Remote Sensing Commons^™

Spatial Analysis Of Distributions And Habitat Conditions Of Fallopia Japonica (Japanese Knotweed) Invasive Species Applying Unmanned Helicopter Remote Sensing, Jiazhen Zhang

Great Lakes Center Masters Theses

Abstract:

Fallopia japonica (Japanese knotweed) is a perennial herbaceous plant that is native to East Asia. It is considered as one of the worst invasive species worldwide because of its serious impact on biological diversity and human activities (Lowe et al., 2001). Once established, Japanese knotweed forms dense stands that shade and crowd out native plant species. The objectives of this research were to verify and confirm the distribution of Japanese knotweed as published online by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) – iMap and to identify the geographic areas of spreading and the local habitat conditions. In …

Predictive Modeling Of Terrestrial Radiation Exposure From Geologic Materials, Daniel A. Haber

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Aerial gamma ray surveys are an important tool for national security, scientific, and industrial interests in determining locations of both anthropogenic and natural sources of radioactivity. There is a relationship between radioactivity and geology and in the past this relationship has been used to predict geology from an aerial survey. The purpose of this project

is to develop a method to predict the radiologic exposure rate of the geologic materials in an area by creating a model using geologic data, images from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), geochemical data, and pre-existing low spatial resolution aerial surveys …

Predicting Toucan Locations In Panama Using Arcgis, Daniel J. Herrera

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Toucans are omnivorous birds native to southern Latin America and South America. They are non-migratory, and their range is disputed among experts. In an attempt to develop a better understanding of the range and behavior of toucans, correlations between toucan presence and geographic features of the area were analyzed to create a location probability map.

Geography: A Career Without Borders

DePaul Magazine

What do mosquito abatement, education policy, retail site location and public transportation have in common? Although it might not seem obvious, these disparate pursuits all involve the work of geographers. This article looks at the wide variety of occupations open to geographers, who manipulate and map big data, use geographic information systems for municipal functions and pest removal, analyze transportation and job siting, pursue human and environmental sustainability practices, and teach. The article also includes a brief summary of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

Locating A Wildlife Corridor For The Wild Tiger In India, Carmen George

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The tiger (Panthera Tigris) has been on the ICUN red list of endangered species since 1972. In the early 20^th century, 100,000 wild tigers roamed Asia and today approximately 3,600 remain. India is home to over half of the remaining wild tigers and continues to struggle in creating effective conservation plans. Poaching, habitat destruction and prey depletion are several primary causes of tiger population degradation and remain major barriers to rejuvenation of healthy populations in the wild. Wildlife corridors are essential to the process of repairing fragmented habitats. Through the use of GIS and remote sensing this …

An Approach To Optimal Hyperspectral And Multispectral Signature And Image Fusion For Detecting Hidden Targets On Shorelines, Charles R. Bostater

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Hyperspectral and multispectral imagery of shorelines collected from airborne and shipborne platforms are used following pushbroom imagery corrections using inertial motion motions units and augmented global positioning data and Kalman filtering. Corrected radiance or reflectance images are then used to optimize synthetic high spatial resolution spectral signatures resulting from an optimized data fusion process. The process demonstrated utilizes littoral zone features from imagery acquired in the Gulf of Mexico region. Shoreline imagery along the Banana River, Florida, is presented that utilizes a technique that makes use of numerically embedded targets in both higher spatial resolution multispectral images and lower spatial …

Aerosol And Urban Heat Island Effects On Warm Cloud-Top Shortwave Infrared Reflectance And Visible Albedo, Heather Glickman-Eliezer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses ten years of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data (1999-2009) to assess urban effects of anthropogenic aerosols and Urban Heat Island (UHI) on cloud-top radiative properties of optically thick clouds. GOES images at noon local time of channels 1, 2, and 4 are used to calculate visible albedo, and shortwave infrared reflectance at 3.9-µm. Cloud-top particle radius is inversely related with SWIRR. Albedo and cloud fraction are measured for cold and warm clouds, and SWIRR is used as a particle-radius proxy for warm clouds only. AERONET fine-mode particle retrievals (fAOD) from the CCNY station are used for …

Moving Fluid Mud Sondes, Optical And Acoustic Sensing Methods In Support Of Coastal Waterway Dredging, Charles R. Bostater, Tyler A. Rotkiske

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Airborne, Satellite and In-Situ optical and acoustical imaging provides a means to characterize surface and subsurface water conditions in shallow marine systems. An important research topic to be studied during dredging operations in harbors and navigable waterways is the movement of fluidized muds before, during and after dredging operations. The fluid movement of the surficial sediments in the form of flocs, muck and mud is important to estimate in order to model the transport of solids material during dredging operations. Movement of highly turbid bottom material creates a lutocline or near bottom nephelometric layers, reduces the penetration of light reaching …

A Multiscale Mapping Assessment Of Lake Champlain Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms, Nathan Torbick, Megan Corbiere, Yu-Pin Lin

Dartmouth Scholarship

Lake Champlain has bays undergoing chronic cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms that pose a public health threat. Monitoring and assessment tools need to be developed to support risk decision making and to gain a thorough understanding of bloom scales and intensities. In this research application, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), Rapid Eye, and Proba Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) images were obtained while a corresponding field campaign collected in situ measurements of water quality. Models including empirical band ratio regressions were applied to map chlorophylla and phycocyanin concentrations; all sensors performed well with R² and root-mean-square error (RMSE) ranging …

A Geospatial Tool For Wetland Prioritization At The Watershed Scale, Debra Sue Blackmore, Heejun Chang

Institute for Natural Resources Publications

There is an increasing demand for assessing ecosystem functions for freshwater wetlands, especially when comparing or prioritizing among wetlands at the watershed scale. We estimated the relative potential of selected ecosystem functions for freshwater wetlands within a watershed using widely available geospatial data. We developed four functions to estimate 1) flood storage, 2) late season flow, 3) sediment retention and 4) temperature control in four pilot watersheds in Oregon (Tualatin, Coquille, Upper Grande Ronde and Sprague). These watersheds are geographically separated from each other representing diverse ecoregion environments. Spatial analysis and geographic information system (GIS) were designed for maximum re-use, …

Building A Better Model: Variable Selection To Predict Poverty In Pakistan And Sri Lanka, Marium Afzal, Jonathan Hersh, David Newhouse

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Numerous studies have developed models to predict poverty, but surprisingly few have rigorously examined different approaches to developing prediction models. This paper applies out of sample validation techniques to household data from Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to compare the accuracy of regional poverty predictions from models derived using manual selection, stepwise regression, and Lasso-based procedures. It also examines how much incorporating publically available satellite data into the model improves its accuracy. The five main findings are that: 1) Lasso tends to outperform both discretionary and stepwise models in Pakistan, where the set of potential predictors is large. 2) Lasso and …

Forest Baseline And Deforestation Map Of The Dominican Republic Through The Analysis Of Time Series Of Modis Data, Florencia Sangermano, Leslie Bol, Pedro Galvis, Raymond E. Gullison, Jared Hardner, Gail S. Ross

Geography

Deforestation is one of the major threats to habitats in the Dominican Republic. In this work we present a forest baseline for the year 2000 and a deforestation map for the year 2011. Maps were derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Radiometer (MODIS) products at 250. m resolution. The vegetation continuous fields product (MOD44B) for the year 2000 was used to produce the forest baseline, while the vegetation indices product (MOD13Q1) was used to detect change between 2000 and 2011. Major findings based on the data presented here are reported in the manuscript "Habitat suitability and protection status of four species …

Image Interpretation-Guided Supervised Classification Using Nested Segmentation, A. V. Egorov, M. C. Hanson, David P. Roy, A. Kommareddy, P. V. Patapov

GSCE Faculty Publications

We present a new binary (two-class) supervised non-parametric classification approach that is based on iterative partitioning of multidimensional feature space into variably-sized and nested hyper-cubes (partitions). The proposed method contains elements of active learning and includes classifier to analyst queries. The spectral transition zone between two thematic classes (i.e., where training labels of different classes overlap in feature space) is targeted through iterative training derivation. Three partition categories are defined: pure, indivisible and unlabeled. Pure partitions contain training labels from only one class, indivisible partitions contain training data from different classes, and unlabeled partitions do not contain training …

Solubility And Detectability Of Hydrocarbons On The Surface Of Titan, Sandeep Singh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Titan’s thick atmosphere is enriched with organic compounds and its surface holds reservoirs of hydrocarbons. This makes Titan the only other candidate in our solar system (apart from Earth) to have stable liquid at the surface. The stability and characteristics of liquid and ices on the surface of Titan are of high importance in understanding its surface-atmosphere interactions. Titan’s hydrological cycle is similar to what we see on Earth, with the exception of methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) taking the place of water. The smoggy atmosphere veils the surface of Titan from the view of Cassini spacecraft, except at seven …

Lidar And Machine Learning Estimation Of Hardwood Forest Biomass In Mountainous And Bottomland Environments, Bowei Xue

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Light detection and ranging (lidar) has been applied in various forest applications, such as to retrieve forest structural information, to build statistical models for identification of tree species, and to monitor forest growth. However, despite significant progress in these areas, the choice of regression approach and parameter tuning remains an ongoing critical question. This study focused on choosing the right spatial generalization level to transform lidar point clouds to 2D images which can be further processed by mature image processing and pattern recognition approaches. It also compared the prediction ability of popular machine learning algorithms applied to aboveground forest biomass …

Analysing Chemical Attraction Of Gravid Anopheles Gambiae Sensu Stricto With Modified Bg-Sentinel Traps, Michael N. Okal, Manuela Herrera-Varela, Paul Ouma, Baldwyn Torto, Steven W. Lindsay, Jenny M. Lindh, Ulrike Fillinger

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Background: Cues that guide gravid Anopheles gambiae sensu lato to oviposition sites can be manipulated to create new strategies for monitoring and controlling malaria vectors. However, progress towards identifying such cues is slow in part due to the lack of appropriate tools for investigating long-range attraction to putative oviposition substrates. This study aimed to develop a relatively easy-to-use bioassay system that can effectively analyse chemical attraction of gravid Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto. Methods: BG-Sentinel™ mosquito traps that use fans to dispense odourants were modified to contain aqueous substrates. Choice tests with two identical traps set in an 80 m2 screened …

Structural Controls On The Distribution Of Groundwater In Southern Sinai, Egypt: Constraints From Geophysical And Remote Sensing Observations, Lamees Mohamed

Dissertations

An integrated (Very Low Frequency [VLF] electromagnetic, magnetic, remote sensing, field, and Geographic Information System [GIS]) study was conducted over the basement complex in Southern Sinai (Feiran watershed) for a better understanding of the structural controls on the groundwater flow. The increase in satellite-based radar backscattering values following a large precipitation event (date: 17, 18 Jan 2010; amount: 34 mm) was used to identify water-bearing features, here interpreted as preferred pathways for surface water infiltration. Findings include: (1) The distribution of the water bearing features (conductive features) correspond to that of fractures, faults, shear zones, dike swarms, and wadi networks; …

Using An Interactive Mobile Application To Crowdsource Data Collection For Management Issues In Asylum Lake Preserve, Kalamazoo, Mi, Alexander Ebenstein

Masters Theses

As technology continues to improve, personal and mobile technologies are becoming ubiquitous, being used for everything from social media to data collection. Crowdsourcing is a form of mobile data collection that calls upon a group of people to help solve a complex problem. In recent years, crowdsourcing has become an important component in data collection for managing natural disasters, allowing disaster relief systems to improve response time and coordination protocols. Natural resource and land managers are also starting to use these new technology-based and location-aware systems to improve management. By calling upon users of the recreation areas to help identify …

Aerial Thermography In Archaeological Prospection: Applications & Processing, Autumn Chrysantha Cool

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aerial thermography is one of the least utilized archaeological prospection methods, yet it has great potential for detecting anthropogenic anomalies. Thermal infrared radiation is absorbed and reemitted at varying rates by all objects on and within the ground depending upon their density, composition, and moisture content. If an area containing archaeological features is recorded at the moment when their thermal signatures most strongly contrast with that of the surrounding matrix, they can be visually identified in thermal images.

Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s established a few basic rules for conducting thermal survey, but the expense associated with the …

Discovering Rock Features With Geophysical Exploration And Archaeological Testing At The Mississippian Pile Mound Site, Upper Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee, Jeremy G. Menzer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Pile Mound survey includes magnetometry paired with targeted ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electromagnetic induction (EMI) surveys of the mound and testing of associated features over the ca. 6.5 ha site. The GPR survey discovered six rock features (five large rock features within the mound and one marking the outside of the mound). Knowledge of mounds in the Upper Cumberland Plateau (UCP) is lacking—the closest other studied sites are at the Corbin Site, Croley-Evans, Bell Site, and Beasley Mounds, approximately 75 – 100 km away. However, the most similar mound construction is found at Corbin and Cherokee sites, some 175 …