Spatial Science Commons^™

Estimating Solar Energy Production In Urban Areas For Electric Vehicles, Shaimaa Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Cities have a high potential for solar energy from PVs installed on buildings' rooftops. There is an increased demand for solar energy in cities to reduce the negative effect of climate change. The thesis investigates solar energy potential in urban areas. It tries to determine how to detect and identify available rooftop areas, how to calculate suitable ones after excluding the effects of the shade, and the estimated energy generated from PVs. Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) are used in solar city planning. The goal of this research is to assess available and suitable rooftops areas using …

Algorithm Performance On The Estimation Of Cdom And Doc In The North Slopes Of Alaska, Monica Weisenbach

Masters Theses

Use of satellite imagery makes environmental monitoring easy and convenient with little of the logistics involved in planning sampling campaigns. Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is an important component to track as a proxy for the large pool of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In a world contending with the looming issue of global climate change, the ability to investigate the carbon cycle of inland to coastal environments allows for examination of the magnitude of carbon flowing through the system and potential changes over years. The Arctic region is a critical area for climate change impacts but is a difficult landscape …

Spatial Assessment Of Urban Growth In Cities Of The Decapolis; And The Implications For Modern Cities, Wade A. Pierson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Levant’s Decapolis was a network of ten cities in Greco-Roman Israel, Jordan, and Syria that established a thriving economic community. The Decapolis was home to ancient and modern cities like Damascus (Dammásq) and Amman (Philadelphia). Despite the various origins of these cities, Roman administration and their city planners oversaw the implementation of idealized Roman city form throughout the region. Three Decapolis cities represent intriguing examples of the larger confederation. Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), and Gadara (Umm Qais) represent cities of common original urban form which developed drastically diverse urban morphologies over time.

Spatial analyses of these cities required working …

A Karst Feature Prediction Model For Prince Of Wales Island, Alaska Based On High Resolution Lidar Imagery, Alexander Lyles

Master's Theses

Investigation into surface karst formation is significant to hazard prediction, hydrogeologic drainage, and land management. Southeast Alaska contains over 600,000 acres of mapped carbonate bedrock, and some of the fastest recorded karst dissolution in the world. The objectives of this study are to develop and compare multiple semi-automated models to map and delineate karst features from bare-earth LiDAR imagery using ArcGIS Desktop 10.7, and to apply a preliminary geostatistical analysis of sinkhole morphometric parameters to highlight potential spatial patterns of karst evolution on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. A semi-automated approach of mapping karst features provides a dataset that minimizes …

Changes In Land Use Land Cover (Lulc), Surface Water Quality And Modelling Surface Discharge In Beaver Creek Watershed, Northeast Tennessee And Southwest Virginia, Tosin James

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beaver Creek is an impaired streams that is not supporting its designated use for recreation due to Escherichia coli (E.coli), and sediment. To address this problem, this thesis was divided into two studies.

The first study explored changes in Land Use Land Cover (LULC), and its impact on surface water quality. Changes in E.coli load between 1997-2001 and 2014-2018 were analyzed. Also, Landsat data of 2001, and 2018 were examined in Terrset 18.31. Mann-Whitney test only showed a significant reduction in E.coli for one site. Negative correlation was established between E.coli load, and Developed LULC, Forest LULC, and …

Utilization Of Various Methods And A Landsat Ndvi/Google Earth Engine Product For Classifying Irrigated Land Cover, Andrew Nemecek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Methods for classifying irrigated land cover are often complex and not quickly reproducible. Further, moderate resolution time-series datasets have been consistently utilized to produce irrigated land cover products over the past decade, and the body of irrigation classification literature contains no examples of subclassification of irrigated land cover by irrigation method. Creation of geospatial irrigated land cover products with higher resolution datasets could improve reliability, and subclassification of irrigation by method could provide better information for hydrologists and climatologists attempting to model the role of irrigation in the surface-ground water cycle and the water-energy balance. This study summarizes a simple, …

Remote Sensing Of Avalanche Paths In Glacier National Park, Montana, Morgan Voss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Snow avalanches are the common form of mass wasting in the high mountain environments of Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana. These natural disturbances play important roles in mountain ecosystems by regularly disturbing montane systems, providing critical habitat for some species, transporting debris, and influencing vegetation and fire dynamics. Since the 1900s, natural avalanche-related activity recorded along important transportation corridors within the park has frequently disrupted transportation.

While many of the steep slopes of GNP are susceptible to avalanching, formal inventories exist only for small, critical portions of the park and they vary substantially from one another. GNP’s protected status does …

Object-Based Supervised Machine Learning Regional-Scale Land-Cover Classification Using High Resolution Remotely Sensed Data, Christopher A. Ramezan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

High spatial resolution (HR) (1m – 5m) remotely sensed data in conjunction with supervised machine learning classification are commonly used to construct land-cover classifications. Despite the increasing availability of HR data, most studies investigating HR remotely sensed data and associated classification methods employ relatively small study areas. This work therefore drew on a 2,609 km2, regional-scale study in northeastern West Virginia, USA, to investigates a number of core aspects of HR land-cover supervised classification using machine learning. Issues explored include training sample selection, cross-validation parameter tuning, the choice of machine learning algorithm, training sample set size, and feature selection. A …

Assessment Of The Socio-Environmental Impacts Of The Urban Expansion Using Gis And Remote Sensing In The City Of Guayaquil, Ecuador., Erika P. Jimenez Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the impacts of the urban expansion from 1990 to 2010 in Guayaquil, Ecuador using geospatial technologies. It incorporates census and land cover data to identify the social and environmental repercussions through Hot Spot Analysis, land cover classification, and Markov chains model.

Using Technology To Serve The Agricultural Community In The Western Cape Province Of South Africa, Pavarni Naidoo, Lise Sandenbergh, Maud Bonato, Johann Strauss, Mike Wallace, Andre Roux, Shaheed Martin, Ilse Trautmann, Schalk Cloete

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

The Western Cape Department of Agriculture has a team of agricultural experts using novel approaches to address the challenges faced by South African agriculture. The objective of this paper is to describe some of the innovative research and technologies, and methods of technology transfer, used to better serve the agricultural community. The spectrum of technologies implemented includes new research on breeding (biotechnology); new approaches to conservation agriculture; remote sensing satellite and spatial information for improved decision making, such as the spatial intelligence project and FruitLook; Agricultural Integrated Management System; and technology to manage and disseminate information, such as smart …

Time Series Analysis Of Modis Ndvi Data With Cloudy Pixels: Frequency-Domain And Sizer Analyses Of Vegetation Change In Western Rwanda, Ephraim Robert Love

Masters Theses

Remote sensing is a valuable source of data for the study of human ecology in rural areas. In this thesis, I attempt to analyze the presence of a long-term trend indicative of post-resettlement adaptation in the vegetation signals of Western Rwanda. There is a dearth of research utilizing medium resolution imagery to study difficult environments, such as tropical-montane regions, where complex topography and cloud cover diminish image accuracy. I attempt to add to the extant literature on frequency-domain smoothing methods as well as the literature on human-environment interaction in tropical-montane regions by applying a harmonic filtering and smoothing algorithm to …

Large Seasonal Swings In Leaf Area Of Amazon Rainforests, Ranga B. Myneni, Wenze Yang, Ramakrishna R. Nemani, Alfredo R. Huete, Robert E. Dickinson, Yuri Knyazikhin, Kamel Didan, Rong Fu, Robinson I. Negron Juarez, Sasan S. Saatchi, Hirofumi Hashimoto, Kazuhito Ichii, Nikolay V. Shabanov, Bin Tan, Piyachat Ratana, Jeffrey L. Privette, Jeffrey T. Morisette, Eric F. Vermote, David P. Roy, Robert E. Wolfe, Mark A. Friedl, Steven W. Running, Petr Votava, Nazmi El-Saleous, Sadashiva Devadiga, Yin Su, Vincent V. Salomonson

GSCE Faculty Publications

Despite early speculation to the contrary, all tropical forests studied to date display seasonal variations in the presence of new leaves, flowers, and fruits. Past studies were focused on the timing of phenological events and their cues but not on the accompanying changes in leaf area that regulate vegetation–atmosphere exchanges of energy, momentum, and mass. Here we report, from analysis of 5 years of recent satellite data, seasonal swings in green leaf area of ~25% in a majority of the Amazon rainforests. This seasonal cycle is timed to the seasonality of solar radiation in a manner that is suggestive of …

Winnebago Tribal Council Brief, Hank Lehrer, Brent D. Bowen

Curriculum Development

Native Impact, Native IMAGE: Institute for Managing Applications of Geospatial Extension Little Priest Tribal College - Winnebago Tribal Council Brief - 9/11/2003