Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Intra- And Inter-Seasonal Variability Of Supra-Glacial 1 Streams And Lakes Over The West Greenland Ice Sheet 2 From High-Resolution Satellite Optical Data, Michael Gregory Brown

Dissertations and Theses

The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is one of the largest glacial ice masses on Earth, second only to the Antarctic ice sheet. The surface hydrology of the GrIS plays a crucial role on the surface energy and mass balance budgets of the ice sheet as a whole. Surface water, known as supra-glacial water, is seasonally found in the ablation zone and feeds the en-glacial and sub-glacial hydrological environments of the ice sheet. The spatial distribution of surface streams is poorly understood and their temporal variability is (to our knowledge) unknown. One of the reasons for the lack of knowledge on …

Global Analysis Of Saturation Artifacts In The Viirs Infrared Channels And The Effects Of Sample Aggregation, Thomas N. Polivka, Edward Hyer, Jun Wang, David A. Peterson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Unlike previous spaceborne Earth observing sensors, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) employs onboard sample aggregation to reduce downlink bandwidth requirements and preserve spatial resolution across the scan. To examine the potentially deleterious impacts of onboard sample aggregation when encountering detector saturation, nearly four months of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Nightfire product are analyzed, which contains a subset of the hottest observed nighttime pixels. An empirical method for identifying saturation is devised. The M12 band (3.69 μm) is the most frequently saturating band with 0.15% of the Nightfire pixels at or near the ~359-K detector saturation limit; …

Estimation Of Daily Air Temperature Based On Modis Land Surface Temperature Products Over The Corn Belt In The Us, Linglin Zeng, Brian D. Wardlow, Tsegaye Tadesse, Jie Shan, Michael Hayes, Deren Li, Daxiang Xiang

Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies: Publications

Air temperature (Ta) is a key input in a wide range of agroclimatic applications. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Ts (Land Surface Temperature (LST)) products are widely used to estimate daily Ta. However, only daytime LST (Ts-day) or nighttime LST (Ts-night) data have been used to estimate Tmax/Tmin (daily maximum or minimum air temperature), respectively. The relationship between Tmax and Ts-night, and the one between Tmin and Ts-day has not been studied. In this study, both the ability of Ts-night data to estimate Tmax and the ability of Ts-day data to estimate Tmin were tested and studied in the Corn …

Detection Of Temporal Changes In Vegetative Cover On South Padre Island, Texas Using Image Classifications Derived From Aerial Color-Infrared Photographs, Ruben A. Mazariegos, Kenneth R. Summy, Frank W. Judd, Robert I. Lonard, James H. Everitt

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

Supervised image classifications developed from 23 x 23 cm aerial color-infrared aerial photographs (1:5,000 scale) were used to evaluate temporal changes in vegetative cover occurring within three 150 x 300-m research sites on South Padre Island, Texas. Use of high-resolution digitized imagery (ground pixel resolution of ca. 0.1 m) and survey-grade GPS for positional measurements of ground control points (20-25 1.0m2 targets within each research site) resulted in consistently high levels of geometric accuracy, with root mean square errors (RMSEs) ranging between 0.397 – 2.867. Similarly, use of relatively simple information categories (dry and wet sand, live and dead vegetative …

Sparse Coding Based Dense Feature Representation Model For Hyperspectral Image Classification, Ender Oguslu, Guoqing Zhou, Zezhong Zheng, Khan Iftekharuddin, Jiang Li

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a sparse coding based dense feature representation model (a preliminary version of the paper was presented at the SPIE Remote Sensing Conference, Dresden, Germany, 2013) for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. The proposed method learns a new representation for each pixel in HSI through the following four steps: sub-band construction, dictionary learning, encoding, and feature selection. The new representation usually has a very high dimensionality requiring a large amount of computational resources. We applied the l₁/l_q regularized multiclass logistic regression technique to reduce the size of the new representation. We integrated the method with a linear …

Remote Sensing And Modeling Of Atmospheric Dust And Studying Its Impact On Environment, Weather, And Climate, Hesham El-Askary, Seon K. Park, Slobodan Nickovic, Mian Chin

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

An overview of the 2015 volume of Advances in Meteorology, which was co-edited by Chapman faculty member Dr. Hesham El-Askary.

How The Presence Of Plastic In The North Pacific Gyre Affects The Growth Of Thalassiosira Through Remote Sensing And Laboratory Replication, Jordynn Brennan, Hesham El-Askary

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Through the use of remote sensing, we are able to determine the approximate location of the garbage patch in the North Pacific Gyre. Though remote sensing does not penetrate the surface of the ocean, monthly satellite images can be analyzed to determine the rate of growth or rate of decrease of certain parameters, such as atmospheric gases, phytoplankton, and dissolved organic matter. Over the past decade, data from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (Giovanni program) has shown a significant increase in dissolved organic matter and chlorophyll a content in the area of the North Pacific Garbage …

A Remote Sensing Based Early Warning System For Algal Blooms In Kuwait Bay And Coastal Waters, Cameron Manche

Masters Theses

The Kuwait Bay and its coastal waters are being threatened by a perpetual hazard, the proliferation of harmful algal blooms (HABS). The frequency of HAB occurrences is a growing problem that is only reported subsequent to the onset of a HAB event. Little effort has been invested in investigating the spatial and temporal distribution of these events in Kuwait Bay and even less is known about their controlling factors. All previous studies within the Kuwait Bay have focused either on measuring nutrient availability and the biodiversity of algal species.

The overall study objective is four-fold: (1) to monitor the spatial …

A Vegetation Analysis On Horn Island, Mississippi, Ca. 1940 Using Characteristic Dimensions Derived From Historical Aerial Photography, Guy Wilburn Jeter Jr.

Master's Theses

Horn Island is part of the MS/AL barrier island chain in the northern Gulf of Mexico located approximately 18kn off the coast of Mississippi. This island’s habitats have undergone many transitions over the last several decades. The goal of this study was to quantify habitat change over a seventy year period using historical black and white photography from 1940. Using present NAIP imagery from the USDA, habitat structure was estimated by using geo-statistics, and second order statistics, from a co-occurrence matrix, to characterize texture for habitat classification. Percent land cover was then calculated to determine overall land cover change over …

Assessments Of Surface-Pelagic Drift Communities And Behavior Of Early Juvenile Sea Turtles In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, Robert F. Hardy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Knowledge of species distribution and habitat associations are essential for conservation measures. Such information is lacking for many marine species due to their occupancy of broad and ephemeral habitats that are difficult to access for study. Sea turtles, specifically the surface-pelagic juvenile stage of some species, are a group for which significant knowledge gaps remain surrounding their distribution and habitat use. Recent research has confirmed the long-standing hypothesis that the surface-pelagic juvenile stage occurs within surface-pelagic drift communities (SPDC). Within the North Atlantic and surrounding basins, the holopelagic macroalgae Sargassum spp. dominates SPDC and serves as a remotely-detectable indicator of …

Remote Sensing Estimates Of Stand-Replacement Fires In Russia, 2002–2011, Alexander Krylov, Jessica L. Mccarty, Peter Potapov, Tatiana Loboda, Alexandra Tyukavina, Svetlana Turubanova, Matthew Hansen

Michigan Tech Research Institute Publications

The presented study quantifies the proportion of stand-replacement fires in Russian forests through the integrated analysis of Landsat and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data products. We employed 30 m Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus derived tree canopy cover and decadal (2001–2012) forest cover loss (Hansen et al 2013 High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change Science 342 850–53) to identify forest extent and disturbance. These data were overlaid with 1 km MODIS active fire (earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-time-data/firms) and 500 m regional burned area data (Loboda et al 2007 Regionally adaptable dNBR-based algorithm for burned area mapping from …

Hyperspectral Measurements Of Wet, Dry And Saline Soils From The Mcmurdo Dry Valleys: Soil Moisture Properties From Remote Sensing, Joseph S. Levy, Anne Nolin, Andrew G. Fountain, James W. Head

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Soil moisture is a spatially heterogeneous quantity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica that exerts a large influence on the biological community and on the thermal state of Dry Valleys permafrost. The goal of this project was to determine whether hyperspectral remote sensing techniques could be used to determine soil moisture conditions in the Dry Valleys. We measured the spectral reflectance factors of wetted soil samples from the Dry Valleys under natural light conditions and related diagnostic spectral features to surface layer soil moisture content. Diagnostic water absorption features in the spectra at 1.4 mu m and 1.9 mu …

No More Hidden Secrets: Human Rights Violations And Remote Sensing, Tommy O'Connell, Stephen Young

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: This study used both high resolution and medium resolution satellite imagery to test three semi-automated remote sensing methods, in an attempt to identify useful tools to support eye-witness testimony and reports on human rights violations. As huts are routinely burned down during attacks on a village, particularly in Sudan, the number of huts and villages burned can be used to corroborate on-the-ground reports.

Methods: Three remote sensing methods (Supervised Classification, Change Detection, and Feature Extraction) were performed on imagery from both before the attacks in February 2006 and after the attacks to examine any useful trends that could be …

Using Remote Sensing Data To Predict The Spread Of Mosquito Borne Disease, Mary Ellen O'Donnell, Erika Podest

STAR Program Research Presentations

There is interest in how environmental variables derived from satellite data such as temperature, vegetation cover, and precipitation correlate to vector borne disease occurrence such as malaria and dengue fever. This study will be carried out using a decision tree based open source software called Random Forests to find correlations between the remote sensing variables and mosquito abundance. Software will be written in C# to take large amounts of data from the NASA satellite database and automatically format it for the Random Forest Software input. Correlations found, using Random Forests, between disease incidence and the variables can be used as …

Separation Of Soil Evaporation And Vegetation Transpiration By Modis Data For Central And Northern China, Tingting Li, Jinhui Jeanne Huang

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Evapotranspiration(ET) plays a crucial role in the hydrologic system. To estimate evapotranspiration quantitatively in a large scale, remote sensing data has been used in a number of models and shows its applicability in the estimation of evapotranspiration. In this paper, evapotranspiration for central and northern China was derived from MODIS data. In arid and semi-arid regions, soil evaporation can be considered as the minimum water requirement for bare area, while evapotranspiration can be considered as the minimum water demand for the area covered by vegetation. Hence the separation of soil evaporation and vegetation transpiration is valuable for efficient water resources …

Monitoring Spatiotemporal Total Organic Carbon Concentrations In Lake Mead With Integrated Data Fusion And Mining (Idfm) Technique, Sanaz Imen, Ni-Bin Chang, Y. Jeffrey Yang

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Forest fires, soil erosion, and land use changes in Lake Mead watershed nearby Las Vegas wash are considered as sources of water quality impairment in the Lake Mead. These conditions result in higher concentration of Total Organic Carbon (TOC). TOC in contact with Chlorine which is often used for disinfection purposes of drinking water supply causes the formation of trihalomethanes (THMs). THM is one of the toxic carcinogens controlled by EPA’s Disinfection By-Product Rule. As a result of threat posed to drinking water of 25 million people downstream, recreation area, and wildlife habitat of Lake Mead, it is necessary to …

Graphic User Interface To Preprocess Landsat Tm, Etm+ And Oli Images For Hydrological Applications, Rafael Pimentel, Javier Herrero, María José Polo

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Remote sensing techniques are powerful tools for the validation and data assimilation of GIS-based calculations of physical and distributed hydrological models. The high spatial resolution of Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI, make this the most adequate satellite images for the study of hydrological processes in Mediterranean regions. Several levels of preprocessing are required to obtain validated reflectance values from these images. Generally, these steps include radiometric calibrations and an atmospheric correction. However, over complex terrain and for specific land covers such as snow, certain problems related to radiometric saturation and shadow effects must also be taken into account. This work …

Empirical Regression Model Using Ndvi, Meteorological Factors For Estimation Of Wheat Yield In Yunnan, China, Jing Huang, Qiang Dai, Huimin Wang, Dawei Han

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Crop yield estimation is of great importance to food security. NDVI, as an effective crop monitoring tool, is extensively used in crop yield estimation. However there are few studies conducted in the regions where mixed crops are grown. In this study, a statistical approach for crop area identification is proposed and applied to wheat in Jianshui County in the Nanpan River Basin, Yunnan Province of China. Based on the correlation analysis between MODIS NDVI data and crop yield, the planting areas are identified, as well as the best periods for a reliable estimation. Regression models are presented to predict the …

On The Importance Of Remote Sensing Data To Validate A Distributed Dynamic Vegetation Model Applied To A Semi-Arid Basin, Félix Francés, Guiomar Ruiz-Pérez, Marta Pasquato, Chiara Medici, María González-Sanchis, Tarcísio J. G. Fernandes, Antonio Molina, Antonio D. Del Campo

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Efforts to better understand the components of catchments’ water balance have traditionally been one of the objectives of the hydrological community. Very few hydrological models incorporate vegetation development as state variable. This is beginning to change with the recognition by the hydrological community that biological processes play a key role in catchment’s water balance. In addition, some studies confirm that vegetation density controls most of hydrological processes in semi-arid regions. However, the most of the dynamic vegetation models are too complex to be coupled with hydrological models and they incorporate variables and inputs which are difficult to be estimated across …

Moving Horizon Estimation To Assimilate Snow And Soil Moisture Data Into The Hbv Hydrological Model, Rodolfo Alvarado Montero, Dirk Schwanenberg, Peter Krahe, Aynur Şensoy

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

We present a variational data assimilation approach based on a Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) applied to the HBV hydrological model. This framework enables the modification of the model inputs precipitation and temperature as well as the model states soil moisture, upper zone storage and lower zone storage. It considers data products for snow cover, snow water equivalent and soil moisture and observed streamflow. The performance of the framework is evaluated for three test sites: i) the data–dense catchment of the upper Main River (2419 km2), Germany, for which the HBV model already produces excellent results, ii) a comparable upstream catchment …

Automated Meter Reading For Water Demand Forecast And Hydraulic Modelling Of The Municipal Water Distribution System In Mikołów, Poland, Patryk Wójtowicz, Andrzej Pawlak, Jan Studziński

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

This paper presents preliminary results of a project aimed at utilising automated meter reading (AMR) system for water demand forecasting and hydraulic modelling of Mikołów (Poland) water distribution system. This system will allow for near-real time collection of hydraulic data. Accurate estimation and prediction of the demand patterns of the customers is a crucial element affecting accuracy of hydraulic model. AMR will be used to analyse the behaviour of individual household-based water consumption. Calibration and validation of the model will be realised by combining existing SCADA system and mobile (temporary) measurement points. Total length of the main water distribution system …

Research And Application On The Coupled Method Of Remote-Sensing And Ground-Monitoring Of Reservoir Storage Capacity, He Zhu, Hongli Zhao, Yunzhong Jiang, Li Wang

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Reservoir storage capacity monitoring is the basis of reservoir operation. The relationship curves of reservoir water level-area and water level-capacity are the significant parameters of storage capacity calculation. With the long-term operation, both on the bottom and bank of the reservoir have erosion and deposition, causing the relationship of water level-area and level-storage changes, which leads to inaccuracy of reservoir storage capacity calculation with the original curves. It is costly to revise the curves of reservoir water level-area and water level-capacity by ground measurement termly. A coupled Method of Remote-sensing and Ground-monitoring of Reservoir Storage Capacity is proposed in this …

Precipitation Forecasting With Wavelet-Based Empirical Orthogonal Function And Artificial Neural Network (Weof-Ann) Model, Sanaz Imen, Ni-Bin Chang, Y. Jeffrey Yang

International Conference on Hydroinformatics

Western drought began since 2000 caused sharp decrease by about 100 feet in the largest reservoir of North America, Lake Mead due to the precipitation pattern shift in the upstream lower Virgin River Basin. Oceans play an important role on earth’s climate via oceanic-atmospheric interactions known as climate teleconnections, which deeply affect the terrestrial precipitation patterns. This issue signifies the necessity of developing a modern hydroinformatics tool - precipitation forecasting model - to account for teleconnection signals from climate change and mitigate drought hazards impact on lake water, quantitatively and qualitatively, which cannot be achieved by using traditional Global Circulation …

Porphyry Copper Exploration Of The Hualapai Mountains, Mohave County, Arizona, Usa: A Multi-Faceted Approach, Patrick Kevin Meazell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A variety of exploration methods including geologic mapping, trace- and major-level geochemical analyses, fluid inclusion petrography, remote sensing, and SWIR clay spectroscopy were used to investigate the potential for porphyry Cu-Mo mineralization at the Wikieup prospect, in the southern Hualapai Mountains of northwestern Arizona. Aspects of the Mineral Park mine were used as an analogue to guide exploration due to the proximity and similar geology of the area.

The Hualapai Mountains are a series of northwest-trending Precambrian gneisses, schists, granitoids and amphibolites that have been cut by younger intrusive rocks. Within the Wikieup study area, the intrusive rocks include aplite …

Eyes In The Sky: Linking Satellite Oceanography And Biotelemetry To Explore Habitat Selection By Basking Sharks, Tobey H. Curtis, Stephan I. Zeeman, Erin L. Summers, Steven X. Cadrin, Gregory B. Skomal

Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Satellite-based oceanographic data products are a valuable source of information on potential resource availability for marine species. Satellite oceanography data may be particularly useful in biotelemetry studies on marine species that feed at low trophic levels, such as zooplanktivorous whales, sharks, and rays. The basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus, is a well-documented zooplanktivore in the western North Atlantic, yet little is known of its movements and spatial ecology in this region. A combination of satellite tag technologies were used to describe basking shark movements with respect to concurrent satellite-observed oceanographic conditions in order to test for selection of these …

Recent Cropping Frequency, Expansion, And Abandonment In Mato Grosso, Brazil Had Selective Land Characteristics, Stephanie A. Spera, Avery S. Cohn, Leah K. Vanwey, Jack F. Mustard, Bernardo F.T. Rudorff, Marcos Adami

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

This letter uses satellite remote sensing to examine patterns of cropland expansion, cropland abandonment, and changing cropping frequency in Mato Grosso, Brazil from 2001 to 2011. During this period, Mato Grosso emerged as a globally important center of agricultural production. In 2001, 3.3 million hectares of mechanized agriculture were cultivated in Mato Grosso, of which 500 000 hectares had two commercial crops per growing season (double cropping). By 2011, Mato Grosso had 5.8 million hectares of mechanized agriculture, of which 2.9 million hectares were double cropped. We found these agricultural changes to be selective with respect to land attributes —significant …

Predictive Modeling In The Search For Vertebrate Fossils: Geographic Object Based Image Analysis (Geobia) In The Eocene Of Wyoming, Bryan Bommersbach

Masters Theses

The development and testing of predictive models for identifying productive fossil localities represents a promising interdisciplinary endeavor among geographic information scientists, paleoanthropologists, and vertebrate paleontologists. This thesis analyzed high resolution (2m spatial resolution) commercial satellite imagery from the Worldview-2 satellite of five areas of the Great Divide Basin using a GEographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) technique, which segments the image into spectrally homogeneous, multi-pixel image objects. In addition to allowing statistical analysis of the spectral characteristics of the image objects, GEOBIA techniques also let analysts incorporate expert knowledge and contextual information to improve classification accuracy. The spectral characteristics of the …

Detection Of Land Use Change In Lake Maumelle Watershed Critical Management Area: Image Processing And Gis Integration Approach, Ling Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Land use in the Lake Maumelle watershed is expected to undergo significant changes in the next several decades, with residential developments replacing forest in many areas. These land use changes have the potential to increase pollutant loads and degrade water quality in the lake. Detecting the land use and land cover changes is therefore a critical requirement for effective land management. Therefore, the research on the cost-effective methodology of detection of land use change is critical and of extreme significance. The first objective of this study is to develop an effective image classification method using very high resolution remote sensing …

Interannual Variations And Trends In Global Land Surface Phenology Derived From Enhanced Vegetation Index During 1982–2010, Xiaoyang Zhang, Bin Tan, Yunyue Yu

GSCE Faculty Publications

Land surface phenology is widely retrieved from satellite observations at regional and global scales, and its long-term record has been demonstrated to be a valuable tool for reconstructing past climate variations, monitoring the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate impacts, and predicting biological responses to future climate scenarios. This study detected global land surface phenology from the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data from 1982 to 2010. Based on daily enhanced vegetation index at a spatial resolution of 0.05 degrees, we simulated the seasonal vegetative trajectory for each individual pixel …

Microelectromechanical Devices For Remote Sensing In Extreme Conditions, David Landry, Dr. David Allred

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are commonly used to build sensors for consumer products such as game console controllers1 and smart phones2. These sensors use piezoelectric materials and are wired directly into a larger electronic system. Because of their use case, these sensors are designed to operate near room temperature. The goal of this project was to help create a remotely detected MEMS accelerometer capable of operating in high temperature and high acceleration environments.