Geography Commons^™

Use Of Water Indices Derived From Landsat Oli Imagery And Gis To Estimate The Hydrologic Connectivity Of Wetlands In The Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Debra Sue Blackmore

Dissertations and Theses

This study compared two remote sensing water indices: the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and the Modified NDWI (MNDWI). Both indices were calculated using publically-available data from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI). The research goal was to determine whether the indices are effective in locating open water and measuring surface soil moisture. To demonstrate the application of water indices, analysis was conducted for freshwater wetlands in the Tualatin River Basin in northwestern Oregon to estimate hydrologic connectivity and hydrological permanence between these wetlands and nearby water bodies. Remote sensing techniques have been used to study wetlands in recent …

Habitat Suitability Modeling For The Mississippi Sandhill Crane, Grus Canadensis Pulla, Linda C. Salande

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I modeled the suitability of habitat on the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge for the federally endangered Mississippi Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis pulla). Habitat type and suitability changed over time due to seasonality of vegetation and succession in the absence of burning. Cranes used highly suitable habitat more in the non-growing than in the growing season, and may have been more constrained by resource availability during winter months. Cranes used some less-suitable areas including cypress drains, which provide roosting sites, and supplemental food plots. The mismatch between predicted quality and crane use suggests that …

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

GSCE Faculty Publications

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 …

The Invisible People Of The Invisible Coast: The Resilience Of People Experiencing Homelessness To Disasters On The Alabama, Louisiana, And Mississippi Gulf Coasts, Nicole Elizabeth Callais

Master's Theses

While extensive research has been conducted on vulnerability and resilience with regard to hazards, very few studies have researched the resilience of homeless populations. The Gulf Coast region is densely populated and susceptible to natural and anthropogenic hazards. Climate change studies indicate that this region will experience an increase in severe and intense tropical cyclones[1], thereby increasing the risk of experiencing adverse impacts from future coastal hazards. While local government agencies in this region have policies in place to protect communities, these policies tend to exclude any action regarding the evacuation and safety of the homeless population.

In …

Land Cover Data For The Mississippi-Alabama Barrier Islands, 2010-2011 Arcgis V10.3 Geodatabase, Gregory A. Carter, Carlton P. Anderson, Kelly L. Lucas, Nathan L. Hopper

Land Cover Data for the Mississippi-Alabama Barrier Islands, 2010-2011

Land cover on the Mississippi-Alabama barrier islands was surveyed in 2010-2011 as part of continuing research on island geomorphic and vegetation dynamics following the 2005 impact of Hurricane Katrina. Results of the survey include sub-meter GPS location, a listing of dominant vegetation species and field photographs recorded at 375 sampling locations distributed among Cat, West Ship, East Ship, Horn, Sand, Petit Bois and West Dauphin Islands. The survey was conducted in a period of intensive remote sensing data acquisition over the northern Gulf of Mexico by federal, state and commercial organizations in response to the 2010 Macondo Well (Deepwater Horizon) …

Identification Of Woodland Vernal Pools With Seasonal Change Palsar Data For Habitat Conservation, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez, Yu Man Lee, Michael Battaglia, Sarah L. Endres, Zachary Laubach, Kirk Scarbrough

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Woodland vernal pools are important, small, cryptic, ephemeral wetland ecosystems that are vulnerable to a changing climate and anthropogenic influences. To conserve woodland vernal pools for the state of Michigan USA, vernal pool detection and mapping methods were sought that would be efficient, cost-effective, repeatable and accurate. Satellite-based L-band radar data from the high (10 m) resolution Japanese ALOS PALSAR sensor were evaluated for suitability in vernal pool detection beneath forest canopies. In a two phase study, potential vernal pool (PVP) detection was first assessed with unsupervised PALSAR (LHH) two season change detection (spring when flooded—summer when dry) and validated …

Distinguishing Land Change From Natural Variability And Uncertainty In Central Mexico With Modis Evi, Trmm Precipitation, And Modis Lst Data, Zachary Christman, John Rogan, J. Ronald Eastman, B. L. Turner Ii

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

Precipitation and temperature enact variable influences on vegetation, impacting the type and condition of land cover, as well as the assessment of change over broad landscapes. Separating the influence of vegetative variability independent and discrete land cover change remains a major challenge to landscape change assessments. The heterogeneous Lerma-Chapala-Santiago watershed of central Mexico exemplifies both natural and anthropogenic forces enacting variability and change on the landscape. This study employed a time series of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) composites from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer (MODIS) for 2001–2007 and per-pixel multiple linear regressions in order to model changes in EVI as …

An Automated Approach For Sub-Pixel Registration Of Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (Oli) And Sentinel-2 Multi Spectral Instrument (Msi) Imagery, Lin Yan, David P. Roy, Hankui Zhang, Jian Li, Haiyan Huang

GSCE Faculty Publications

Moderate spatial resolution satellite data from the Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2A MSI sensors together offer 10 m to 30 m multi-spectral reflective wavelength global coverage, providing the opportunity for improved combined sensor mapping and monitoring of the Earth’s surface. However, the standard geolocated Landsat-8 OLI L1T and Sentinel-2A MSI L1C data products are currently found to be misaligned. An approach for automated registration of Landsat-8 OLI L1T and Sentinel-2A MSI L1C data is presented and demonstrated using contemporaneous sensor data. The approach is computationally efficient because it implements feature point detection across four image pyramid levels to identify a sparse …

Land Change Modeler Application: Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Nan Ding, Siqi Cheng

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper is a description of our internship with Clark Labs in the summer of 2015. We worked as research assistants in the Land Change Modeler Application (App) project. This project aimed to display the land cover changes in the United States from 2001 to 2010, show the vulnerability in 48 states and predict changes from the yaer 2050. Our responsibility was to extract eight variables (slope, elevation, surface water, roads, high intensity land, protected areas, county subdivisions, and cultivated crops) in TerrSet, and use them in several models to test the accuracy of prediction.

The internship is a great …

Remote Sensing Specialist Summer Internship At Geoadaptive Llc., Zehan Li

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper describes my summer internship experience during the summer of 2015, as a requirement toward my master's degree. I worked as a full-time remote sensing specialist at GeoAdaptive LLC., which locates at downtown Boston. My work covers a variety ranging from providing technical support like data collecting and visualization to other research groups at the firm, to conducting a pioneer project regrading the large scale drought monitoring using publicly available data. As someone who learnt a great deal and valued this experience greatly, I would love to recommend this internship to other fellow GISDE students when they take on …

Land Change Modeler Application:Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Siqi Cheng, Nan Ding

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper is a description of our internship with Clark Labs in the summer of 2015. We worked as research assistants in the Land Change Modeler Application (App) project. This project aimed to display the land cover changes in the United States from 2001 to 2010, show the vulnerability in 48 states and predict changes from the yaer 2050. Our responsibility was to extract eight variables (slope, elevation, surface water, roads, high intensity land, protected areas, county subdivisions, and cultivated crops) in TerrSet, and use them in several models to test the accuracy of prediction.

The internship is a great …

The State Of Tobacco : A Remote Sensing Approach To Understanding Tobacco Crop Production In Kentucky., Laura Krauser

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Agricultural policy allows for governing bodies to better control the landscape, economy, and security of resources. Because of this power, it is essential for policy and its effects to be thoroughly understood. This study examines the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (TTPP, “tobacco buyout”), in effect from 2005 to 2014, using a mixed methods approach. The TTPP lifted the existing geographic restrictions of tobacco production and deregulated market prices formerly controlled by the government. Kentucky’s economic, social, and agricultural landscapes changed significantly in the wake of this legislation. To explore these changes, this study employs semi-structured interviews and remote sensing analyses …

An Evaluation Of Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis Applied To Landsat 8 Oli Images For Mapping Land Cover In Southern Africa's Savanna., Fernando Ferreira Caixeta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mapping land cover in southern Africa’s savannas using traditional pixel based remote sensing techniques can be very challenging due to the heterogeneity of its vegetation structure and the spectral difficulty in separating similar land covers across various land uses. In order to overcome these complications, a Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) provides a potential remote sensing approach to quantify spectral variation in the physical environment at a subpixel level. The MESMA approach was applied in the study area of the Mayuni Conservancy, in Namibia. Results show that 32.3% of the study area is covered by photosynthetic vegetation (PV), 32.0% …

Global Population Distributions And The Environment : Discerning Observed Global And Regional Patterns., Jeremiah J. Nieves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1990 to 2015, numerous groups used ancillary data about the environment surrounding populations to more accurately map global populations from standard census data. No comprehensive study has been undertaken to characterize the observed relationships between population density and ancillary data. Better understanding these relationships may produce more accurate population maps, focus resources on new datasets with a high probability of modelling importance, and lead to expanded end-user applications. This study examined these relationships by extracting variable importances from 36 independently run, country-specific population models from the WorldPop project’s population data. Covariate data describing urban/suburban extents were found to be …

Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry Analysis Of Ground Deformation Within The Coso Geothermal Site, California, Erik Vaughn Brawner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Earth’s surface movement may cause as a potential hazard to infrastructure and people. Associated earthquake hazards pose a potential side effect of geothermal activity. Modern remote sensing techniques known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) can measure surface change with a high degree of precision to mm scale movements. Previous work has identified a deformation anomaly within the Coso Geothermal site in eastern California. Surface changes have not been analyzed since the 1990s, allowing a decade of geothermal production impact to occur since previously assessed. In this study, InSAR data was acquired and analyzed between the years 2005 and 2010. …

Trade And Transport In Late Roman Syria, Christopher Wade Fletcher

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the relative notoriety and miraculous level of preservation of the Dead Cities of Syria, fundamental questions of economic and subsistence viability remain unanswered. In the 1950s Georges Tchalenko theorized that these sites relied on intensive olive monoculture to mass export olive oil to urban centers. Later excavations discovered widespread cultivation of grains, fruit, and beans which directly contradicted Tchalenko’s assertion of sole reliance on oleoculture. However, innumerable olive presses in and around the Dead Cities still speak to a strong tradition of olive production. This thesis tests the logistical viability of olive oil transportation from the Dead Cities to …

A New Multispectral Imaging Instrument For In-Situ Characterization Of Flocs And Colloidal Aggregates In Natural Waters, Charles R. Bostater

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Technology To Serve The Agricultural Community In The Western Cape Province Of South Africa, Pavarni Naidoo, Lise Sandenbergh, Maud Bonato, Johann Strauss, Mike Wallace, Andre Roux, Shaheed Martin, Ilse Trautmann, Schalk Cloete

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

The Western Cape Department of Agriculture has a team of agricultural experts using novel approaches to address the challenges faced by South African agriculture. The objective of this paper is to describe some of the innovative research and technologies, and methods of technology transfer, used to better serve the agricultural community. The spectrum of technologies implemented includes new research on breeding (biotechnology); new approaches to conservation agriculture; remote sensing satellite and spatial information for improved decision making, such as the spatial intelligence project and FruitLook; Agricultural Integrated Management System; and technology to manage and disseminate information, such as smart …

A Comparison Of Multiple Datasets For Monitoring Thermal Time In Urban Areas Over The U.S. Upper Midwest, Cole Krehbiel, Geoffrey M. Henebry

GSCE Faculty Publications

Traditional studies of urban climate used air temperature observations from local urban/rural weather stations in order to analyze the general pattern of higher temperatures in urban areas compared with corresponding rural regions, also known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. More recently, satellite remote sensing datasets of land surface temperature have been exploited to monitor UHIs. While closely linked, air temperature and land surface temperature (LST) observations do not measure the same variables. Here we analyze land surface temperature vs.air temperature-based characterization and seasonality of the UHI and the surface UHI (SUHI) from 2003 to 2012 over the …

A General Method To Normalize Landsat Reflectance Data To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Hankui Zhang, Junchang Ju, Jose Luis Gomez-Dans, Philip E. Lewis, Crystal Barker B. Schaaf, Qingsong Sun, Jian Li, Haiyan Huang, V. Kovalskyy

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Landsat satellites have been providing spectacular imagery of the Earth's surface for over 40 years. However, they acquire images at view angles ±7.5° from nadir that cause small directional effects in the surface reflectance. There are also variations with solar zenith angle over the year that can cause apparent change in reflectance even if the surface properties remain constant. When Landsat data from adjoining paths, or from long time series are used, a model of the surface anisotropy is required to adjust all Landsat observations to a uniform nadir view (primarily for visual consistency, vegetation monitoring, or detection of …

Sparse Coding Based Feature Representation Method For Remote Sensing Images, Ender Oguslu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, we study sparse coding based feature representation method for the classification of multispectral and hyperspectral images (HSI). The existing feature representation systems based on the sparse signal model are computationally expensive, requiring to solve a convex optimization problem to learn a dictionary. A sparse coding feature representation framework for the classification of HSI is presented that alleviates the complexity of sparse coding through sub-band construction, dictionary learning, and encoding steps. In the framework, we construct the dictionary based upon the extracted sub-bands from the spectral representation of a pixel. In the encoding step, we utilize a soft …

"Chinese Military Space Power: U.S. Department Of Defense Annual Reports, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Following instructions received from the U.S. Congress in the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Defense prepared an annual report on Chinese military power. This report contains classified and unclassif ied editions. Documenting Chinese military space power developments was one of the provisions in this law’s authorizing language. This article will examine how Chinese military space power documents have been described by the Department of Defense during this report's existence through 2015 and detail how members of Congress and Congressional committee hearing witnesses reacted to these developments in Congressional hearing transcripts and in Congressional debate through Fall 2015.

A Model Of The Effects Of Deforestation On Local Climate In The North Cascades, Monica R. H. Jasper

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Changes in areal extent of land cover types may lead to alterations in the surface energy budget that contribute to anthropogenic climate forcing. This study examines the effects of deforestation in the Cascade Range on local temperature. Temperature sensors were installed in 14 forest stands, taking measurements for one year. Estimated tree age, circumference, and species were recorded to calculate stand density index. Satellite imagery was used to calculate shade fraction from spectral mixture analysis, which is a proxy for canopy structure and density. These data were used to construct seasonal cycles of temperature to model variation with stand density …

Stone Walls Of New York And New England, John W. Delano Phd

Atmospheric and Environmental Science Faculty Scholarship

Stone walls are an enduring testimony of the hard labors and work ethic of subsistence family farms on ~100-acre lots. Those lots had been defined by hardy teams of surveyors who used compasses and chains to define the magnetic directions and lengths of boundaries. Farmers cleared (‘improved’) large sections of their land of trees for the purpose of grazing animals and growing crops. As we venture into the deep woods today, we often encounter these forgotten stonewalls that reveal that others long ago were there. Modern airborne surveys using ‘Light Detection And Ranging’ (LiDAR) not only reveal the vast extent …

Airborne Lidar Acquisition, Post-Processing And Accuracy-Checking For A 3d Webgis Of Copan, Honduras, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Maria Grazia Spera, Michael Auer, Nicolas Billen, Lukas Loos, Laura Stelson, Markus Reindel

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeological projects increasingly collect airborne LiDAR data to use as a remote sensing tool for survey and analysis. Publication possibilities for LiDAR datasets, however, are limited due to the large size and often proprietary nature of the data. Fortunately, web-based, geographic information systems (WebGIS) that can securely manage temporal and spatial data hold great promise as virtual research environments for working with and publishing LiDAR data. To test this and to obtain new data for archaeological research, in 2013, the MayaArch3D Project (www.mayaarch3d.org) collected LiDAR data for the archaeological site of Copan, Honduras. Results include: 1) more accurate archaeological maps, …

Accuracy Assessment Of Pictometry® Height Measurements Stratified By Cardinal Direction And Image Magnification Factor, Daniel Unger, David Kulhavy, I-Kuai Hung, Yanli Zhang

Faculty Publications

The aim of this project was to ascertain if Pictometry^® estimated height could be used in lieu of field-based height estimation. Height of a light pole measured with a telescopic height pole was compared to Pictometry^® hyperspatial 4-inch (10.2 centimeters) multispectral imagery estimated light pole height on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas. Average percent agreement between light pole height and Pictometry^® estimated light pole height summarized by Pictometry^® image magnification factors at 100%, 125%, 150%, 200%, and 300% magnification were within 98% of light pole height with percent disagreement ranging from …

Computationally Inexpensive Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (Oli) Pansharpening, Hankui Zhang, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Pansharpening algorithms fuse higher spatial resolution panchromatic with lower spatial resolution multispectral imagery to create higher spatial resolution multispectral images. The free-availability and systematic global acquisition of Landsat 8 data indicate an expected need for global coverage and so computationally efficient Landsat 8 pansharpening. This study adapts and evaluates the established, and relatively computationally inexpensive, Brovey and context adaptive Gram Schmidt component substitution (CS) pansharpening methods for application to the Landsat 8 15 m panchromatic and 30 m red, green, blue, and near-infrared bands. The intensity images used by these CS pansharpening methods are derived as a weighted linear combination …

Conterminous United States Crop Field Size Quantification From Multi-Temporal Landsat Data, Lin Yan Dr., David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Agricultural field size is indicative of the degree of agricultural capital investment, mechanization and labor intensity, and it is ecologically important. A recently published automated computational methodology to extract agricultural crop fields from weekly 30 m Web Enabled Landsat data (WELD) time series was refined and applied to a year of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhance Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) acquisitions for all of the conterminous United States (CONUS). For the first time, spatially explicit CONUS field size maps and derived information are presented. A total of 4,182,777 fields were extracted with mean and median …

The Global Landsat Archive: Status, Consolidation, And Direction, Michael A. Wulder, Joanne C. White, Thomas R. Loveland, Curtis E. Woodcock, Alan S. Belward, Warren B. Cohen, Eugene A. Fosnight, Jerad Shaw, Jeffrey G. Masek, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

New and previously unimaginable Landsat applications have been fostered by a policy change in 2008 that made analysis-ready Landsat data free and open access. Since 1972, Landsat has been collecting images of the Earth, with the early years of the program constrained by onboard satellite and ground systems, as well as limitations across the range of required computing, networking, and storage capabilities. Rather than robust on-satellite storage for transmission via high bandwidth downlink to a centralized storage and distribution facility as with Landsat-8, a network of receiving stations, one operated by the U.S. government, the other operated by a community …

Incorporating Applied Undergraduate Research In Senior To Graduate Level Remote Sensing Courses, Richard Henley, Daniel Unger, David Kulhavy, I-Kuai Hung

Faculty Publications

An Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA) senior spatial science undergraduate student engaged in a multi-course undergraduate research project to expand his expertise in remote sensing and assess the applied instruction methodology employed within ATCOFA. The project consisted of performing a change detection land-use/land-cover classification for Nacogdoches and Angelina counties in Texas using satellite imagery. The dates for the imagery were spaced approximately ten years apart and consisted of four different acquisitions between 1984 and 2013. The classification procedure followed and expanded upon a series of concrete theoretical remote sensing principles, transforming the four remotely sensed raster images …