Analyzing The Native-Exotic Richness Relationship Using Native Beta Diversity, Gabriela C. Nunez-Mir, Songlin Fei

Purdue GIS Day

Invasion paradox, a change of direction in native-exotic richness relationships (NERRs) from negative at small scales to positive at large scales, has been shown to exist in many environments. A major explanation for these patterns is environmental heterogeneity, and to a lesser extent, species pool size. It is likely that a combination of these factors is producing these patterns and determines if and how they appear in certain environments. Beta diversity, which describes the heterogeneity of species composition among assemblages and as the scalar between local richness and regional richness (species pool size), could serve as a proxy for these …

Geospatial Tools And Data Provided By Itap/Research Computing, Larry L. Biehl

Purdue GIS Day

The presentation will provide the audience information about the geospatial applications that are available on campus including Esri ArcGIS, ERDAS Imagine, Exelis ENVI, Trimble eCognition and others. The information will include where to go to download the software installers and how to set up the licensing for them. The discussion will also go over the new software installer file download process.

Mapping Religion And Chinese Society, Jonathan E.E. Pettit

Purdue GIS Day

Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has enacted a series of regulations that have made the collection of geospatial data illegal, and have tried to use existing technologies (e.g., cell phone towers, online mapping programs) to avert attempts to map sensitive areas in China. This talks examines the recent work of Purdue graduate students at the Center on Religion and Chinese Society, who have developed a web-based GIS program that provides researchers worldwide a way to make and use accurate data on religious and demographic data in China.

Predicting U. S. Presidential Elections: From 1900 Until Today, Richard L. Hogan

Purdue GIS Day

This presentation is scheduled for the weekend before the presidential election of 2016. By then, we might all need a break from pollsters and predictions, although we still might be looking for some assurance that this will not be the end of Western Civilization as we knew it. Toward that end, a little historical perspective on presidential elections since 1900, complete with cool maps, of course, indicating partisanship by state, will illustrate several important hypotheses that the data suggest we might incorporate in our efforts to predict the future by explaining the past. Neither candidate has approved this message.

Drone Panel Presentation: Using Drones In Archaeological Research: Kasakh Valley Archaeological Survey (Kvas), Armenia, Ian Lindsay

Purdue GIS Day

No abstract provided.

Drone Panel Presentation: Unmanned Aerial Systems In Agriculture Research, Keith A. Cherkauer, Anthony Hearst, Yan Zhu

Purdue GIS Day

No abstract provided.

Open Access Geospatial Data, Hannah Hamalainen

Open Access Events

The landscape of open-access geospatial data is vastly growing with an abundance of open source software, websites, and datasets available to the public. How do we find and access these resources? Find out from the Geospatial Services Center.

Spatial And Seasonal Responses Of Precipitation In The Ganges And Brahmaputra River Basins To Enso And Indian Ocean Dipole Modes: Implications For Flooding And Drought, M. S. Pervez, G. M. Henebry

Geoffrey Henebry

We evaluated the spatial and seasonal responses of precipitation in the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins as modulated by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) modes using Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) full data reanalysis of monthly global land-surface precipitation data from 1901 to 2010 with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5°. The GPCC monthly total precipitation climatology targeting the period 1951–2000 was used to compute gridded monthly anomalies for the entire time period. The gridded monthly anomalies were averaged for the years influenced by combinations of climate modes. Occurrences of El Niño alone significantly …

Evapotranspiration In The Nile Basin: Identifying Dynamics, Trends, And Drivers 2002-2011, H. Alemu, A. T. Kaptué, G. B. Senay, M. C. Wimberly, Geoffrey Henebry

Geoffrey Henebry

Analysis of the relationship between evapotranspiration (ET) and its natural and anthropogenic drivers is critical in water-limited basins such as the Nile. The spatiotemporal relationships of ET with rainfall and vegetation dynamics in the Nile Basin during 2002–2011 were analyzed using satellite-derived data. Non-parametric statistics were used to quantify ET-rainfall interactions and trends across land cover types and subbasins. We found that 65% of the study area (2.5 million km2) showed significant (p < 0.05) positive correlations between monthly ET and rainfall, whereas 7% showed significant negative correlations. As expected, positive ET-rainfall correlations were observed over natural vegetation, mixed croplands/natural vegetation, and croplands, with a few subbasin-specific exceptions. In particular, irrigated croplands, wetlands and some forests exhibited negative correlations. Trend tests revealed spatial clusters of statistically significant trends in ET (6% of study area was negative; 12% positive), vegetation greenness (24% negative; 12% positive) and rainfall (11% negative; 1% positive) during 2002–2011. The Nile Delta, Ethiopian highlands and central Uganda regions showed decline in ET while central parts of Sudan, South Sudan, southwestern Ethiopia and northeastern Uganda showed increases. Except for a decline in ET in central Uganda, the detected changes in ET (both positive and negative) were not associated with corresponding changes in rainfall. Detected declines in ET in the Nile delta and Ethiopian highlands were found to be attributable to anthropogenic land degradation, while the ET decline in central Uganda is likely caused by rainfall reduction.

Alternative Methods To Predict Actual Evapotranspiration Illustrate The Importance Of Accounting For Phenology: The Event Driven Phenology Model Part Ii, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry

Geoffrey Henebry

Evapotranspiration (ET) flux constitutes a major component of both the water and energy balances at the land surface. Among the many factors that control evapotranspiration, phenology poses a major source of uncertainty in attempts to predict ET. Contemporary approaches to ET modeling and monitoring frequently summarize the complexity of the seasonal development of vegetation cover into static phenological trajectories (or climatologies) that lack sensitivity to changing environmental conditions. The Event Driven Phenology Model (EDPM) offers an alternative, interactive approach to representing phenology. This study presents the results of an experiment designed to illustrate the differences in ET arising from various …

Modeling Syrian Internally Displaced Person Movements: A Case Study Of Conflict, Travel, Accessibility, And Resource Availability, Ethan Harrison

Student Writing

This study explores the “push and pull” factors that influence the migration of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the context of the Syrian crisis. “Internal displacement” occurs when a conflict or natural disaster displaces people from their homes. The distinction between refugees or asylum seekers and IDPs is simple. IDP’s are those who have been displaced but are still in their home country, generally in the same area that the conflict or disaster occurred. Refugees and asylum seekers are displaced individuals who leave their home country, seeking protection elsewhere.

The research for this project was implemented using ArcGIS and R …

Women In The Gis Profession, Livia Betancourt-Mazur, Jochen Albrecht

Publications and Research

In many technical professions, women are underrepresented. While a gender imbalance also has been assumed to exist in the realm of professional GIS, no data existed to corroborate it. The original survey presented here was developed by the authors to add both quantitative and qualitative research about the numbers and current experience of women in GIS to address this knowledge gap. A total of 484 women responded to the survey, providing a healthy sample size and a reliable and informative data set.

A key finding is that some 42 percent of women are, overall, not grossly underrepresented in the GIS …

Geospasial Indonesia: The Utilization Of Spatial Data Through Geographic Information Systems Across Indonesia In Various Environmental Contexts, Kaitlyn Bretz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Spatial planning and mapping in Indonesia have had a precarious history for the past several decades. Laws controlling the creation of maps for land use planning have fluctuated greatly between executive administrations and the country is still struggling to create a single, unified national map. With the One Map Policy the future of mapping is optimistic, but in the meantime spatial data analyses are lacking. Geographic information systems (GIS) is a computerized system for the capture, storage, querying, analysis, and display of spatial data, and is used predominately by the government, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) across Indonesia. Community …

Variability Of Lacustrine Sediment Proxy Responses To Late Holocene Climate Change As Modified By Lake Specific Processes: A Review Of Ecological And Geophysical Processes Across Northern And Eastern Iceland, Mallory Mintz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Consistenly-deposited lake sediments provide some of the highest resolution records of local and global climates in the past, offering the potential to better understand modern climate change in the context of past climate variability. In relating proxies to their respective climate regimes, the environmental cues that the specific proxies reacted to must be isolated from the general noise of possible local influences. In this investigation, biogenic silica (BSi), total organic carbon (TOC), δ13C values, and carbon: nitrogen ratios were analyzed between lakes through northern Iceland, to review possible complicating factors specific to the use of lacustrine proxies in the interpretation …

Proxy Dating In Iceland Testing The Validity Of Silene Acaulis As A Phytometric Proxy, Madelyn Grant

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Climate change is causing drastic changes in the cryosphere, particularly in the Arctic region where average warming is 1.9 times greater than in the rest of the world due to Arctic amplification. Understanding the response of essential climate variables such as glaciers and ice caps to rapid Arctic warming is essential to predicting future changes in the Arctic region and around the world. Proxy dating methods can help construct a record of warming-induced glacial retreat in areas where long-term monitoring systems are not in place. In Arctic regions, the cushion plant Silene acaulis represents one of the only feasible proxies …

Merging Volunteered Geographic Information Systems, James Mcandrew

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This project determines how two different systems based on geographic user-generated content can work together to allow the content to be made more accessible. This project’s objective is to determine the technical and social issues involved with allowing information to be transferred between systems.

Specifically, this project works with information from two volunteer systems: 1) The United States Geological Survey’s National Map Corps, 2) A global volunteer mapping project called OpenStreetMap.

This project discusses the history of both systems and how they have dealt with importing data in the past. It reviews what has worked well with previous imports and …

Investigating Effects Of Climate Change On Glaciers And Proglacial Landscapes In Southeast Iceland: Fluvioglacial Behavior Of Sólheimajökull And Seljavallajökull, Roberta B.C. Miller

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Seljavallajökull glacier, part of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier system, and Sólheimajökull, part of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier system, are two glaciers that extend into valleys in the southeast part of Iceland. Due to climate warming, both of these glaciers are part of a melting ice cap. They are located nearby to one another, and Sólheimajökull has been extensively studied for its outwash plain sedimentology, retreat history, pro-glacial geomorphology and has been steadily monitored by the Glaciological Society of Iceland. Seljavallajökull has also been monitored by this group, but it has not been studied for sediment profiles and landscape chronology as Sólheimajökull …

An Automated Framework To Identify Lost And Restorable Wetlands In The Prairie Pothole Region, Ann Waz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

While progress has been made in automating wetland identification, identifying lost and restorable wetlands remains a challenge. A suite of automated methods was developed and applied to the Nose Creek watershed near Calgary, Alberta to establish a historical wetland inventory and the proportion of permanently versus temporarily lost wetlands. A power-law function of wetland area vs. wetland frequency using wetlands derived from the fusion of a high resolution digital elevation model and near-infrared data identified permanent loss of 11.0% by number and 0.6% by area. The difference between historical and existing wetlands was used to estimate a further temporary …

Estimation Of Crop Gross Primary Production (Gpp): Ii. Do Scaled Modis Vegetation Indices Improve Performance?, Qingyuan Zhang, Yen-Ben Cheng, Alexei I. Lyapustin, Yujie Wang, Xiaoyang Zhang, Andrew Suyker, Shashi Verma, Yanmin Shuai, Elizabeth M. Middleton

Xiaoyang Zhang

Satellite remote sensing estimates of gross primary production (GPP) have routinely been made using spectral vegetation indices (VIs) over the past two decades. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), the green band Wide Dynamic Range Vegetation Index (WDRVI_green), and the green band Chlorophyll Index (CI_green) have been employed to estimate GPP under the assumption that GPP is proportional to the product of VI and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) (where VI is one of four VIs: NDVI, EVI, WDRVI_green, or CI_green). However, the empirical regressions between VI*PAR and …

A Comparison Of Tropical Rainforest Phenology Retrieved From Geostationary (Seviri) And Polar-Orbiting (Modis) Sensors Across The Congo Basin, Dong Yan, Xiaoyang Zhang, Yunyue Yu, Wei Guo

Xiaoyang Zhang

The seasonal and interannual dynamics of tropical rainforests play a critical role in the global carbon cycle and climate change. This paper retrieved and compared land surface phenology from observations acquired by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard geostationary satellites and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on polar-orbiting satellites over the Congo Basin. To achieve this,we first retrieved canopy greenness cycles (CGCs) and their transition timing from two-band enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) derived from SEVIRI and MODIS data between 2006 and 2013.We then assessed the influences of SEVIRI and MODIS data quality on the reconstruction of …