Image of the day July 1, 2019

Image of the Day June 24, 2019

Welcome to our new students!

A very special (but belated) welcome to our 2018 Environmental Observation and Information (EOI) Program cohort, and my newest Master's students.  So excited you are here at UW-Madison!

The 2018-2019 EOI Master's cohort, pictured in June, 2018, while visiting the satellite data receivers on top of the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences Building at UW-Madison.

New paper in Remote Sensing

It is hard to believe that our paper on mapping boom crops in Mainland Southeast Asia has already been out for more than a year!  I loved pushing the limits of Landsat data to map some very complex crop transitions in this dynamic landscape... we are truly in the middle of a remote sensing data revolution.

Expansion of boom crops between 2000 and 2014 mapped for four selected Landsat footprints (125050; 125051; 126049; 126050) in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam.  For full text, please click here.

Caitlin Kontgis's paper published in Remote Sensing of Environment

PhD student Caitlin Kontgis has just published her work Mapping rice paddy extent and intensification in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta with dense time stacks of Landsat data in the top journal in the field of remote sensing, Remote Sensing of Environment.  This work focuses on the development of a new change detection method involving dense time stacks of Landsat (30-m) satellite data to monitor changes in rice paddy area as well as shifts in the number of annual harvests for two time points (circa 2000, circa 2010) in the Mekong Delta.  The results suggest that  rice has intensified in the region from 2000 to 2010, with triple-cropped fields expanding from approximately 34% to 62% of rice paddy agriculture.

Make sure to take a look at this paper (available here) -- recent comments on the paper via the Elsevier website have highlighted that the novel use of Landsat data to monitor crop systems is a 'game-changer' for policy makers.  Exciting stuff!

In Kontgis et al. (2015), the location and extent of rice paddy in the Mekong River Delta were delineated using the confluence of NDWI standard deviation, EVI standard deviation, and EVI mean.

A new urban landscape in East-Southeast Asia, 2000-2010 published today in Environmental Research Letters

Click here for additional publication information. 

New Remote Sensing of Environment publication available online

Our research Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data is now available in the January 2015 issue of of Remote Sensing of Environment (click here for more information).  This work demonstrates a new methodology for monitoring urban land expansion at continental to global scales using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data.  We tested the method in 15 countries in East-Southeast Asia experiencing different rates and manifestations of urban expansion, finding accuracies ranging from 70-95% at the country level.  A companion article describing the spatial and temporal trends in urban growth across the 15 countries, A new urban landscape in East-Southeast Asia, 2000-2010, has been accepted at Environmental Research Letters.

 

New research at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting

Caitlin Kontgis presented her work, Understanding transitions in rice paddy extent and management in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta using Landsat data, at the 2014 AGU meeting in San Francisco, California.  This work demonstrates how to map rice agriculture using fine-scale Landsat data by generating dense time stacks over multiple growing seasons.  Second, the new approach differentiates between single-, double-, and triple-cropped rice paddies in the region, again by exploiting temporally dense EVI trajectories.  The results show that this new approach can map rice paddy agriculture with over 90% accuracy at a much finer spatial resolution than has ever been produced.  In addition, this research demonstrates that triple-cropped rice fields have nearly doubled in area from 2000 to 2010, from one-third of total rice area to nearly two-thirds of paddy area.  

Caitlin will submit this work for publication in Remote Sensing of Environment.

New article released in Landscape & Urban Planning

Our new research assessing the urban transformation in Western China has been published in this month's issue of Landscape & Urban Planning.  The work, funded by a NASA Land Cover-Land Use Change grant, focuses on the post-reform period (1988–2009) in four major metropolitan areas: Chengdu, Xi’an, Kunming, and Urumqi (shown below). The analysis exploits recent land change maps, satellite images, socioeconomic data, and master planning documents, and draws on a variety of spatial and statistical measures to estimate urban patterns through space and time.  Check out the full article here for more information.

Graduate student Caitlin Kontgis wins travel award!

Caitlin Kontgis was selected to receive the prestigious Twin Cities Women's Philanthropy Council student travel grant.  Caitlin is the very first recipient of this grant, and was selected based on the high ratings from peer reviewers she received on her Vilas Travel Award application.  This spring, Caitlin will use the grant to spend 10 weeks in Vietnam working with collaborators at the Can Tho University Research Institute for Climate Change.  This grant will enable her to collect data necessary to parameterize and validate an agricultural model that will help her understand how future climate fluctuations could impact rice paddy yields in the Mekong River Delta.

Research assistantship available in remote sensing analysis

Graduate Research Assistant or Project Assistant, Remote Sensing of Urban and Peri-Urban Expansion

The Land Cover Change Lab at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) has funding for one RA or PA position starting this fall, and continuing through spring and summer, 2015, to conduct research to monitor urban expansion and agricultural land loss across East-Southeast Asia using multiple remote sensing data sets.

The overall goal of the project is to monitor land cover change, and work will be completed using a combination of ENVI, ArcGIS, and command line programming tools.  The student will focus on analysis of time series MODIS satellite data to understand global trends in urban expansion.  For more information, please click here.

Application deadline: October 27, 2014

New article now in press at Remote Sensing of Environment

Check out our recent research Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data in this upcoming issue of Remote Sensing of Environment.  This work, completed as part of Carly Mertes' Master's thesis, demonstrates a methodology for monitoring urban land expansion at continental to global scales using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data.  The new method focuses on resolving the spectral and temporal ambiguities between urban/non-urban land and stable/changed areas by: (1) spatially constraining the study extent to known locations of urban land; (2) integrating multi-temporal data from multiple satellite data sources to classify c. 2010 urban extent; and (3) mapping newly built areas (2000-2010) within the 2010 urban land extent using a multi-temporal composite change detection approach based on MODIS 250 m annual maximum enhanced vegetation index (EVI).  The method is tested in 15 countries in East-Southeast Asia experiencing different rates and manifestations of urban expansion.

Introduction to Environmental Remote Sensing course starts September 2nd

Interested in learning how to map the world with satellite imagery?  Or detect change in dynamic landscapes using advanced machine learning methods?  If yes, then please join us for Introduction to Environmental Remote Sensing this fall, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4:00 pm in room 104 Russell Labs.  For more information, please visit the class website.

Now hiring...

GIS-Remote Sensing Research Assistant, Project Assistant and Hourly positions available. We are hiring students for geospatial analyst jobs starting in September.  Click here for more details.

New results on peri-urbanization in Vietnam

Our research, Monitoring peri-urbanization in the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area, was recently published in Applied Geography.  This research combines commune-level Vietnamese census information, dense time stacks of Landsat satellite data (1990–2012), and several spatial measures to quantify urbanization and peri-urbanization in the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area from 1990 to 2012. The results indicate that 660.2 km2 of cropland was converted to urban uses (a near quintupling of urban land), while 3.5 million persons moved into the region, bringing the total population to nearly 12 million by 2012. The analysis also highlights the rapid, unplanned nature of peri-urban development: approximately one-third of new urban expansion occurs in areas >40 km from the core, with nearly 50% of population expansion occurring in communes classified as peri-urban.  Check out the full article at this site: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0143622814001477.

Carly Mertes graduates with MS in Geography

Congratulations to Carly Mertes who successfully defended her Master's Thesis, "Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data".  This work has recently been accepted for publication in Remote Sensing of Environment, and will be available for download this fall.  For more information on this project, go to: http://landcoverchange.com/gallery_post/global_mapping/

Carly (pictured above) first presented her work at Multitemp 2013 in Banff, Calgary, Canada.

Professor Annemarie Schneider presents the keynote at the Geospatial Summit

Annemarie Schneider gave the invited keynote address at this spring's University of Wisconsin-Madison's Geospatial Summit, on April 24th.  Her talk Mapping a decade of change: urban expansion in East Asia, 2000-2010 focused on recent work to understand urbanization processes in East and Southeast Asia.  The talk is now posted online at the UW Geospatial Alliance website.

Congratulations to Professor Mutlu Ozdogan

Congratulations to collaborator and colleague Mutlu Ozdogan on his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure!  To learn more about Professor Ozdogan's cutting edge research, click here.

New NASA funding to understand land cover change teleconnections

Annemarie Schneider and collaborators received a NASA grant for their project Forest, agricultural, and uban transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: synthesizing knowledge and developing theory. The project is designed to enhance the conceptual underpinnings of land change science by integrating aspects of land teleconnections, land use transitions, and political ecology to explicitly link land changes in SE Asia to local, national, and international drivers. The work will study transitions in forests, boom crops, and periurban areas using remote sensing imagery, socioeconomic data, focus group discussions and surveys designed to harness local knowledge.

New article published on rapid urbanization in Chinese Cities

Annemarie Schneider and Carly Mertes' article Expansion and growth in Chinese cities, 1978-2010, was published in Environmental Research Letters.  The article can be downloaded at http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/2/024008/