Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Assessing Flood Inundation Mapping With The Use Of A Dem And Gis Along The Missouri River At Sioux City, Iowa, Kathryn A. Pfaffle

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

There are various methods that are used to predict flood inundation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided inundation maps for the 2011 Missouri River flood event that did not utilized aerial photo imagery. This study assesses the suitability of using a digital elevation model (DEM) in combination with aerial photo imagery within a geographic information system to predict flood inundation mapping along the Missouri River in Sioux City, Iowa. GPS data was collected during the height of this flood event in order to validate the positional accuracy of the DEM. Using the GPS receiver’s accuracy standards to determine the …

Relationships Between Snow Pack, Soil Moisture, And Forest Greenness: Implications For Smap, Jordan Anderson, Noah Molotch, Bin Guan

STAR Program Research Presentations

Snowpack in the arid/semi-arid western United States is a critical element of the hydrologic cycle as water is stored in the winter and released in the spring and summer. The warmer seasons rely heavily on this water source for various purposes including economic (farming), environmental and recreational demands. Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors were used in this project to measure seasonal variability in global vegetation phenology and productivity. MODIS data was used to calculate Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to estimate net primary production of subalpine forests in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Preliminary results indicate that variability in forest …

Use Of Remote Sensing, Hydrologic Tree-Ring Reconstructions, And Forecasting For Improved Water Resources Planning And Management, Cody Lee Moser

Doctoral Dissertations

Uncertainties were analyzed in three areas (remote sensing, dendroclimatology, and climate modeling) relevant to current water resources management. First, the research investigated the relationships between remotely sensed and in situ Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) datasets in three western U.S. basins. Agreement between SWE products was found to increase in lower elevation areas and later in the snowpack season. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) revealed two distinct snow regions among the datasets and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) was used to link both data products with regional streamflow. Remotely sensed SWE was found to be sufficient to use in statistically based forecast models …

Developing A Remote Sensing Algorithm For Deriving Soil Moisture From Spectral Reflectance, Santosh Rijal

Theses and Dissertations

Wet weather cycle since 1993 has brought ground water level closer to the surface of the soil in many areas in the Red River Valley (RRV) of the North basin. Many farmers have to delay spring plantation or autumn harvest due to excessive moisture in', their farmland. In such case, it becomes increasingly important to have timely and accurate information on the soil moisture conditions. Conventional soil moisture measurement techniques are point-based that results in poor spatial representation of soil moisture. Remote sensing techniques offer many potential advantages over traditional means such as repetitive coverage and areal representation. The objective …

Evidence Of Atmospheric Gravity Waves During The 2008 Eruption Of Okmok Volcano From Seismic And Remote Sensing Observations, S. De Angelis, Stephen R. Mcnutt, P. W. Webley

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Okmok volcano erupted on July 12, 2008, following an 11-year hiatus. Detailed inspection of the syn-eruptive seismograms revealed the presence of an ultra long-period mode at a frequency of 1.7 mHz, which is not a characteristic of the background seismic noise at Okmok. Data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and National Aeronautical and Space Administration Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors displayed the propagation of a vigorous ash-and-steam plume up to about 17 km above sea level. We suggest that the observed ultra long-period signals represent the response of the seismometer to …

Nir-Red Reflectance-Based Algorithms For Chlorophyll-A Estimation In Mesotrophic Inland And Coastal Waters: Lake Kinneret Case Study, Yosef Z. Yacobi, Wesley Moses, Semion Kaganovsky, Benayahu Sulimani, Bryan Leavitt, Anatoly A. Gitelson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A variety of models have been developed for estimating chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentration in turbid and productive waters. All are based on optical information in a few spectral bands in the red and near-infra-red regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelength locations in the models used were meticulously tuned to provide the highest sensitivity to the presence of Chl-a and minimal sensitivity to other constituents in water. But the caveat in these models is the need for recurrent parameterization and calibration due to changes in the biophysical characteristics of water based on the location and/or time of the year. In this …

An Integrated Geographic Information Systems (Igis) Analysis And Definition Of The Tectonic Framework Of Northern Mexico, Carlos Manuel Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Crustal rupture structures reactivated in the course of the tectonic history of northern Mexico are the surface expressions of planes of weakness, in the form of simple or composite rectilinear features or slightly curved, defined as lineaments. Unless otherwise defined as strike-slip faults, lineaments are part of parallel and sub-parallel oblique convergent or oblique divergent tectonic zones cross cutting the Sierra Madre Occidental and northern Mexico, in a NW trend. These shear zones are the response to the oblique subduction of the Farallon plate beneath North America.

Kinematic analysis of five selected sites in northern Mexico, three basins and two …

Gis And Paleoanthropology: Incorporating New Approaches From The Geospatial Sciences In The Analysis Of Primate And Human Evolution, Robert L. Anemone, Glenn C. Conroy, Charles W. Emerson

Robert L. Anemone

The incorporation of research tools and analytical approaches from the geospatial sciences is a welcome trend for the study of primate and human evolution. The use of remote sensing (RS) imagery and geographic information systems (GIS) allows vertebrate paleontologists, paleoanthropologists, and functional morphologists to study fossil localities, landscapes, and individual specimens in new and innovative ways that recognize and analyze the spatial nature of much paleoanthropological data. Whether one is interested in locating and mapping fossiliferous rock units in the field, creating a searchable and georeferenced database to catalog fossil localities and specimens, or studying the functional morphology of fossil …