Publications

Remote sensing data from both Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 systems were utilized to assess urban area thermal characteristics in Tampa Bay watershed of west-central Florida, and the Las Vegas valley of southern Nevada. To quantitatively determine urban land use extents and development densities, sub-pixel impervious surface areas were mapped for both areas. The urban–rural boundaries and...

Long-term exposure to elevated nitrate levels in community drinking water supplies has been associated with an elevated risk of several cancers including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, colon cancer, and bladder cancer. To estimate human exposure to nitrate, specific crop type information is needed as fertilizer application rates vary widely by crop type. Corn requires the highest application of...

Data from multiple sensors must be used together to gain a more complete understanding of land surface processes at a variety of scales. Although higher-level products derived from different sensors (e.g., vegetation cover, albedo, surface temperature) can be validated independently, the degree to which these sensors and their products can be compared to one another is vastly improved if...

Our ability to forecast the role of ecosystem processes in mitigating global greenhouse effects relies on understanding the driving forces on terrestrial C dynamics. This study evaluated the controls on soil organic C (SOC) changes from 1973 to 2000 in the northwest Great Plains. SOC source-sink relationships were quantified using the General Ensemble Biogeochemical Modeling System (GEMS...

The 10-km-wide caldera of the historically active Aniakchak volcano, Alaska, subsides ∼13 mm/yr, based on data from 19 European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1 and ERS-2) interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) images from 1992 through 2002. The pattern of subsidence does not reflect the distribution of pyroclastic deposits from the last eruption in 1931 and therefore is not...

The Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) is an innovative, multidisciplinary program that began in 2000 in response to a congressional directive for the Department of the Interior to address the issue of amphibian declines in the United States. ARMI’s formulation was cross-disciplinary, integrating U.S. Geological Survey scientists from Biology, Water, and Geography to...

No abstract available.

We describe a new remote sensing system called the Short Wave Aerostat-Mounted Imager (SWAMI). The SWAMI is designed to acquire co-located video imagery and hyperspectral data to study basic remote sensing questions and to link landscape level trace gas fluxes with spatially and temporally appropriate spectral observations. The SWAMI can fly at altitudes up to 2 km above ground level to...

The Center for Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) is a field center of the geography discipline within the US geological survey (USGS) of the Department of the Interior. The EROS Data Center (EDC) was established in the early 1970s as the nation’s principal archive of remotely sensed data. Initially the EDC was responsible for the archive, reproduction, and distribution of black...

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system transmits electromagnetic (EM) waves at a wavelength that can range from a few millimeters to tens of centimeters. The radar wave propagates through the atmosphere and interacts with the Earth’s surface. Part of the energy is reflected back to the SAR system and recorded. Using a sophisticated image processing technique, called SAR processing...

The MODIS Reprojection Tool (MRT) is designed to help individuals work with MODIS Level-2G, Level-3, and Level-4 land data products. These products are referenced to a global tiling scheme in which each tile is approximately 10° latitude by 10° longitude and non-overlapping (Fig. 9.1). If desired, the user may reproject only selected portions of the product (spatial or parameter...

We analyzed RADARSAT-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to compute interferometric SAR (InSAR) images of surface deformation at Uzon caldera, Kamchatka, Russia. From 2000 to 2003 approximately 0.15 m of inflation occurred at Uzon caldera, extending beneath adjacent Kikhpinych volcano. This contrasts with InSAR data showing no significant deformation during either the 1999 to 2000, or...