It’s been a little over a month since the start of this project, and now’s a good time more than any to touch base and see if I’m still on course for this project’s goal. In summary, my project is to implement LiDAR into the Wisconsin Urban Forest Assessment program and measure for changes in accuracy for urban forest assessments. This month has been extremely informative and progressive as I build my knowledge and research robust methods, but my angst builds as I look forward towards developing my deliverable and tool.
Continue reading urban tree assessment: one month reflectionTag Archives: EOI
fieldwork and mapping
As mentioned in my introductory blog post, I am mapping land use and linear intrusions of the Nethravathi river basin in India. There are no reliable land use maps of the region and hence the map I create will serve as a baseline my geospatial analysis of quantifying forest loss with each intrusion, and fragmentation analysis. The major challenge I had was to distinguish forests from agricultural plantations of rubber, areca, and coffee. This distinction is important so that I don’t overestimate or underestimate the forest loss due to intrusions.
Continue reading fieldwork and mapping
Sowing the seeds
My project aims to combine two forms of data – satellite images and surveys – to gain a better understanding of conservation farming practices in Wisconsin. To do this, my plan has been to first send a survey to 500 farmers in Wisconsin and ask them about their experiences with cover cropping and no-till farming techniques. Then, using an algorithm developed by Ryan Geygan in Prof. Ozdogan’s lab which uses satellite data to identify conservation farming techniques, I would (1) verify the algorithm and (2) develop a database illustrating which conservation farming conditions produced what results.
Continue reading Sowing the seedsExtract impervious surface with Multi-source remote sensing data.
My placement has started on June 3rd, and it has been two weeks now. During this time, I have completed some works and made progress.
Before my placement started, I met with Annemarie, my academic supervisor, and she gave me some feedbacks and proposed some questions about my proposal, which lead me to a good point to start my work. At the kick-off meeting with my host supervisor, we discussed some of the questions, and decided to use Orthoimagery from Ayres as data source. The data contains Red, Blue, Green and Near Infrared bands, and has a resolution of 0.5 feet. The study area is focused on Middleton. And impervious surface will be used to identify urban area.
Continue reading Extract impervious surface with Multi-source remote sensing data.Climbing the hump before the dawn
I’ve been working with the MPO for about four weeks now. As been stressed in the introduction, one of the main deliverables for me during this placement is to develop road networks for Dane County. Which means the very first task is digitizing line features within Dane County with the help of aerial photo and street view.
CLOSER — Creating networks for roads accessibility within dane county
Where
This summer, I’ll be working as an AASPIRE intern for Madison Area Transportation Planning Board under Planning Division in City of Madison.
Continue reading CLOSER — Creating networks for roads accessibility within dane county
Fire Detection in Panama
For my placement, I will be working with the Azuero Earth Project (AEP), an organization located on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula that focuses on reforestation, habitat restoration, sustainable land use and environmental education.
Reforestation projects in the Azuero region of Panama often face multiple threats such as fire use due to cultural reasons and harvesting. Having an idea of what geographic areas and time periods are most vulnerable to fire can be beneficial to protecting AEP’s reforestation efforts.
Global Forest Watch have produced tools to monitor fire-related threats on a global level. AEP activated Global Forest Watch fire and harvest alerts over the dry season in 2018 and registered fire and harvesting threats on the peninsula. The GFW data is a global dataset, so the extent to which they work in registering forest threats at the local level still need to be investigated. I will be working on fire detection during the 2018 dry season using high resolution images limited to the Azuero region, then I will create maps of actual fire and harvest distributions.
Some secondary projects I will be working on involve my design and spatial analysis skills. I will redesign the Azuero map using my cartography knowledge and design skills, design infographics for AEP, and create a Collector App by using ArcGIS to allow researchers to collect plant information in the field in an accessible way.
I look forward to heading to Pedasi soon to work with a motivated, international group of people doing important work, and to use my remote sensing knowledge and skills in a practical setting.
The good, The bad, the Dead. Mapping California tree mortality.
The Organization
The company I’m working with is Salo Sciences, Inc. in San Fransisco, California. Salo is a conservation analytics & monitoring company focused on using remotely sensed data to improve conservation effort and promote sustainable ecosystem management.
Mapping Land use and linear intrusions
For my summer placement project, I will be working with Wildlife First, a wildlife advocacy non profit based in Bengaluru, India to create maps of the Nethravathi river basin. Nethravathi river basin lies in the south western part of peninsular India. Tributaries of Nethravathi river originate in the forested mountains which are part of the Western Ghats, a mountain range which runs North to south along the West coast of India. These forests are home to many threatened and endemic species such as the Asian Elephant, Tiger, Leopard, Gaur and act as a critical link between Kudremukh National Park in the North and Talacauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in the South.
Continue reading Mapping Land use and linear intrusionssolar roadmap project at The nature conservancy on Long island
It’s actually been just about one month that I’ve been out here on Long Island and additional two since starting work. I’m here at The Nature Conservancy’s chapter in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, a town that lives up to the idyllic setting conjured up in my mind by its name. Even doing my research beforehand, I was still surprised by how quiet and serene it is out here just up the hill from the shore along the Long Island Sound. The office I work at is actually a repurposed barn on a parcel of land also used as a research farm, and is therefore among the more classically-Midwestern-feeling places I’ve had the pleasure to spend any amount of time despite it being about an hour train ride from New York City.
The Nelson Institute: Environmental Conservation Leadership Projects 