Publications

Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) increasingly relies on automated analysis of authoritative geospatial data, exposing limitations in data infrastructures originally designed for simple dissemination rather than for knowledge-driven use. From the perspective of scientific spatial data providers, the challenge is enabling GeoAI responsibly while retaining semantic clarity...

Autonomous GIS uses large language models as its reasoning core to automate spatial data collection, analysis, modeling, and visualization for solving spatial problems with minimal human intervention. Often implemented through autonomous geospatial agents that work independently or collaboratively, it represents a shift from GIS as a passive software environment requiring expert...

River meander patterns arise from geomorphological processes influenced by climate, geology, terrain, and hydrology. These processes produce a wide spectrum of sinuous channel and meander forms, and understanding them is essential for land management practices, such as natural channel restoration (Dominguez et al., 2018), flood and erosion control, bank stabilization (U.S. Department of...

No abstract available.

Effective management of deep-sea ecosystems and the high seas is hindered by the absence of a globally consistent framework for characterizing benthic habitats. Here we present the first global ecological classification of the seafloor, comprising 250 unique ecological benthic units (EBUs), distributed on the seafloor as nearly 700,000 EBU polygon occurrences, generated by intersecting a...

Accurate building height information is used for numerous urban applications, including infrastructure modeling, disaster risk assessment, and energy demand estimation. The U.S. Geological Survey collects airborne lidar data to support the three-dimensional elevation program (3DEP). The high point density and vertical accuracy of the lidar point clouds are optimal for 3D mapping. Few...

Accurate building footprint extraction is critical for applications ranging from population estimation to disaster management. Although optical imagery provides detailed spectral information, it often struggles with shadows, occlusions, and background clutter in dense urban environments. Lidar data, by contrast, offer precise elevation and structural attributes but face challenges such...

Transmission corridors are critical components of power delivery infrastructure, and their large-area monitoring increasingly relies on national-scale airborne lidar programs. This study presents an unsupervised, scalable framework for extracting transmission corridor structures (including conductors and supporting towers) from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 3D Elevation Program (3DEP)...

Livestream video has become a crucial tool for volcano monitoring in recent years, building upon the use of webcam snapshots that have been common for the past two decades. In Hawaii, livestream video was first tested in 2018, and today, livestream video is a vital tool for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and partner agencies (National Park Service and Hawaiʻi County Civil Defense) as...

Sun glint is a major limitation for spaceborne optical remote sensing of aquatic environments, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. By dominating the at-sensor radiance, sun glint complicates atmospheric correction and reduces the quality of aquatic reflectance products derived across Earth observation missions. This study presents a machine learning framework to quantify...