With the growing trend in use of 3D laser scanning technology for data collection, it is important to study the various potential applications of this revolutionary technology. One such application is the measurement of road roughness at both large and small scales. At larger extents, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is...
For the first objective of this thesis, we attempt to understand the role of water flow and directionality in determining steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and spring/summer and fall Chinook (O. tschawytscha) migration patterns within the Columbia River Estuary and plume by integrating recent advances in biotelemetry and environmental observation and forecasting...
Marine debris is a chronic and increasingly pervasive problem for coastal regions around the world. Debris poses environmental risks, threats to wildlife, and degradation of the natural environment. Recent research has shown the advantages of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) for detection and recognition of marine debris, including the ability to...
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as drones, are an increasingly popular method of collecting surveying and mapping data. Two common drone-based mapping techniques are lidar and structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, and a frequently-heard (yet nearly impossible to answer) question is: “which is better?” The most common metric for...
One of the most common practices regarding estimation of forest attributes is
the partitioning of large forested subpopulations into smaller areas of interest to
coincide with specific objectives of present and future forest management. New
estimators are needed to improve estimation of selected forest attributes in small areas
where the...
The transportation of wood and biomass resources from landing and other collection locations to processing and distribution sites is a substantial cost within the wood supply chain. These high costs provide a basis for research aimed at improving biomass transportation planning decisions and potentially reducing biomass transportation costs. Chip vans...
Remote sensing forest inventory gained increased attention in the last decade triggered by the decrease in the price of sensors and the explosion of data availability and formats. Evermore, the constant advances in the hardware processing the data emphasized the necessity to develop algorithms to extract forest relevant information from...
Controlling competing vegetation with the application of herbicides and increased seedling size at planting has been shown to increase seedling survival and growth. These two important reforestation tools have often been studied independently of each other, limiting comparisons that can be made between them. This study utilized a factorial treatment...
Flexible aerodynamic surfaces have been shown to favorably influence flight characteristics at low Reynolds numbers by increasing lift, angle of attack at stall, and resistance to perturbation. The objective of the research presented within this thesis is to investigate the influence of two aspects of flight observed in biological flyers,...