Remote Sensing Commons^™

Mapping Forest Structure In Mississippi Using Lidar Remote Sensing, Nitant Rai

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed at evaluating the agreement of spaceborne Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) ICESat-2 canopy height with Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) derived canopy height to inform about the performance of ICESat-2 canopy height metrics and understand its uncertainties and utilities. The agreement was assessed for different forest types, physiographic regions, a range of percent canopy cover, and diverse disturbance histories. Results of this study suggest that best agreements are found using strong beam data collected at night for canopy height retrieval using ICESat-2. The ICESat-2 showed great potential for estimating canopy heights, particularly in evergreen forests with high canopy …

Geologic Mapping Of The Sparta 7.5-Minute Quadrangle In Northern Mississippi Via Remote Sensing, Traditional Geologic Survey, And Applied Geospatial Information Systems Methods, Rayford Dean Parnell

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional geologic mapping involves substantial time and labor in the field as geologic contacts are manually examined and interpreted. The processes of mapping geologic contacts can be condensed into a quicker and less laborious process using advances in remote sensing and GIS (geospatial information systems), including increased resolution and computerized data management and interpretation. Application of these advances reduces the costs and time of geologic mapping. The Sparta 7.5-minute quadrangle provides a mostly unaltered view of regional Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous geology due to its rural locale, lack of development, and stream topography. Recently LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) survey …

Lidar Field Data Collection For 3d Cartography, Danny Jang

Symposium of Student Scholars

Remote sensing using LiDAR technology for terrestrial mapping can be done using airborne or ground-based methods. Ground-based methods of LiDAR scanning have the favorable advantage of being much more cost-effective compared to the majority of aerial choices (balloons and drones might overcome this advantage in the future) for small-area large-scale cartography. LiDAR data collection has been traditionally utilized for urban applications, forest applications, agricultural applications, and geoscience applications. This student research aims to use the data gathered from this process for crafting 3D maps using cost-effective 3D printers.

Remote Sensing Application For Landslide Detection: Monitoring Along Eastern Lake Michigan (Miami Park, Mi), Guzalay Sataer

Dissertations

I assessed the nature and spatial and temporal patterns of deformation over the Miami Park bluffs on the eastern margin of Lake Michigan and investigated the factors controlling its observed deformation. Our approach involved the following steps: (1) extracting bluff deformation rates (velocities along the line of sight of the satellite) using a stack of Sentinel-1A radar imagery in ascending acquisition geometry acquired between 2017 and 2021 and applying the Intermittent Small Baseline Subset (ISBAS) InSAR time series analysis method; (2) generating high-resolution (5 cm) elevation models and orthophotos from temporal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveys acquired in 2017, 2019, …

Spatiotemporal Change Detection Of The Alpine Meadows At Holcomb Valley, San Bernardino Mountain National Forest, Using Gis And Remote Sensing Techniques, Rama Ewing

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Holcomb Valley, with a general elevation between 2200-2257m, is in the Northeast of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. Holcomb Valley is covered by Alpine meadows, unlike most mountain landscapes, which are rarely found in Mediterranean climates such as California. The cultural-environmental history of the San Bernardino Mountains in the past century speaks of intense anthropogenic activities such as timbering, grazing, gold mining, and extreme climate changes (i.e., drought, fires, floods). A study is conducted to identify and calculate the changes in the Alpine meadows at Holcomb Valley. The climatical data has been acquired to compute and visualize …

Precision Weed Management Based On Uas Image Streams, Machine Learning, And Pwm Sprayers, Jason Allen Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weed populations in agricultural production fields are often scattered and unevenly distributed; however, herbicides are broadcast across fields evenly. Although effective, in the case of post-emergent herbicides, exceedingly more pesticides are used than necessary. A novel weed detection and control workflow was evaluated targeting Palmer amaranth in soybean (Glycine max) fields. High spatial resolution (0.4 cm) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) image streams were collected, annotated, and used to train 16 object detection convolutional neural networks (CNNs; RetinaNet, Faster R-CNN, Single Shot Detector, and YOLO v3) each trained on imagery with 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.2 cm spatial resolutions. Models were …

Malaria Vector Feeding, Peak Biting Time And Resting Place Preference Behaviors In Line With Indoor Based Intervention Tools And Its Implication: Scenario From Selected Sentinel Sites Of Ethiopia, Alemnesh Hailemariam Bedasso, Abebe Asale Gutto, Abate Waldetensai, Araya Eukubay, Getachew Eticha Bokore, Solomon Kinde, Fekadu Gemechu, Yared Debebe, Mesfin Aklilu, Geremew Tasew, Fekadu Massebo, Abebe Teshome, Tilahun Kebede, Bedri Abdulatif, Achamyelesh Sisay, Hiwot Solomon, Eliningaya J. Kweka

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

In Ethiopia, malaria incidence has significantly reduced in the past decade through the combined use of conventional vector control approaches and treatment using antimalarial drugs. However, the sustainability of this achievement is threatened by the shift in biting and resting behaviors and emergence of insecticide resistance by the primary malaria vector. Therefore, continuous monitoring of the behaviour of malaria mosquitoes in different sentinel sites is crucial to design effective prevention and control methods in the local context. Entomological investigations were conducted in three sentinel sites for five consecutive months during the major malaria transmission season. The species composition, population dynamics, …

The Possibilities Of Explicit Striga (Striga Asiatica) Risk Monitoring Using Phenometric, Edaphic, And Climatic Variables, Demonstrated For Malawi And Zambia, Emily Kimathi, Bester Tawona Mudereri, Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman, Saliou Niassy, Henri E.Z. Tonnang, Tobias Landmann

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Food insecurity continues to affect more than two-thirds of the population in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), particularly those depending on rain-fed agriculture. Striga, a parasitic weed, has caused yield losses of cereal crops, immensely affecting smallholder farmers in SSA. Although earlier studies have established that Striga is a constraint to crop production, there is little information on the spatial extent of spread and infestation severity of the weed in some SSA countries like Malawi and Zambia. This study aimed to use remotely sensed vegetation phenological (n = 11), climatic (n = 3), and soil (n = 4) variables to develop a …

Delineating Field Variation Using Apparent Electrical Conductivity In An Ozark Highlands Agroforestry System, Shane Reid Ylagan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Little to no work has been conducted assessing field variability using repeated electromagnetic induction (EMI) apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) surveys in agroforestry (AF) systems within regions similar to the Ozark Highlands. The objectives of this thesis were to identify i) spatiotemporal ECa variability; ii) ECa-derived soil management zones (SMZs); iii) correlations among EMI-ECa and in-situ, sentential-site soil properties; iv) whether fewer, EMI-ECa surveys could be conducted to capture similar ECa variance as mid-monthly EMI-ECa surveys; v) correlations between ECa and forage yield, tree growth, and terrain attributes based on plant (forage and tree) species, and fertility treatments, and ECa-derived SMZs, …

Efficient Hierarchical Space-Time Models For Large Areal Datasets With Application To Forest Inventory Mapping Using Remote Sensing Imagery, Md Kamrul Hasan Khan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is development of a novel hierarchical framework, that can be used for predictive modeling of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data over large regions. This dissertation has two significant contributions. Based on a study region in north-central Wisconsin, we analyze satellite imagery, along with a sample of national forest inventory field plots, to monitor and predict changes in forest conditions over time. The auxiliary data from the satellite imagery of this region are relatively dense in space and time, and can be used to learn how forest conditions changed over that decade. However, these records …

Glacier Segmentation From Remote Sensing Imagery Using Deep Learning, Bibek Aryal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Large-scale study of glaciers improves our understanding of global glacier change and is imperative for monitoring the ecological environment, preventing disasters, and studying the effects of global climate change. In recent years, remote sensing imagery has been preferred over riskier and resource-intensive field visits for tracking landscape level changes like glaciers. However, periodic manual labeling of glaciers over a large area is not feasible due to the considerable amount of time it requires while automatic segmentation of glaciers has its own set of challenges. Our work aims to study the challenges associated with segmentation of glaciers from remote sensing imagery …

Systematic Review Of A Ramsar Wetland And Unesco Biosphere Reserve In A Climate Change Hotspot (Ichkeul Lake, Tunisia), Sabrine Sahbani, Béchir Béjaoui, Sihem Benabdalla, Rachid Toujani, Afef Fathalli, Noureddine Zaaboub, Jalel Aouissi, Zeineb Kassouk, Nabil Hamdi, Nabiha Ben Mbarek, Hechmi Missaoui, Leila Basti, Reginald Blake, Hamidreza Norouzi

Publications and Research

Tunisia's Ichkeul Lake is among the most productive ecosystems in the Mediterranean, with a great regional value thanks to its diversity of habitats. It is an important overwintering area for waterfowl species. It is a RAMSAR wetland, a National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage, and a Biosphere Reserve. This review paper provides a broad overview of the climatic, hydraulic, biogeochemical features, bio-resources, and bio-productivity of the Lake. The interconnectivity between the different environmental components of the lake is presented, highlighting the main characteristics of this vital ecosystem. Its ecosystem consists of a permanent lake bordered by temporary marshes. It is …

Studying Factors Of Environmental Injustice And Ways To Achieve Equity, Arham Hussain, Reginald Metellus

Publications and Research

In today's day of age, the biggest concern for current and future generations: the environment. The urban heat island (UHi) with its significant energy, health, and societal impacts is among the major environmental issues in urban regions, especially in historically underserved and socially vulnerable communities (HUSVCs). In the 1930s, the former federal agency, Homeowners' Loan Corporation (H0Lq, created ''Residential Security" maps of major cities, known today as "redlined" areas. These neighborhoods were often designated as "hazardous" due to the high percentages of people of color living there, leading to systematic disinvestment based on race. While the program ended in 1968, …

Studies Of Roseau Cane Dieback In The Lower Mississippi River Delta Based On Remote Sensing Data Including Landsat, Worldview, And Drone, Nan Shang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research focused on the Roseau cane (Phragmites australis) dieback assessment in the lower MRD of Louisiana and introduced a comprehensive and systematic multi-source remote sensing method for assessing wetland and Roseau cane dieback and habitat dynamics analysis from three scale levels from large-scale to small scale.

Large-scale historical vegetation/land change analyses were conducted in the lower MRD based on Landsat in the past two decades (2001 - 2021). A strong increasing trend of vegetation was found since 2005. Around 51 km² ofdieback area was detected which accounts for 11% of the overall vegetation coverage. This research …

Meteor Radar Vertical Wind Observation Biases And Mathematical Debiasing Strategies Including The 3dvar+Div Algorithm, Alan Z. Liu, Zishun Qiao, Gunter Stober, Alexander Kozlovsky, Ales Kuchar, Christoph Jacobi, Chris Meek, Diego Janches, Guiping Liu, Masaki Tsutsumi, Njål Gulbrandsen, Satonori Nozawa, Mark Lester, Evgenia Belova, Johan Kero, Nicholas Mitchell

Publications

Meteor radars have become widely used instruments to study atmospheric dynamics, particularly in the 70 to 110 km altitude region. These systems have been proven to provide reliable and continuous measurements of horizontal winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. Recently, there have been many attempts to utilize specular and/or transverse scatter meteor measurements to estimate vertical winds and vertical wind variability. In this study we investigate potential biases in vertical wind estimation that are intrinsic to the meteor radar observation geometry and scattering mechanism, and we introduce a mathematical debiasing process to mitigate them. This process makes use of …

Multi-Decadal Analysis Of Remotely Sensed Vegetation Change In Berea College Forest - Seasonality Of Forest Patterns Using Remote Sensing, Jacob Foushee

The Cardinal Edge

Satellite imagery is a practical and valuable tool for monitoring vegetation condition in forests. The longevity of the USGS/NASA Landsat program along with its medium spatial resolution (30m) gives researchers the ability to make informed statements on land cover generally, and specifically on aspects such as forest conditions. The Landsat program’s nearly 50-year archive of imagery show how Earth’s surface has changed through modern development and how these developments have influenced forests. Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud-based repository of satellite imagery dating as far back as the 1970s. This study utilizes Landsat 5-8 imagery from GEE to calculate …

Spatio-Temporal Changes In Vegetation In The Last Two Decades (2001–2020) In The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, Yuan Zou, Wei Chen, Siliang Li, Tiejun Wang, Le Yu, Min Xu, Ramesh P. Singh, Cong-Qiang Liu

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

In terrestrial ecosystems, vegetation is sensitive to climate change and human activities. Its spatial-temporal changes also affect the ecological and social environment. In this paper, we considered the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region to study the spatio-temporal vegetation patterns. The detailed analysis of a moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were carried out through the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Our results show a slow and tortuous upward trend in the average leaf area index (LAI) in the study region for the periods 2001–2020. Specifically, Beijing had the highest LAI value, with an average of 1.64 over twenty years, followed by Hebei (1.30) and …

Characterization Of Smoke Particles Toward Improved Remote Sensing Retrievals And Chemical Transport Modeling, Chenchong Zhang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Wildfires increase in extent, intensity, and frequency across the globe over the recent decades. The uncontrolled fires trigger cascading effects on local ecosystems and the fire emissions pose a higher risk to air quality and climate. Wildfire emissions contain a variety of trace gases and particulate matters. The particle-phase emissions, especially those light-absorbing species including black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC), significantly affect the regional and global climate by modulating the radiative transfer phenomena in the atmosphere. A great discrepancy still exists between model- and observation-based estimates of aerosol-radiation interactions (ARI). The discrepancy is partially attributed to the mischaracterizations …

(Re)Constructing Homescapes: “Archaeological Remote Sensing” And Ground-Truthing Of The Walker Place Homestead At Spirit Hill Farm, Tate County, Mississippi, Gabriel Griffin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an early nineteenth-century homestead known as the Walker Place homestead at Spirit Hill Farm in northern Mississippi. The goal of this thesis is to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and shovel test survey to explore how changing landscapes simultaneously (re)create and destroy senses of place or Homescapes. Homescapes have received little attention in the field of archaeology and have not been applied to Euro-American Homescapes. I apply this theoretical construct in a novel way as a venture to further develop an avenue in archaeology to be collaborative and understand the past in a way that accurately …

Deep Learning Applications In Industrial And Systems Engineering, Winthrop Harvey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Deep learning - the use of large neural networks to perform machine learning - has transformed the world. As the capabilities of deep models continue to grow, deep learning is becoming an increasingly valuable and practical tool for industrial engineering. With its wide applicability, deep learning can be turned to many industrial engineering tasks, including optimization, heuristic search, and functional approximation. In this dissertation, the major concepts and paradigms of deep learning are reviewed, and three industrial engineering projects applying these methods are described. The first applies a deep convolutional network to the task of absolute aerial geolocalization - the …