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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan Dec 2015

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …


Developing Effective Ground And Space-Based Soil Moisture Sensing Techniques For Irrigating Cotton In Coastal Plain Soils, Xin Qiao Dec 2015

Developing Effective Ground And Space-Based Soil Moisture Sensing Techniques For Irrigating Cotton In Coastal Plain Soils, Xin Qiao

All Dissertations

Irrigation scheduling based on soil moisture sensor readings has gained popularity in the past few decades since it can enhance crop yield while saving water. Such method is limited since the representativeness of an individual soil moisture sensor measurement is questionable in a large field with variable soil type and texture. The optimum location of soil moisture sensors needs to be determined within such a production field for effective sensor-based irrigation scheduling. Therefore, the first object of this study was to investigate the optimum sensor location and the number of moisture sensors required for irrigating cotton in coastal plain soils. …


Evaluating Long-Term Land Cover Changes For Malheur Lake, Oregon Using Envi And Arcgis, Ryan Joseph Woods Dec 2015

Evaluating Long-Term Land Cover Changes For Malheur Lake, Oregon Using Envi And Arcgis, Ryan Joseph Woods

Theses and Dissertations

Land cover change over time can be a useful indicator of variations in a watershed, such as the patterns of drought in an area. I present a case study using remotely sensed images from Landsat satellites for over a 30-year period to generate classifications representing land cover categories, which I use to quantify land cover change in the watershed areas that contribute to Malheur, Mud, and Harney Lakes. I selected images, about every 4 to 6 years from late June to late July, in an attempt to capture the peak vegetation growth and to avoid cloud cover. Complete coverage of …


Improving The Performance Of The Space Surveillance Telescope As A Function Of Seeing Parameter, Jae H. Jeon Mar 2015

Improving The Performance Of The Space Surveillance Telescope As A Function Of Seeing Parameter, Jae H. Jeon

Theses and Dissertations

This research paper investigates ways to improve the detection capability and predict the performance of the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) system when it's relocated to Exmouth, Australia. The dataset collected by the SST observing the Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite, ANIK-F1, entering the earth's eclipse is used to test the performance of the three existing and one new detection algorithm. The three existing algorithms are the point detection (Binary Hypothesis Test (BHT)), correlation detection (CD-BHT), and Multi-hypothesis Test using ten hypotheses (MHT10), and the new detection algorithm is the Multi-hypothesis Test using six hypotheses (MHT6). To improve the accuracy and …


Using Remote Sensing To Explore The Time History Of Emergent Vegetation At Malheur Lake, Oregon, Zola Yaa Adjei Mar 2015

Using Remote Sensing To Explore The Time History Of Emergent Vegetation At Malheur Lake, Oregon, Zola Yaa Adjei

Theses and Dissertations

The growth patterns of emergent vegetation can be a useful indicator for factors affecting lake health. However, field data to characterize emergent vegetation at many reservoirs may not be available or may be limited to small, isolated areas. We present a case study using remotely sensed data from the Landsat satellite to generate data to represent emergent vegetation in the near-shoreline and tributary delta areas of Malheur Lake, Oregon. We selected late June images for this study as vegetation is relatively mature in late June and visible, but has not completely grown-in providing a better indication of vegetation coverage in …


Drinking Water Infrastructure Assessment With Teleconnection Signals, Satellite Data Fusion And Mining, Sanaz Imen Jan 2015

Drinking Water Infrastructure Assessment With Teleconnection Signals, Satellite Data Fusion And Mining, Sanaz Imen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adjustment of the drinking water treatment process as a simultaneous response to climate variations and water quality impact has been a grand challenge in water resource management in recent years. This desired and preferred capability depends on timely and quantitative knowledge to monitor the quality and availability of water. This issue is of great importance for the largest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, which is located in the proximity of a big metropolitan region - Las Vegas, Nevada. The water quality in Lake Mead is impaired by forest fires, soil erosion, and land use changes in nearby watersheds …


A Roughness Correction For Aquarius Ocean Brightness Temperature Using The Conae Microwave Radiometer, Yazan Hejazin Jan 2015

A Roughness Correction For Aquarius Ocean Brightness Temperature Using The Conae Microwave Radiometer, Yazan Hejazin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aquarius/SAC-D is a joint NASA/CONAE (Argentine Space Agency) Earth Sciences satellite mission to measure global sea surface salinity (SSS), using an L-band radiometer that measures ocean brightness temperature (Tb). The application of L-band radiometry to retrieve SSS is a difficult task, and therefore, precise Tb corrections are necessary to obtain accurate measurements. One of the major error sources is the effect of ocean roughness that "warms" the ocean Tb. The Aquarius (AQ) instrument (L-band radiometer/scatterometer) baseline approach uses the radar scatterometer to provide this ocean roughness correction, through the correlation of radar backscatter with the excess ocean emissivity. In contrast, …