Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of the hydrologic cycle that transfers large quantities of water vapor away from Earth's surface into the atmosphere. In addition to having agricultural water management applications, including monitoring water rights compliance and irrigation scheduling, estimating ET is also important to quantify water used by...
Multibeam sonar data was collected on Nehalem Bank, off of the Oregon Coast with the purpose of increasing the spatial resolution of our knowledge of the area and delineating seafloor habitats. The system used was the Kongsberg Simrad EM-300 operating at 30 kHz. The data set collected includes both topographic...
Many devices and methods for radiological searches are currently being developed, including scanning using simple detectors, mapping using large-volume detectors, and Compton imaging using 3-D position sensitive detectors. However, these devices are typically expensive and the methods used require long periods of time to generate a direction or location. The...
The 14-km long Netarts Littoral Cell, located on the northern Oregon coast, experienced episodic erosion as a result of the severe 1997-98 El Nino and 1998-99 La Nina. The erosion events led to the development of a unique partnership bridging scientists, stakeholders, and various planning agencies. To address these erosion...
Many ecological systems follow a seasonal cycle affecting primary production,carbon flux, and vegetative gas emissions. The seasonal variation of ecological systems are both affected by and have effects upon climatic factors. A quantitative estimate of the seasonal variation of vegetation is required to characterize ecological systems and their interaction with...
Vegetation change is an important factor affecting the global carbon cycle, land-atmosphere interaction, and terrestrial ecology. The study of vegetation change on a global scale can be used to evaluate the impact of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. Satellite remote sensing can monitor vegetation change at the global scale,...
An integrative method for monitoring glacier geometry change and mass balance is presented and applied to the Pacific Northwest, USA. Acting as a baseline for interpretation of future changes in glacier size and shape, we first derive a new inventory of regional glacier cover using remotely sensed data. To investigate...
A per-segment classification system was developed to map aspen (Populus tremuloides) stands on Winter Ridge in central Oregon from remote sensing imagery. A 1-meter color infrared (CIR) image was segmented based on its hue and saturation values to generate aspen "candidates", which were then classified to show aspen coverage according...
A satellite-derived Climatology of Global Ocean Winds (COGOW) on a 0.5° latitude by 0.5° latitude grid is presented based on 5-years (August 1999 July 2004) of measurements from the SeaWinds scatterometer that was launched on 19 June 1999 onboard the QuikSCAT satellite. SeaWinds is an active microwave radar that estimates...
Phytoplankton are a sentinel class of organisms in the marine environment. Through their photosynthetic activity in sunlit waters worldwide, phytoplankton shape the health and productivity of marine ecosystems and impact the global climate. In this work a range of ocean sensing technologies (via ships, surf zone sampling, moorings, gliders, and...