Geography Commons^™

A New Approach For The Analysis Of Hyperspectral Data: Theory And Sensitivity Analysis Of The Moment Distance Method, E.A. L. Salas, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We present the Moment Distance (MD) method to advance spectral analysis in vegetation studies. It was developed to take advantage of the information latent in the shape of the reflectance curve that is not available from other spectral indices. Being mathematically simple but powerful, the approach does not require any curve transformation, such as smoothing or derivatives. Here, we show the formulation of the MD index (MDI) and demonstrate its potential for vegetation studies. We simulated leaf and canopy reflectance samples derived from the combination of the PROSPECT and SAIL models to understand the sensitivity of the new method to …

Geography Newsletter, Department Of Geography

Geography Newsletter

Contents:
2013 Year in Review [Page] 2
New Faculty Spotlight [Page] 3
Move to Wecota Hall [Page] 4
Dr. Janet Gritzner to Retire [Page] 5
Wetland Survey [Page] 6
Fulbright Student Scholar in Residence [Page] 7
Geography Club at Hobo Day [Page] 7
Regional Meeting of the AAG [Page] 8
Geography Alumni Spotlight [Page] 9
South Dakota Geographic Alliance [Page] 10
Geography Awareness Week 2013 [Page] 11
Bringing the World to South Dakota [Page] 12-13
44th Annual Geography Convention [Page] 14-15
Community Updates: Alumni [Page]16
Geography Alumni Spotlight [Page] 17
From the Foundation [Page] 17
Building relationships in Burkina Faso …

Evaluation And Application Of A New Shape-Sensitive Metric Useful For Characterizing Both Spectral Curves And Lidar Waveforms, Eric Ariel L. Salas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to investigate hyperspectral and waveform LiDAR datasets through a new analytical framework called Moment Distance method that uses a metric derived from the shape of the curve (spectral or waveform). In the case of hyperspectral data, the shape of the reflectance curve should unmask fine points of the spectra usually not considered by existing band-specific indices. To explore the advantages and shortcomings of this new approach, leaf and canopy hyperspectral reflectance samples were simulated using the physicallybased models PROSPECT (a leaf model) and SAIL (a canopy model). Sensitivity analysis was conducted with the goal of understanding the …

Fire Type Classification In The Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome, Sanath Kumar Sathyachandran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Brazilian Tropical Moist Forest Biome (BTMFB) is “Earth’s greatest biological treasure and a major component of the earth system” and forest degradation and deforestation by fire is a serious issue in this region. Fires in the BTMFB can be broadly classified as maintenance, deforestation and forest fire types. Spatially and temporally explicit information on the incidences of fire types are important as they have widely varying atmospheric emissions and ecological impacts. Satellite based remote sensing is a practical means of monitoring the BTMFB that spans almost 4 million km2. However, there has been no way to reliably …

Detecting The Influence Of Best Management Practices On Vegetation Near Ephemeral Streams With Landsat Data, Matthew Rigge, Alexander Smart, Bruce Wylie, Kendall De Van Kamp

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Various best management practices (BMPs) have been implemented on rangelands with the goals of controlling nonpoint sourcepollution, reducing the impact of livestock in ecologically important riparian areas, and improving grazing distribution.Providing off-stream water sources to livestock in pastures, cross-fencing, and rotational grazing are common rangeland BMPsthat have demonstrated success in drawing livestock grazing pressure away from streams. We evaluated the effects of rangelandBMP implementation with six commercial-scale pastures in the northern mixed-grass prairie. Four pastures received a BMPsuite consisting of off-stream water, cross-fencing, and deferred-rotation grazing, and two pastures did not receive BMPs. Wehypothesized that the BMPs increased the quantity …

Land Surface Phenologies And Seasonalities Using Cool Earthlight In Mid-Latitude Croplands, Woubet G. Alemu, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Phenology deals with timing of biotic phenomena and seasonality concerns temporal patterns of abiotic variables. Studies of land surface phenology (LSP) and land surface seasonality (LSS) have long been limited to visible to near infrared (VNIR) wavelengths, despite degradation by atmospheric effects and solar illumination constraints. Enhanced land surface parameters derived from passive microwave data enable improved temporal monitoring of agricultural land surface dynamics compared to the vegetation index data available from VNIR data. LSPs and LSSs in grain growing regions of the Volga River Basin of Russia and the spring wheat belts of the USA and Canada were characterized …

Evaluation Of A Coupled Event-Driven Phenology And Evapotranspiration Model For Croplands In The United States Northern Great Plains, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry, D. P. Roy, B. Adusei, M. Hansen, G. Senay, D. M. Mocko

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

A new model coupling scheme with remote sensing data assimilation was developed for estimation of daily actual evapotranspiration (ET). The scheme consists of the VegET, a model to estimate ET from meteorological and water balance data, and an Event Driven Phenology Model (EDPM), an empirical crop specific model trained on multiple years of flux tower data transformed into six types of environmental forcings that are called “events” to emphasize their temporally discrete character, which has advantages for modeling multiple contingent influences. The EDPM in prognostic mode supplies seasonal trajectories of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); whereas in diagnostic mode, it …

The Global Availability Of Landsat 5 Tm And Landsat 7 Etm+ Land Surface Observations And Implications For Global 30m Landsat Data Product Generation, V. Kovalskyy, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

With the advent of the free U.S. Landsat data policy it is now feasible to consider the generation of global coverage 30 m Landsat data sets with temporal reporting frequency similar to that provided by the monthly Web Enabled Landsat (WELD) products. A statistical Landsat metadata analysis is reported considering more than 800,000 Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM + acquisitions obtained from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center archive. The global monthly probabilities of acquiring a cloud-free land surface observation for December 1998 to November 2001 (2000 epoch) and from December 2008 …

Daily Modis 500 M Reflectance Anisotropy Direct Broadcast (Db) Products For Monitoring Vegetation Phenology Dynamics, Yanmin Shuai, Crystal Schaaf, Xiaoyang Zhang, Alan Strahler, David P. Roy, Jeffery Morisette, Zhuosen Wang, Joanne Nightingale, Jaime Nickerson, Andrew D. Richardson, Donghui Xie, Jindi Wang, Xiaowen Li, Kathleen Strabala, James E. Davies

GSCE Faculty Publications

Land surface vegetation phenology is an efficient bio-indicator for monitoring ecosystem variation in response to changes in climatic factors. The primary objective of the current article is to examine the utility of the daily MODIS 500 m reflectance anisotropy direct broadcast (DB) product for monitoring the evolution of vegetation phenological trends over selected crop, orchard, and forest regions. Although numerous model-fitted satellite data have been widely used to assess the spatio-temporal distribution of land surface phenological patterns to understand phenological process and phenomena, current efforts to investigate the details of phenological trends, especially for natural phenological variations that occur on …

The Establishment And Reterritorialization Of Planning Districts In South Dakota As A Response To Economic Challenges, George W. White, Robert H. Watrel

Geography Faculty Publications

Rural areas in South Dakota have been experiencing population decline over the last forty years. This has reduced tax revenues of small town and cities, in turn reducing the abilities of local governments to provide services. The concurrent rise in federal monies and federal policies has caused many local communities to reterritorialize into planning districts that are quasi-government in nature. These planning districts bring together the resources and talents of local communities to obtain much needed federal monies through grants. This is an examination of this process and its effects within South Dakota.

Sagebrush Ecosystem Characterization, Monitoring, And Forecasting With Remote Sensing: Quantifying Future Climate And Wildlife Habitat Change, Collin G. Homer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems constitute the largest single North American shrub ecosystem and provide vital ecological, hydrological, biological, agricultural, and recreational ecosystem services. Disturbances continue to alter this ecosystem, with climate change possibly representing the greatest future disturbance risk. Improved ways to characterize and monitor gradual change in this ecosystem are vital to its future management. A new remote sensing sagebrush characterization approach was developed in Wyoming which integrates three scales of remote sensing to derive four primary continuous field components (bare ground, herbaceousness, litter, and shrub), and four secondary components (sagebrush, big sagebrush, Wyoming sagebrush, and shrub …

Impacts Of Land Cover Changes On Ecosystem Services Delivery In The Black Hills Ecoregion From 1950 To 2010, Suzanne Cotillon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental degradation generated by land use choices and human activities is the first driver of change in the provision of ecosystem goods and services. One of the challenges in ecosystem services research is to evaluate the contribution of each land cover unit to ecosystem services delivery while considering multiple services. In this thesis, I develop a framework to assess the capacity of many land covers to independently produce ecosystem services (i.e., potential production) and the capacity of the whole landscape to deliver multiple services to the population (i.e., potential supply). In the first part, this methodology is used to report …

Energy In The Corn Belt: Is Maize Production Sustainable?, Matthew Bernau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Technological and scientific innovation has transformed agricultural production. Corn production methods changed from a sustainable, nutrient recycling production system to one reliant on imported fossil energy inputs. Located in the Western Corn Belt, Union County, South Dakota was chosen as the study area. Changes in production methods are represented by four technological epochs: 1) The Draft Horse Epoch, 1890-1920; 2) The Tractor Epoch, 1920-1950; 3) The Fertilizer Epoch, 1950-1980; and 4) The Biotechnology and Precision Agriculture Epoch, 1980-2010. The energy budget method was used to measure the energy sustainability of corn production. The findings show that the volume of corn …

Near-Real-Time Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product From Geostationary Satellite Constellation, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, Jessica Ram, Christopher Schmidt, Ho-Chung Huang

GSCE Faculty Publications

Near-real-time estimates of biomass burning emissions are crucial for air quality monitoring and forecasting. We present here the first near-real-time global biomass burning emission product from geostationary satellites (GBBEP-Geo) produced from satellite-derived fire radiative power (FRP) for individual fire pixels. Specifically, the FRP is retrieved using WF_ABBA V65 (wildfire automated biomass burning algorithm) from a network of multiple geostationary satellites. The network consists of two Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) which are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Meteosat second-generation satellites (Meteosat-09) operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and the Multifunctional Transport …

Prototype For Monitoring And Forecasting Fall Foliage Coloration In Real Time From Satellite Data, Xiaoyang Zhang, Mitchell D. Goldberg, Yunyue Yu

GSCE Faculty Publications

While determining vegetation phenology from the time series of historical satellite data has been widely investigated throughout the last decade, little effort has been devoted to real-time monitoring and short-term forecasting. The latter is more important for numerical weather modeling, ecosystem forecasting, forest and crop management, and health risk warning. In this study we developed a prototype approach for the real-time monitoring and short-term forecasting of fall foliage status (including low coloration, moderate coloration, near-peak coloration, peak coloration, and post-peak coloration) using temporal satellite observations. The algorithm combined the climatology of vegetation phenology and temporally available satellite observations to establish …

Remote Sensing-Based Time Series Models For Malaria Early Warning In The Highlands Of Ethiopia, A. Midekisa, G. Senay, G. M. Henebry, P. Semuniguse, M. C. Wimberly

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Background

Malaria is one of the leading public health problems in most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. Almost all demographic groups are at risk of malaria because of seasonal and unstable transmission of the disease. Therefore, there is a need to develop malaria early-warning systems to enhance public health decision making for control and prevention of malaria epidemics. Data from orbiting earth-observing sensors can monitor environmental risk factors that trigger malaria epidemics. Remotely sensed environmental indicators were used to examine the influences of climatic and environmental variability on temporal patterns of malaria cases in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. …

Projected Surface Raidiative Forcing Due To 2000-2050 Land-Cover Land-Use Albedo Change Over The Eastern United States, Christoper A. Barnes, David P. Roy, Thomas R. Loveland

GSCE Faculty Publications

Satellite-derived contemporary land-cover land-use (LCLU) and albedo data and modeled future LCLU are used to study the impact of LCLU change from 2000 to 2050 on surface albedo and radiative forcing for 19 ecoregions in the eastern United States. The modeled 2000–2050 LCLU changes indicate a future decrease in both agriculture and forested land and an increase in developed land that induces ecoregion radiative forcings ranging from −0.175 to 0.432 W m−2 driven predominately by differences in the area and type of LCLU change. At the regional scale, these projected LCLU changes induce a net negative albedo decrease (−0.001) and …

Sensitivity Analysis Of The Gems Soil Organic Carbon Model To Land Cover Land Use Classification Uncertainties Under Different Climate Scenarios In Senegal, Amadou M. Dieye, David P. Roy, N. P. Hanan, S. Lui, M. Hansen, A. Toure

GSCE Faculty Publications

Spatially explicit land cover land use (LCLU) change information is needed to drive biogeochemical models that simulate soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. Such information is increasingly being mapped using remotely sensed satellite data with classification schemes and uncertainties constrained by the sensing system, classification algorithms and land cover schemes. In this study, automated LCLU classification of multi-temporal Landsat satellite data were used to assess the sensitivity of SOC modeled by the Global Ensemble Biogeochemical Modeling System (GEMS). The GEMS was run for an area of 1560km2 in Senegal under three climate change scenarios with LCLU maps generated using different Landsat …

Alternative Methods To Predict Actual Evapotranspiration Illustrate The Importance Of Accounting For Phenology: The Event Driven Phenology Model Part Ii, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Evapotranspiration (ET) flux constitutes a major component of both the water and energy balances at the land surface. Among the many factors that control evapotranspiration, phenology poses a major source of uncertainty in attempts to predict ET. Contemporary approaches to ET modeling and monitoring frequently summarize the complexity of the seasonal development of vegetation cover into static phenological trajectories (or climatologies) that lack sensitivity to changing environmental conditions. The Event Driven Phenology Model (EDPM) offers an alternative, interactive approach to representing phenology. This study presents the results of an experiment designed to illustrate the differences in ET arising from various …

A New Concept For Simulation Of Vegetated Land Surface Dynamics: The Event Driven Phenology Model Part I, V. Kovalskyy, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Phenologies of the vegetated land surface are being used increasingly for diagnosis and prognosis of climate change consequences. Current prospective and retrospective phenological models stand far apart in their approaches to the subject. We report on an exploratory attempt to implement a phenological model based on a new event driven concept which has both diagnostic and prognostic capabilities in the same modeling framework. This Event Driven Phenological Model (EDPM) is shown to simulate land surface phenologies and phenophase transition dates in agricultural landscapes based on assimilation of weather data and land surface observations from spaceborne sensors. The model enables growing …

Geography Newsletter, Department Of Geography

Geography Newsletter

Contents:
New Additions: Dr. Trisha Jackson [and] Delora Bennett [Page] 2
Trip to Romania [Page] 3
To the Rocky Mountains and . . . [Page] 4
AAG Meetings [Page] 5
Geography Awareness Week [Page] 6
42nd Annual South Dakota State Geography Convention 2011 [Page] 7-9
John Fraser Hart Day Proclaimed [Page] 10-11
43rd Annual South Dakota State Geography Convention 2012 [Page] 12
The Council of Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA) [Page] 12
2011 ESRI International Users Conference [Page] 12
Student Graduations [Page] 13
Friends of Geography 2010 and 2011 [Page] 14
Successful Career : Joan Bruinsma [Page] 15
Alumni News and …

Continuity Of Landsat Obersvations: Short Term Considerations, Michael A. Wulder, Joanne C. White, Jeffrey G. Masek, John Dwyer, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

As of writing in mid-2010, both Landsat-5 and -7 continue to function, with sufficient fuel to enable data collection until the launch of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) scheduled for December of 2012. Failure of one or both of Landsat-5 or -7 may result in a lack of Landsat data for a period of time until the 2012 launch. Although the potential risk of a component failure increases the longer the sensor's design life is exceeded, the possible gap in Landsat data acquisition is reduced with each passing day and the risk of Landsat imagery being unavailable diminishes for …

Exploiting The Power Law Distribution Properties Of Satellite Fire Redaiative Power Retrials: A Method To Estimate Fire Radiative Energy And Biomass Burned From Sparse Satellite Observations, S. S. Kumar, David P. Roy, L. Boschetti, R. Kremens

GSCE Faculty Publications

Instantaneous estimates of the power released by fire (fire radiative power, FRP) are available with satellite active fire detection products. The temporal integral of FRP provides an estimate of the fire radiative energy (FRE) that is related linearly to the amount of biomass burned needed by the atmospheric emissions modeling community. The FRE, however, is sensitive to satellite temporal and spatial FRP undersampling due to infrequent satellite overpasses, cloud and smoke obscuration, and failure to detect cool and/or small fires. Satellite FRPs derived over individual burned areas and fires have been observed to exhibit power law distributions. This property is …

Geography Newsletter, Department Of Geography

Geography Newsletter

Contents:
Romanian Delegation [Page] 2
AAG Great Plains? Rocky Mountain Regional Meeting [Page] 2
Professor Donald J. Berg [Page] 3
Enhancing the Physical Geography Laboratory Curriculum [Page] 3
Georgia's Been on My Mind [Page] 4
Graduate Student Travel to the Philippines [Page] 4
42nd Annual South Dakota State Geography Convention [Page] 6
2010 Scholarships [Page] 7
Student Graduations [Page] 7
Research in the Department [Page] 8-10
Alumni News [Page] 11-13
Supporting Geography [Page] 13
Fritz's Retirement Gathering [Page] 14

Upscaling Carbon Fluxes Over The Great Plains Grasslands: Sinks And Sources, Li Zhang, Bruce K. Wylie, Lei Ji, Tagir G. Gilmanov, Larry L. Tieszen, Daniel M. Howard

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Previous studies suggested that the grasslands may be carbon sinks or near equilibrium, and they often shift between carbon sources in drought years and carbon sinks in other years. It is important to understand the responses of net ecosystem production (NEP) to various climatic conditions across the U.S. Great Plains grasslands. Based on 15 grassland flux towers, we developed a piecewise regression model and mapped the grassland NEP at 250 m spatial resolution over the Great Plains from 2000 to 2008. The results showed that the Great Plains was a net sink with an averaged annual NEP of 24 ± …

Radiative Forcing Over The Conterminous United States Due To Contemporary Land Cover Use Change And Sensitivity To Snow And Interannual Albedo Variability, Christoper A. Barnes, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Satellite‐derived land cover land use (LCLU), snow and albedo data, and incoming surface solar radiation reanalysis data were used to study the impact of LCLU change from 1973 to 2000 on surface albedo and radiative forcing for 58 ecoregions covering 69% of the conterminous United States. A net positive surface radiative forcing (i.e., warming) of 0.029 Wm−2 due to LCLU albedo change from 1973 to 2000 was estimated. The forcings for individual ecoregions were similar in magnitude to current global forcing estimates, with the most negative forcing (as low as −0.367 Wm−2) due to the transition to forest and the …

United States Land Cover Land Use Change, Albedo And Radiative Forcing: Past And Potential Climate Implications, Christopher A. Barnes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Land Cover Land Use (LCLU) change affects Earth surface properties including albedo that impose a radiative forcing on the climate. Recent spatially explicit satellite derived contemporary LCLU, albedo, and projected LCLU data are used to study the impact of LCLU change from 1973 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2050, on albedo and surface radiative forcing for the conterminous United States. Four research hypotheses concerned with past and potential future climate implications of LCLU change are addressed. The research described in this dissertation makes an important contribution to advancing understanding of the role of LCLU change on the climate system, …

Tracking Bare Sand Mobilization Arising From Landscape Manipulations In The Grasslands Destabilization Experiment (Gdex) In The Nebraska Sandhills Using Imaging Spectroscopy, Benjamin Helder

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Grassland Destabilization Experiment (GDEX) is a landscape scale manipulative experiment initiated in 2004 in the Nebraska Sandhills to evaluate changes in surface properties following the abrupt loss of stabilizing vegetation. The GDEX features five treatments allocated among ten plots of 120 m in diameter (1.13 ha). The Aggressive Bare Sand protocol included chemical defoliation and subsequent shallow disking and raking in 2004 to devegetate the plot with periodic physical disturbance to maintain bare sand. The Long Term Disturbance (Press) protocol includes an initial chemical defoliation in May 2005 and seasonal spring reapplications, but no physical disturbance. Short Term Disturbance …

Reanalysis Data Underestimate Significant Changes In Growing Season Weather In Kazakhstan, C. K. Wright, K. M. De Beurs, Z. K. Akhmadiyeva, P. Y. Groisman, G. M. Henebry

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

We present time series analyses of recently compiled climate station data which allowed us to assess contemporary trends in growing season weather across Kazakhstan as drivers of a significant decline in growing season normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) recently observed by satellite remote sensing across much of Central Asia. We used a robust nonparametric time series analysis method, the seasonal Kendall trend test to analyze georeferenced time series of accumulated growing season precipitation (APPT) and accumulated growing degree-days (AGDD). Over the period 2000–2006 we found geographically extensive, statistically significant (p < 0.05) decreasing trends in APPT and increasing trends in AGDD. The temperature trends were especially apparent during the warm season and coincided with precipitation decreases in northwest Kazakhstan, indicating that pervasive drought conditions and higher temperature excursions were the likely drivers of NDVI declines observed in Kazakhstan over the same period. We also compared the APPT and AGDD trends at individual stations with results from trend analysis of gridded monthly precipitation data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) Full Data Reanalysis v4 and gridded daily near surface air temperature from the National Centers for Climate Prediction Reanalysis v2 (NCEP R2). We found substantial deviation between the station and the reanalysis trends, suggesting that GPCC and NCEP data substantially underestimate the geographic extent of recent drought in Kazakhstan. Although gridded climate products offer many advantages in ease of use and complete coverage, our findings for Kazakhstan should serve as a caveat against uncritical use of GPCC and NCEP reanalysis data and demonstrate the importance of compiling and standardizing daily climate data from data-sparse regions like Central Asia.

Strategies For The Fusion Of Satellite Fire Radiative Power With Burned Area Data For Fire Radiative Energy Derivation, Luigi Boschetti, David P. Roy

GSCE Faculty Publications

Instantaneous estimates of the power released by a fire (Fire Radiative Power, FRP) are available with satellite active fire detection products. Integrating FRP in time provides an estimate of the total energy released (Fire Radiative Energy, FRE), which can be converted into burned biomass estimates needed by the atmospheric emissions modeling community. While straightforward in theory, the integration of FRP in time and space is affected by temporal and spatial undersampling imposed by the satellite sensing and orbit geometry, clouds, and active fire product omission errors. Combination of active fire FRP estimates with independently derived burned area maps provides the …