Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

A Study Of African Savanna Vegetation Structure, Patterning, And Change, Christoffer R. Axelsson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

African savannas cover roughly half of the continent, are home to a great diversity of wildlife, and provide ecosystem services to large populations. Savannas showcase a great diversity in vegetation structure, resulting from variation in climatic, edaphic, topographic, and biological factors. Fires play a large role as savannas are the most frequently burned ecosystems on Earth. To study how savanna vegetation structure shifts with environmental factors, it is necessary to gather site data covering the full gradient of climatic and edaphic conditions. Several earlier studies have used coarse resolution satellite remote sensing data to study variation in woody cover. These …

Examination Of Sentinel-2a Multi-Spectral Instrument (Msi) Reflectance Anisotropy And The Suitability Of A General Method To Normalize Msi Reflectance To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Jian Li, Hankui Zhang, Lin Yan Dr., Haiyan Huang, Zhongbin Li

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Sentinel-2A multi-spectral instrument (MSI) acquires multi-spectral reflective wavelength observations with directional effects due to surface reflectance anisotropy and changes in the solar and viewing geometry. Directional effects were examined by considering two ten day periods of Sentinel-2A data acquired close to the solar principal and orthogonal planes over approximately 20° × 10° of southern Africa. More than 6.6 million (January 2016) and 10.6 million (April 2016) pairs of reflectance observations sensed 3 or 7 days apart in the forward and backscatter directions in overlapping Sentinel-2A orbit swaths were considered. The Sentinel-2A data were projected into the MODIS sinusoidal projection …

Mapping The Desertification Process In Southern Morocco Using Remote Sensing Data, Abdellah Benkhalti

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Desertification is a problem occurring in arid and semiarid zones all over the world. It is a consequence of mismanagement of the land. Human activities and livestock pressure on such fragile ecosystems lead to a deterioration of the soil by increasing its salinity, lessening its moisture, and covering it with sand and dust. Aerial photographs and satellite images constitute a tool for mapping and monitoring the desertification process. Multispectral data can assist in detecting the indicators of desertification in early stages in order to plan adequate action.

The improvement of the resolution of satellite images and the fact that they …