Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is a powerful resource for coastal and wetland managers and its use is increasing. Vegetation density and other land cover characteristics influence the accuracy of LIDAR-derived ground surface digital elevation models; however, the degree to which wetland land cover biases LIDAR estimates of the ground...
The purpose of this thesis is to apply the wavelet transform WT to
multiresolution structures for analyzing the information content of images based on
multiresolution signal decomposition of the wavelet representation. The advantage
of the wavelet transform is the fact that it uses different building blocks than the
Fourier's sines...
A wave-by-wave forecasting system is desired for optimization of wave energy conversion devices and for improving safety of vessel-based marine operations. This study outlines the first validation attempts of a recently developed forecasting system called Wavecast. The forecasting approach uses X-Band marine radar images for data assimilation, then reconstructs and...
The North Unit irrigation District of Central Oregon,
a water project developed under the guidelines of the
Bureau of Reclamation, is characterized by limited water
and the need for efficient utilization and control of the
irrigation system. To manage the limited water resource,
irrigators need a timely and economical method...
Methods for obtaining accurate, spatially explicit estimates of biomass density in tropical forests are required to reduce uncertainties in the global carbon cycle, and to support international climate agreements and emerging carbon markets. Three-dimensional (3-D) remote sensing techniques sensitive to the vertical structure of vegetation provide a unique opportunity for...
The MODIS NBAR (M0D43B4) data space is explored in terms of biophysical variables with the objective of formulating a MODIS transformation relevant to global vegetation studies. The basic ideas of transform formulation were borrowed from the development of the TM Tasseled Cap transformation, but with differences in sampling strategy and...
One fundamental concern in conservation biology is species abundance. For many taxa, however, these data are costly to obtain via direct observation and thus limited in geographic or temporal scope. Very high-resolution satellite imagery provides a means to address these limitations and provide remotely-sensed counts of large, colonial species. We...
Dramatic declines in many species of demersal fishes off the West Coast have resulted in the designation of nine commercially important species as being overfished. While the causes of those declines are not clearly understood, the fact remains that a paucity of life history and abundance data exists for many...
Accurate measurement of forest productivity is fundamental to understand the carbon balance of forested ecosystems. Recent changes in climate highlight the importance of developing methods to measure forest productivity so that sound economic and environmental decision can be made. Efforts to measure forest productivity across the landscape using remote sensing...
Data acquisition is the foundation of sound decision making. Therefore, after the work of the empiricist who laid the philosophical foundation of the data driven inference (Berkeley, 2003; Hume, 1902; Locke, 1860), significant efforts were carried in developing methods aiming at acquiring representative information for describing reality. The main instrument...