. Magnetometry can be collected and processed quickly, making it an ideal landscape-scale reconnaissance tool. It takes more time to collect, process, and interpret GPR data, but the result is a higher resolution dataset. In addition, GPR often works better than magnetometry in desert environments such as the Jezreel Valley. Conventional wisdom suggests that GPR should not be used as a landscape-scale reconnaissance tool unless there is …

Uas As An Inventory Tool: A Photogrammetric Approach To Volume Estimation, Richard Kramer Rhodes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or remotely piloted vehicles (RPV), are associated with unmanned aircraft either controlled by a pilot on the ground or pre-programmed with specific flight paths. Small UASs have seen a massive increase in public interest in recent years as hobbyist platforms; they are, however, a potentially powerful tool in remote sensing and geospatial applications. Due to the increased availability of low-cost UAS, this technology could soon revolutionize many industries, including those that require volumetric estimation. Traditionally volumetric inventories have been performed with tape measurements, and in some instances where …

Textural Analysis Of Historical Aerial Photography To Determine Change In Coastal Marsh Extent: Site Of The Present-Day Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (Gbnerr), Mississippi, 1955-2014, Heather Michelle Nicholson

Master's Theses

Coastal marshlands are among the world’s most highly productive ecosystems but they have diminished greatly in the past several decades owing to sea-level rise and direct anthropogenic influences. An effective means of quantifying loss or gain in marsh area is through the use of aerial image data, which offers synoptic views of the landscape at decadal-scale sampling frequencies. However, a potential problem with older panchromatic, or black-and-white, imagery is the absence of multispectral information that might be used otherwise in remote identification of vegetation types. Nevertheless, the analysis of horizontal variability in image brightness values, or image texture, can be …

Income Shocks And The Acceptance Of Intimate Partner Violence In Indonesia, Matthew N. Krupoff

Master's Theses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive issue affecting 1 in 3 women worldwide. Despite the negative welfare impacts, it is still seen as acceptable in some parts of the world, even amongst women. This paper examines how elastic these accepting attitudes towards IPV are to changing economic conditions. Specifically, this paper focuses on changes in intra-household resources from negative shocks to male-sourced income. The setting and context takes place in coastal communities in Indonesia, where fishing is a main source ofincome generated primarily by men. This paper uses satellite-derived fishing conditions to measure how women's attitudes towards IPV change …

Pavement Surface Distress Detection, Assessment, And Modeling Using Geospatial Techniques, Su Zhang

Civil Engineering ETDs

Roadway pavement surface distress information is essential for effective pavement asset management, and subsequently, transportation agencies at all levels dedicate a large amount of time and money to routinely collect data on pavement surface distress conditions as the core of their asset management programs. These data are used by these agencies to make maintenance and repair decisions. Current methods for pavement surface distress evaluation are time-consuming and expensive. Geospatial technologies provide new methods for evaluating pavement surface distress condition that can supplement or substitute for currently-adopted evaluation methods. However, few previous studies have explored the utility of geospatial technologies for …

Sentinel-1 Slc Processing: Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Lei Tang

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

My summer internship with Clark Labs was mainly focused on technological and methodological exploration of Sentinel-1 SLC data, under the direct supervision of James Toledano. The main responsibilities of my internship were understanding theory and science behind Sentinel-1, utilizing the SNAP toolbox to determine the proper imagery processing steps in order to distinguish the land structure clearly. 36 testing on different combination of acquisition modes, speckle filters and time gap were conducted during that time.

I would highly recommend this internship to other GISDE students. The dynamic nature of the GISDE program provides students with the opportunity to be able …

Land Surface Phenologies And Seasonalities Using Cool Earthlight In Temperate And Tropical Croplands, Woubet Gashaw Alemu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today’s world of increasing food insecurity due to more frequent and extreme events (droughts, floods), a comprehensive understanding of global cropland dynamics is critically needed. Land surface parameters derived from the passive microwave Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on EOS (AMSR-E) and AMSR2 data enable monitoring of cropland dynamics and they can complement visible to near infrared (VNIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) data. Passive microwave data are less sensitive to atmospheric effects, cloud contamination, and solar illumination constraints resulting in finer temporal resolution suitable to track the temporal progression of cropland cover development compared to the VNIR data that has …

Advancing High Spatial And Spectral Resolution Remote Sensing For Observing Plant Community Response To Environmental Variability And Change In The Alaskan Arctic, Sergio Armando Vargas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Arctic is being impacted by climate change more than any other region on Earth. Impacts to terrestrial ecosystems have the potential to manifest through feedbacks with other components of the Earth System. Of particular concern is the potential for the massive store of soil organic carbon to be released from arctic permafrost to the atmosphere where it could exacerbate greenhouse warming and impact global climate and biogeochemical cycles. Even though substantial gains to our understanding of the changing Arctic have been made, especially over the past decade, linking research results from plot to regional scales remains a challenge due …

Examination Of The Potential Of Structure-From-Motion Photogrammetry And Terrestrial Laser Scanning For Rapid Nondestructive Field Measurement Of Grass Biomass, Sam D. Cooper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Above ground biomass (AGB) is a parameter commonly used for assessment of grassland systems. While destructive sampling of AGB is highly accurate, it is time consuming and often precludes repeat temporal sampling or sampling in sensitive ecosystems. Consequently, a number of nondestructive techniques that relate grass structural properties to AGB have been developed. This study investigated the application of two recent technologies, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Structurefrom- Motion (SfM), in the development of rapid nondestructive AGB estimation of grassland plots. TLS and SfM volume metrics generated using a rasterized surface differencing method were linearly related to destructively measured total …

Monitoring Pollen Counts And Pollen Allergy Index Using Satellite Observations In East Coast Of The United States, Murat Cagatay Kececi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Allergic diseases have become increasingly common over the world during the last four decades, and they are affecting millions of people. Pollination is an important process in the life cycle of plants. However, pollen exposure is associated with allergic diseases such as asthma and seasonal allergic rhinitis (hay fever). As a result, the total annual expenditure for asthma-associated morbidity is about $56 billion in the United States, and the overall cost of allergic diseases is over $18 billion annually. For allergic rhinitis, the annual medical cost is approximately $3.4 billion. The intensity and frequency of the pollen exposures can be …

Utilization Of Landsat Imagery To Assess The Impacts Of Oil And Gas Extraction On The Tazovsky Peninsula, Siberia, Nicholas B. Kline

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climatic warming of the Arctic is leading to landscape change through cascading biophysical feedbacks; development, such as oil and gas exploration and extraction, can accelerate or worsen these impacts. Due to restricted access to oil and natural gas fields, in situ environmental impact studies are only allowed in some regions. Satellite imagery analysis provides a mean for assessing impacts in areas with limited access. The Yamburg oil and gas field in western Siberia serves as a case study to assess the effects of infrastructure on an Arctic landscape.

This project quantifies the land-cover disturbance that occurred during the development and …