Michael P. Finn (Former Employee)

Automated generalization software must accommodate multi-scale representations of hydrographic networks across a variety of geographic landscapes, because scale-related hydrography differences are known to vary in different physical conditions. While generalization algorithms have been tailored to specific regions and landscape conditions by several researchers in recent years, the...

The field of map projections can be described as mathematical, static, and challenging. However, this description is evolving in concert with the development of the Internet. The Internet has enabled new outlets for software applications, learning, and interaction with and about map projections . This chapter examines specific ways in which the Internet has moved map projections from a...

There are undeniable practical consequences to consider when choosing an appropriate map projection for a specific region. The surface of a globe covered by global, continental, and regional maps are so singular that each type distinctively affects the amount of distortion incurred during a projection transformation because of the an assortment of effects caused by distance, direction...

One method for working with large, dense sets of spatial point data is to aggregate the measure of the data into polygonal containers, such as political boundaries, or into regular spatial bins such as triangles, squares, or hexagons. When mapping these aggregations, the map projection must inevitably distort relationships. This distortion can impact the reader’s ability to compare count...

Geospatial data, often embedded with geographic references, are important to many application and science domains, and represent a major type of big data. The increased volume and diversity of geospatial data have caused serious usability issues for researchers in various scientific domains, which call for innovative cyberGIS solutions. To address these issues, this paper describes a...

Evidence suggests that a crypto-explosive hypothesis and a meteorite impact hypothesis may be partly correct in explaining several anomalous geological features in the middle of the United States. We used a primary geographic information science (GIScience) technique of creating a digital elevation model (DEM) of two of these features that occur in Missouri. The DEMs were derived from...

Online interactive maps have become a popular means of communicating with spatial data. In most online mapping systems, Web Mercator has become the dominant projection. While the Mercator projection has a long history of discussion about its inappropriateness for general-purpose mapping, particularly at the global scale, and seems to have been virtually phased out for general-purpose...

Scientists routinely accomplish small-scale geospatial modeling using raster datasets of global extent. Such use often requires the projection of global raster datasets onto a map or the reprojection from a given map projection associated with a dataset. The distortion characteristics of these projection transformations can have significant effects on modeling results. Distortions...

Old geophysical surveys [pre–Global Positioning System (GPS)] stand as valuable, largely untapped sources of scientific data. If data from these surveys were in a format that had reasonable accuracy, availability, and ease of access, they could be more widely used. In this paper, a pre-GPS survey is integrated into a modern geographic database, in this case, The National Map (TNM). The...

The Tasseled Cap transformation is a method of image band conversion to enhance spectral information. It primarily is used to detect vegetation using the derived brightness, greenness, and wetness bands. An approximation of Tasseled Cap values for the Advanced Land Imager was investigated and compared to the Landsat Thematic Mapper Tasseled Cap values. Despite sharing similar spectral...

Version 0.0 (1995), Dan Steinwand, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)/Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center (EDC)--Version 0.0 was a command line version for UNIX that required four arguments: the input metadata, the output metadata, the input data file, and the output destination path. Version 1.0 (2003), Stephen Posch and Michael P. Finn, USGS/Mid-Continent Mapping Center...

Landscape assessment of soil moisture is critical to understanding the hydrological cycle at the regional scale and in broad-scale studies of biophysical processes affected by global climate changes in temperature and precipitation. Traditional efforts to measure soil moisture have been principally restricted to in situ measurements, so remote sensing techniques are often employed...