Geography Commons^™

Identification Of Poverty Areas By Using Machine Learning Classification Methods From Satellite Imagery In Buraydah City, In The Qassim Region Of Saudi Arabia, Amal Alfawzan

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country with its many resources, but it has seen an increase in poverty recently because of a high rate of population growth with a high rate of unemployment. Some estimate that the number of Saudi Arabians living in poverty is between two and four million. This research aims to develop a way to detect poverty through remote sensing. The study area is Buraydah City, the largest city of the Qassim region, an important agricultural center that plays a significant role in the economy of Saudi Arabia. The research hypothesized that there are poor areas within …

Effects Of Human Activities On The Afaka Afforestation Project, Kaduna North, Kaduna State, Nigeria, Mamman Shaba Jibril, Mary Oluyemisi Ariyo, Ali Williams Butu, Chukwudi Nnaemeka Emeribe

Jurnal Geografi Lingkungan Tropik (Journal of Geography of Tropical Environments)

The study aimed to investigate the effects of human activities on the Afaka afforestation project, Kaduna State, Nigeria. Structured interview was used to evaluate the level of community involvement in the modification of the forest project, their perceived environmental effects of landcover loss. Landsat images of 1986, 1999 and Sentinel-2 image of 2017 were applied for detection of changes in land use/land cover over the years (1986-2017). The study found that the land cover structure of the forest reserve has changed significantly. In 1986, area under crop cultivation was 19.24%, built-up areas, 0.08%, disturbed forest, 7.57%, gully, 2.60%, riparian vegetation, …

Observations Of Post-Wildfire Landcover Trends In Boreal Alaska Using A Suite Of Remote Sensing Approaches, Eric John Deutsch

Theses - ALL

Wildfires are a common occurrence in the boreal ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. Studies suggest that anthropogenic climate change has fostered more frequent and higher severity fires in recent decades in these forests, which may result in substantial changes in vegetation structure and ecosystem functioning. However, large-scale studies examining the linkages between changing boreal wildfire regimes and vegetation structure have historically been limited in spatial scope due to the broad area and inaccessibility of many boreal regions, including the Alaskan interior. The development and advancement of satellite remote sensing instruments and geospatial analysis techniques provide researchers with unmatched abilities to …

Monitoring War Destruction From Space Using Machine Learning, Hannes Mueller, Andre Groeger, Jonathan Hersh, Andrea Matranga, Joan Serrat

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Satellite imagery is becoming ubiquitous. Research has demonstrated that artificial intelligence applied to satellite imagery holds promise for automated detection of war-related building destruction. While these results are promising, monitoring in real-world applications requires high precision, especially when destruction is sparse and detecting destroyed buildings is equivalent to looking for a needle in a haystack. We demonstrate that exploiting the persistent nature of building destruction can substantially improve the training of automated destruction monitoring. We also propose an additional machine-learning stage that leverages images of surrounding areas and multiple successive images of the same area, which further improves detection significantly. …

Spatial Assessment Of Urban Growth In Cities Of The Decapolis; And The Implications For Modern Cities, Wade A. Pierson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Levant’s Decapolis was a network of ten cities in Greco-Roman Israel, Jordan, and Syria that established a thriving economic community. The Decapolis was home to ancient and modern cities like Damascus (Dammásq) and Amman (Philadelphia). Despite the various origins of these cities, Roman administration and their city planners oversaw the implementation of idealized Roman city form throughout the region. Three Decapolis cities represent intriguing examples of the larger confederation. Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), and Gadara (Umm Qais) represent cities of common original urban form which developed drastically diverse urban morphologies over time.

Spatial analyses of these cities required working …

A Karst Feature Prediction Model For Prince Of Wales Island, Alaska Based On High Resolution Lidar Imagery, Alexander Lyles

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Investigation into surface karst formation is significant to hazard prediction, hydrogeologic drainage, and land management. Southeast Alaska contains over 600,000 acres of mapped carbonate bedrock, and some of the fastest recorded karst dissolution in the world. The objectives of this study are to develop and compare multiple semi-automated models to map and delineate karst features from bare-earth LiDAR imagery using ArcGIS Desktop 10.7, and to apply a preliminary geostatistical analysis of sinkhole morphometric parameters to highlight potential spatial patterns of karst evolution on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. A semi-automated approach of mapping karst features provides a dataset that minimizes …

Remote Sensing Applications In Population Estimation, Regression Analysis, And Urban Growth Simulation Modeling For A Middle Eastern City, Elaf Amer Alyasiri

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Due to a change in government regime and population migration, the City of Hillah in Iraq has been facing several urban issues, particularly population estimating and urban growth planning. Since the last census conducted in 1997, population in Iraq has been estimated based on the annual growth, without considering migration as factor of the population growth. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation study was to develop a population estimation method and an urban growth simulation method for the City of Hillah. Population data were estimated for Hillah, using the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) derived from Remote Sensing (RS) and …

Snow-Albedo Feedback In Northern Alaska: How Vegetation Influences Snowmelt, Lucas C. Reckhaus

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates how the snow-albedo feedback mechanism of the arctic is changing in response to rising climate temperatures. Specifically, the interplay of vegetation and snowmelt, and how these two variables can be correlated. This has the potential to refine climate modelling of the spring transition season. Research was conducted at the ecoregion scale in northern Alaska from 2000 to 2020. Each ecoregion is defined by distinct topographic and ecological conditions, allowing for meaningful contrast between the patterns of spring albedo transition across surface conditions and vegetation types. The five most northerly ecoregions of Alaska are chosen as they encompass …

An Evaluation Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems' Ability To Assess Stripe Rust In Large Wheat Breeding Nursies, Jamison T. Murry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Stripe Rust (Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici) is a foliar disease that significantly impacts global wheat production, and resistant cultivars provide the most efficient method of control. High-throughput phenotyping using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) offers a potentially more efficient method for field-based phenotyping compared to visual assessment. Here we tested the ability of remote sensing to predict stripe rust severity in a diverse population of 594 soft red winter wheat lines, planted in single-rows, and evaluated them by visually rating stripe rust intensity and remotely using the dark green color index (DGCI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and blue NDVI. …

Changes In Land Use Land Cover (Lulc), Surface Water Quality And Modelling Surface Discharge In Beaver Creek Watershed, Northeast Tennessee And Southwest Virginia, Tosin James

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beaver Creek is an impaired streams that is not supporting its designated use for recreation due to Escherichia coli (E.coli), and sediment. To address this problem, this thesis was divided into two studies.

The first study explored changes in Land Use Land Cover (LULC), and its impact on surface water quality. Changes in E.coli load between 1997-2001 and 2014-2018 were analyzed. Also, Landsat data of 2001, and 2018 were examined in Terrset 18.31. Mann-Whitney test only showed a significant reduction in E.coli for one site. Negative correlation was established between E.coli load, and Developed LULC, Forest LULC, and …

Remote Sensing And Social Sensing For Improved Flood Awareness And Exposure Analysis In The Big Data Era, Xiao Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Floods are among the most devastating hazards on Earth, posing great threats to a large amount of population in the world. As the severity and frequency of flood events have noticeably increased, there is a growing need to improve the flood awareness and exposure analysis to assist flood mitigation. Fortunately, the Era of Big Data has fostered many innovative spatial data sources as well as spatial data analytics. This dissertation advances the existing flood monitoring studies by obtaining enhanced flood awareness via the development of a data fusion enable and deep learning supported flood monitoring framework that systematically integrates remotely …

Assessment Of Land Cover Change In St. Martin’S Marsh Aquatic Preserve, Florida, Usa, Katie Wagner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

St. Martin’s Marsh Aquatic Preserve (SMMAP) is a 28,461 acre (115.18 km2) preserve located on the coast of Citrus County, Florida, USA. There has been no published research that focused on coastal change on this unique coast. This thesis research focuses on coastal land cover change that has occurred within the preserve from 1988 to 2018. Multitemporal Landsat images were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) classification, while changes in vegetation were evaluated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Field research was conducted to examine nineteen sites for classification training and test data and notes on habitat composition. …

Application Of Forest Canopy Density (Fcd) Model For The Hotspot Monitoring Of Crown Fire In Tebo, Jambi Province, Muhammad Attorik Falensky, Anggieani Laras Sulti, Ranggas Dhuha Putra, Kuswantoro Marko

Jurnal Geografi Lingkungan Tropik (Journal of Geography of Tropical Environments)

Indonesia is one of the owners of the 9th largest forest area in the world. Forest area in Indonesia reaches 884,950 km2 . Tebo Regency is a regency in Jambi Province which has a wide forest area of 628,003 Ha. However, this forest area has been reduced due to the conversion of functions of Industrial Plantation Forests (HTI), oil palm plantations, and forest clearing activities for both settlements and plantations which led to the phenomenon of forest and land fires (karhutla). This study aims to get a better knowledge of crowns of fire potential locations in forest areas using remote …

Change Is The Only Constant: A Snowpack Retention Analysis And Climate Vulnerability Road Map For The Skalkaho Creek Sub-Basin, Zachary Freeman Goodwin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate change is impacting the whole of North America, although the impacts differ depending on regional geography. In the Intermountain West, climate change is contributing to lower overall snowpack totals and diminished late season streamflows. These changes will likely contribute to vulnerabilities in how much water is available to irrigators, municipalities, and fisheries dependent upon a consistent yearly flow of meltwater. This paper explores how snowpack retention has changed via the NASA dataset Daymet, which provides gridded estimates of weather parameters including Snow Water Equivalent in the Bitterroot River Basin of western Montana. This analysis showed that snowpack retention from …

A Karst Feature Predictability Model Within Barber County, Kansas, Gary M. Kelner

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This research consisted of two topics: 1) geographic predictive models of karst features and 2), a petrographic study examining the lithology of the study area. The study area is a privately owned ranch in the Gypsum Hills of Barber County, Kansas and is known to have karst features. Two predictive models for karst features were utilized. Previously identified features, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery aided in the creation of these predictive models. These predictability models also used the ESRI ArcMap software platform. The data for these models consists of slope, …

Estimating Free-Flow Speed With Lidar And Overhead Imagery, Armin Hadzic

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Understanding free-flow speed is fundamental to transportation engineering in order to improve traffic flow, control, and planning. The free-flow speed of a road segment is the average speed of automobiles unaffected by traffic congestion or delay. Collecting speed data across a state is both expensive and time consuming. Some approaches have been presented to estimate speed using geometric road features for certain types of roads in limited environments. However, estimating speed at state scale for varying landscapes, environments, and road qualities has been relegated to manual engineering and expensive sensor networks. This thesis proposes an automated approach for estimating free-flow …

Using Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drones) With A Thermal Sensor To Map And Count Deer Population, Maxwell C. Ott

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The number of deer in an area is an important statistic for land managers to know, as overabundance has many negative effects. There are many methods that have been used to count deer in the past, such as using manned helicopters and airplanes, walking on foot, and conducting controlled hunts. UAS (unmanned aerial systems) is a growing field that provides many benefits over traditional methods of counting deer, such as lower cost and missions being less time consuming. Using a thermal sensor attached to a UAS makes it simple to spot any deer during a flight. Two main methods of …

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Lake Water Quality Indicators On Small Lakes, Lake Bloomington And Evergreen Lake In Central Illinois, Using Satellite Remote Sensing, Gare Ambrose-Igho

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the use of Sentinel-2 satellite to determine the spatiotemporal patterns of lake water quality indicators (e.g. chlorophyll a) in Lake Bloomington and Evergreen Lake. Lake water quality issues related to algal blooms is a serious problem in basins with abundant agricultural lands causing harmful effects to freshwater ecosystems such as pollution of beaches, taste and odor problems in drinking water, depletion of oxygen levels causing fish kills and the issue of water exceeding safe drinking water standards. Developing monitoring techniques using various water quality indicators of algal blooms is crucial. In this project, remote sensing and field …

Remote Sensing Of Avalanche Paths In Glacier National Park, Montana, Morgan Voss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Snow avalanches are the common form of mass wasting in the high mountain environments of Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana. These natural disturbances play important roles in mountain ecosystems by regularly disturbing montane systems, providing critical habitat for some species, transporting debris, and influencing vegetation and fire dynamics. Since the 1900s, natural avalanche-related activity recorded along important transportation corridors within the park has frequently disrupted transportation.

While many of the steep slopes of GNP are susceptible to avalanching, formal inventories exist only for small, critical portions of the park and they vary substantially from one another. GNP’s protected status does …

Evaluation Of An Extended Pics (Epics) For Calibration And Stability Monitoring Of Optical Satellite Sensors, Md Nahid Hasan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pseudo Invariant Calibration Sites (PICS) have been increasingly used as an independent data source for on-orbit radiometric calibration and stability monitoring of optical satellite sensors. Generally, this would be a small region of land that is extremely stable in time and space, predominantly found in North Africa. Use of these small regions, referred to as traditional PICS, can be limited by: i) the spatial extent of an individual Region of Interest (ROI) and/or site; ii) and the frequency of how often the site can be acquired, based on orbital patterns and cloud cover at the site, both impacting the time …

Remote Sensing Of Planetary Boundary Layer Height And Particulate Matter 2.5 In New York State Mesonet Network, Bhupal Shrestha

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract:

Object-Based Supervised Machine Learning Regional-Scale Land-Cover Classification Using High Resolution Remotely Sensed Data, Christopher A. Ramezan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

High spatial resolution (HR) (1m – 5m) remotely sensed data in conjunction with supervised machine learning classification are commonly used to construct land-cover classifications. Despite the increasing availability of HR data, most studies investigating HR remotely sensed data and associated classification methods employ relatively small study areas. This work therefore drew on a 2,609 km2, regional-scale study in northeastern West Virginia, USA, to investigates a number of core aspects of HR land-cover supervised classification using machine learning. Issues explored include training sample selection, cross-validation parameter tuning, the choice of machine learning algorithm, training sample set size, and feature selection. A …

[Introduction To] Collateral Values: The Natural Capital Created By Landscapes Of War., Todd R. Lookingbill, Peter D. Smallwood

Bookshelf

This book explores the unanticipated benefits that may arise after wars and conflicts, showing how the preservation of battlefields and the establishment of borderlands can create natural capital in the former landscapes of war. The editors call this Collateral Value, in contrast to the collateral damage that war inflicts upon infrastructure, natural capital, and human capital. The book includes case studies recounting successes and failures, opportunities and risks, and ambitious proposals.

The book is organized in two sections. The first visits U.S., English, and French battlefield sites dating from medieval England to World War I. The second explores borderlands located …

Utilization Of Various Methods And A Landsat Ndvi/Google Earth Engine Product For Classifying Irrigated Land Cover, Andrew Nemecek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Methods for classifying irrigated land cover are often complex and not quickly reproducible. Further, moderate resolution time-series datasets have been consistently utilized to produce irrigated land cover products over the past decade, and the body of irrigation classification literature contains no examples of subclassification of irrigated land cover by irrigation method. Creation of geospatial irrigated land cover products with higher resolution datasets could improve reliability, and subclassification of irrigation by method could provide better information for hydrologists and climatologists attempting to model the role of irrigation in the surface-ground water cycle and the water-energy balance. This study summarizes a simple, …

Uas, Joseph P. Hupy

Purdue GIS Day

This roundtable focuses on UAS as a geospatial data collection tool. Researchers with extensive background in GIS and remote sensing software, or interest in incorporating their UAS data more into GIS discuss about possible research opportunities and collaboration as well as how to incorporate UAS and GIS into curriculum.

Native American Occupation Of The Singer-Hieronymus Site Complex: Developing Site History By Integrating Remote Sensing And Archaeological Excavation, Claiborne Sea

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Located on a ridgetop in central Kentucky, the Singer-Hieronymus Site Complex consists of at least four Native American villages. The Native Americans who lived there are called the “Fort Ancient” by archaeologists. This study examined relationships between these villages, both spatially and temporally, to build a more complete history of site occupation. To do this, aerial imagery analysis, geophysical survey, and archaeological investigations were conducted. This research determined there were differences among villages in terms of their size, however other characteristics—internal village organization, village shape, radiometric dates, and material culture—overlapped significantly. Additionally, landscape-scale geophysical survey identified at least three potentially …

Assessment Of The Socio-Environmental Impacts Of The Urban Expansion Using Gis And Remote Sensing In The City Of Guayaquil, Ecuador., Erika P. Jimenez Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the impacts of the urban expansion from 1990 to 2010 in Guayaquil, Ecuador using geospatial technologies. It incorporates census and land cover data to identify the social and environmental repercussions through Hot Spot Analysis, land cover classification, and Markov chains model.

Sustainable Intensification Of Agriculture: Opportunities And Challenges For Food Security And Agrarian Adaptation To Environmental Change In Bangladesh, Aaron Michael Shew

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates three unique aspects of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) in the context of Bangladeshi rice production. The first article presents a qualitative analysis of SAI and farmer surveys in the embanked polder region of coastal Bangladesh. The second article investigates the global food security and environmental impacts of already adopted High Yielding Variety (HYV) rice and double-cropped rice systems in Bangladesh using a spatial partial equilibrium trade model and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The final article demonstrates a remote sensing methodology for monitoring dry season rice production at 30 m resolution in Bangladesh using a harmonic time …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Fusing Satellite Data To Monitor The Urban Area's Effect On Plant Phenology, Norman Gervais

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation centrally focuses on developing and validating the use of fused satellite imagery to monitor the effects of the urban area on plant phenology, specifically the timing of the start and end of the growing season (SOS and EOS, respectively). In the first paper, Chapter 2, data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat were fused together using the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM) to produce a time series of a high spatial and high temporal resolution vegetation index. From this time series, the SOS and EOS were extracted and compared between the urban …