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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Cautionary Tale.Pdf, Chris Laingen Jan 2015

A Cautionary Tale.Pdf, Chris Laingen

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

Remotely sensed imagery has been used for decades to quantify the area, rates, and types of land use and land cover change (LULCC) from local to global scales. Common platforms used to capture data include satellite- and aerial-based sensors and cameras. Inseparable from those data are errors—misclassified pixels in sensor-based data or incorrect observations in aerial photographs—created by spectral confusion on the part of the sensor or by misclassifying the raw data during interpretation. Such errors, if not sufficiently explained or taken into consideration when reporting LULCC results, could lead to dubious conclusions. For this article, four commonly used and …


Mapping Cropland In Smallholder-Dominated Savannas: Integrating Remote Sensing Techniques And Probabilistic Modeling, Sean Sweeney, Tatyana Ruseva, Lyndon Estes, Tom Evans Jan 2015

Mapping Cropland In Smallholder-Dominated Savannas: Integrating Remote Sensing Techniques And Probabilistic Modeling, Sean Sweeney, Tatyana Ruseva, Lyndon Estes, Tom Evans

Geography

Traditional smallholder farming systems dominate the savanna range countries of sub-Saharan Africa and provide the foundation for the region's food security. Despite continued expansion of smallholder farming into the surrounding savanna landscapes, food insecurity in the region persists. Central to the monitoring of food security in these countries, and to understanding the processes behind it, are reliable, high-quality datasets of cultivated land. Remote sensing has been frequently used for this purpose but distinguishing crops under certain stages of growth from savanna woodlands has remained a major challenge. Yet, crop production in dryland ecosystems is most vulnerable to seasonal climate variability, …