Geography Commons^™

Elevation And Azimuth-Aided Channel Estimation Scheme For Airborne Hyperspectral Data Transmission, Vahid Vahidi, Ebrahim Saberinia

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

A channel-estimation (CE) scheme is proposed to estimate the complex amplitude, Doppler shift, angle-of-departure, and angle-of-arrival of the channel taps for sparse and doubly selective channels for hyperspectral image transmission from unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) to ground stations. The proposed method is dubbed as compressed-sensing joint parameter estimation (CS-JPE) and finds the channel parameters matrix by employing a compressed-sensing (CS)-based method. Afterward, a modified version of the joint parameter estimation (JPE) is proposed as CS-JPE and is dubbed as M-CS-JPE, which employs the elevation-azimuth angles of the line-of-sight channel tap to estimate the channel parameters with higher accuracy and lower …

Bhutan Landscape Anomaly: Possible Effect On Himalayan Economy (In View Of Optimal Description Of Elevation Profiles), Thach N. Nguyen, Laxman Bokati, Aaron A. Velasco, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Economies of countries located in seismic zones are strongly effected by this seismicity. If we underestimate the seismic activity, then a reasonably routine earthquake can severely damage the existing structures and thus, lead to huge economic losses. On the other hand, if we overestimate the seismic activity, we waste a lot of resources on unnecessarily fortifying all the buildings -- and this too harms the economies. From this viewpoint, it is desirable to have estimations of regional seismic activities which are as accurate as possible. Current predictions are mostly based on the standard geophysical understanding of earthquakes as being largely …

Finding Ft. Smith And Ft. Star In Smithland, Ky, Austin Valentine, Austin Valentine Jr.

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Through the utilization of Light Detection and Ranging data, one can compile 3-dimensional models that can be used to spot anomalies of historical interest. These anomalies, if recognizable by the trained eye, can then be used to geo-reference historic maps to gain a better understanding of historic sites as well as to reveal possible areas of interests or unknown features.

By using a 3-dimensional model compiled by LiDAR data, I was able to geo-reference a December 13^th, 1861 map of the Civil War defenses for the town of Smithland, Kentucky. Through this process, I have been able to …

No. 16: Cheap Industrial Food And The Urban Margins, Tony Weis, Marylynn Steckley, Bruce Frayne

Hungry Cities Partnership

From the middle of the 20th century onwards, the productivity gains associated with high-input, high-yield monocultures and livestock operations have become increasingly central to global food security and to dynamics of urbanization across the global south. On one hand, competition has deflated prices and helped undermine the viability of small farm livelihoods in many places. On the other hand, rising flows of cheap food have effectively subsidized urban migration in impoverished urban and peri-urban settings. But this cheapness is highly deceptive, as it hinges on the failure to account for an array of biological and physical costs – which can …

No. 17: Revisiting Africa's Supermarket Revolution, Jonathan Crush, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence N. Kazembe, Jeremy Wagner

Hungry Cities Partnership

Africa is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate and food systems are undergoing rapid transformation. This transformation is being driven in part by a global supermarket revolution. However, the idea of an inexorable supermarket revolution on the continent has recently been contested. This paper examines the role of supermarkets in Namibia’s capital city Windhoek to test the applicability of the model. The paper is based on (a) a review of the literature on South African supermarket expansion; (b) a survey of the food purchasing behaviour of a representative sample of 875 households in Windhoek; and (c) a comprehensive product inventory of …

No.03: Devising Urban Food Security Policy For African Cities, James Sgro

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Informal food services are one of the few options for financially disadvantaged families. Food access policy needs to be created in partnership with informal economy actors to ensure that those who rely on informal systems are not ignored.

■ As household size increases, the likelihood of food insecurity grows exponentially. Adequate social protection programs are required to support household dependants including children and the aged and improve food security.

■ Secondary school completion is a specific milestone that significantly increases one’s food security outlook. Free primary and secondary school policies could return dividends in terms of nation-wide food security, …

Niobrara National Scenic River, Socioeconomic Monitoring Pilot Implementation, Summer 2016, Resource Systems Group

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

This report describes the results of a visitor study at Niobrara National Scenic River (NSR) conducted from July 15 through July 24, 2016. During the sampling period, 253 visitor groups were contacted to participate in the survey. Of those groups, 217 agreed to participate in the study by accepting a mail-back survey packet. Questionnaires were completed and returned by 110 visitor groups, resulting in a completion rate of 51% among those visitor groups that agreed to participate in the study and an overall response rate of 43% for the study.

 This report profiles a systematic random sample …

Quality Assurance Plan For Monitoring White-Tailed Deer In The Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network, United States National Park Service, Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

In accordance with guidelines set forth by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Division, a quality-assurance plan has been created for use by the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network in the implementation of the White-tailed Deer Monitoring Protocol (HTLN 2018). This quality-assurance plan documents the standards, policies, and procedures used by the Heartland Network for activities related to the collection, processing, storage, analysis, and publication of monitoring data. The policies and procedures documented in this quality-assurance plan complement the quality-assurance plans for other monitoring activities conducted by the Heartland Network and supplement the National Inventory and Monitoring Division …

Economic Resilience And Concentration In Indiana Over 2002-2016, Santiago Ruiz, Michael Wilcox, Indraneel Kumar

Purdue GIS Day

It is well accepted that recessionary shocks affect long-term patterns of economic growth within regions. For this reason, it is important to understand how regional economies recover and in which extent a shock could be an economic burden in long term. A relevant variable to measure shock’s impact is employment, for two reasons. First, past recessions suggested that in most cases, the decline in employment tended to be deeper than in output. Second, layoffs of workers are key forms of adjustment to which employees seek to reduce costs. Given these, our research aims to understand shifts in employees during, after …

Gis Applications, Andriy Zhalnin, Indraneel Kumar, Benjamin St. Germain, Darrell Schulze, Rachel Moore, Mark Ehle

Purdue GIS Day

This roundtable discusses various GIS applications in different fields. Purdue's Center for Regional Development presents "harmonized space-time data and measures: a study of race, ethnicity and poverty". Prof. Darrell Schulze from Agronomy and Purdue Center for Environmental and Regulatory Information Systems showcase SoilExplorer, a soil map application for teaching and learning soil science. Mark Ehle, Tippcanoe County GIS administrator, introduces the county's GIS services and maps.

Gis To Address Questions In Forest Ecology And Management, Nicolas Picard

Purdue GIS Day

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are powerful tools to deal with spatialized issues. As such, they have become routine tools in forestry to delimit forest resources, support the design of forest inventories, map forest resources, and analyze, model and support decision making to sustainably manage forests. Two examples will be provided to show how forest management can benefit from progress in GIS technology. The first one deals with the optimization of forest roads to harvest trees in tropical rainforests. It required the development of heuristics to solve the multiple target access problem in a reasonable time. The second one deals with …

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.

Is Corruption Influenced By Human Development Index And Transparency? A Global Spatial Assessment Using Gis, Seyedali Ghahari, Shabnam Ghotbi, Samuel Labi, Nader Naderpajouh

Purdue GIS Day

The intricacy of the construction practices sometimes causes the vague atmosphere between clients, partners, and providers, is one of the Achilles heels of infrastructure projects; this grounds the industry as the most inefficient, corrupted business in the world. Governments, in recent years, have made a significant positive effort on public transparency. E-government is an effective tool to execute the very subject. Not only e-government helps transparency, but also it provides openness, accountability, the participation of citizens, etc. By giving citizens access to the functionality of public organizations and institutions, and providing open media for public debates, nations can obtain higher …

Spatial Humanities, Katherine M. Jarriel, Megha Anwer, Elizabeth Brite, Matthew Hannah, Amber N. Nickell

Purdue GIS Day

This roundtable introduces spatial humanities researches at Purdue. Projects include "Mapping Victorian women's habitation and violence encounter" by Dr. Megha Anwer; "Animating material agencies with GIS data: an example from the archealogy of the Soviet Union" by Dr. Elizabeth Brite; "Modeling community interaction in Bronze Age Greece" by Dr. Katherine Jarriel; "Mapping 'no place': Eastern and Central Europe's nineteenth and twentieth century phantom, indifferent, and alternative geographies by Amber Nickell.

How Much Do Purdue's Trees Weigh? Estimating Biomass In Urban Areas, Jacob Klaybor, Gillian Clark, Brady Hardiman

Purdue GIS Day

Vegetation plays an important role in urban areas by reducing the urban heat island effect, sequestering carbon emissions, and providing socioeconomic benefits to the surrounding areas. However, the roles and distributions of urban forests have historically been ignored or underestimated. This presentation uses the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, as a case study to quantify the aboveground vegetative biomass of campus trees. Tree biomass is calculated with data from the Purdue Arboretum and family-specific allometric relationships based on each tree's diameter at breast height to estimate the total carbon storage available within campus trees. Biomass estimates of …

Economic Resilience And Diversity In Indiana From 2002 To 2016, Santiago Ruiz, Michael Wilcox, Indraneel Kumar

Purdue GIS Day

It is well accepted that recessionary shocks affect long-term patterns of economic growth within regions. For this reason, it is important to understand how regional economies recover and in which extent a shock could be an economic burden in long term. A relevant variable to measure shock’s impact is employment, for two reasons. First, past recessions suggested that in most cases, the decline in employment tended to be deeper than in output. Second, layoffs of workers are key forms of adjustment to which employees seek to reduce costs. Given these, our research aims to understand shifts in employees during, after …

My Laptop Takes Forever, Now What!, Eric Adams

Purdue GIS Day

ITAP Research Computing's Data Workbench offers researchers access to an interactive computing environment for non-batch big data analysis and simulation. Researchers who outgrow their local computing resources can benefit from the extra computing power that Data Workbench offers without jumping directly into the High-Performance Computing clusters.

In this presentation, we will discuss the details of Data Workbench, file storage options including the Data Depot and how to transfer large files reliably with the Globus research data management service.

Sustainable Environment: Nexus Project, Zachary S. Brecheisen, Darrell Schulze, Timothy Filley, Jino Ramson, W. Daniel Leon-Salas, Natalie Chin, Fariborz Daneshvar, Andre De Lima Moraes

Purdue GIS Day

Arequipa region is locaed in Southwestern Peru. The Arequipa Nexus Institute for food, energy, water and the environment aims to address the key challenges to a sustainable furture for the people in the region. This roundtable discusses about the sustainable water management, geosaptial analysis and environment sharing, long range sensor network solution for soil health monitoring and data management and sharing in this Nexus project.

Middle-Range Theories Of Land System Change, P. Meyfroidt, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, A. De Bremond, E. C. Ellis, K. H. Erb, T. Filatova, R. D. Garrett, J. M. Grove, A. Heinimann, T. Kuemmerle, C. A. Kull, E. F. Lambin, Y. Landon, Y. Le Polain De Waroux, P. Messerli, D. Müller, J. Nielsen, G. D. Peterson, V. Rodriguez García, M. Schlüter, B. L. Turner, P. H. Verburg

Geography

Changes in land systems generate many sustainability challenges. Identifying more sustainable land-use alternatives requires solid theoretical foundations on the causes of land-use/cover changes. Land system science is a maturing field that has produced a wealth of methodological innovations and empirical observations on land-cover and land-use change, from patterns and processes to causes. We take stock of this knowledge by reviewing and synthesizing the theories that explain the causal mechanisms of land-use change, including systemic linkages between distant land-use changes, with a focus on agriculture and forestry processes. We first review theories explaining changes in land-use extent, such as agricultural expansion, …

Scaling Effect Of Fused Aster-Modis Land Surface Temperature In An Urban Environment, Hua Liu, Qihao Weng

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

There is limited research in land surface temperatures (LST) simulation using image fusion techniques, especially studies addressing the downscaling effect of LST image fusion. LST simulation and associated downscaling effect can potentially benefit the thermal studies requiring both high spatial and temporal resolutions. This study simulated LSTs based on observed Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST imagery with Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model, and investigated the downscaling effect of LST image fusion at 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, 250, 500, and 1000 m spatial resolutions. The study …