Predicting bird abundance in tidal marshes

Predicted mean abundance for common yellowthroat at Browns Is. and Sherman Lake

Stralberg, D., M. Herzog, N. Nur, K. Tuxen, S. Siegel and M. Kelly. 2010. Predicting avian abundance within and across tidal marshes using fine-scale vegetation and geomorphic metrics. Wetlands 30: 475-487

We used a blend of fine-scale remote sensing products and field-based survey data via spatial predictive models to aid in monitoring restoring tidal marshes for bird habitat. We developed a suite of 1-m pixel-level spatial metrics describing patterns in marsh vegetation and geomorphology for six sites across a large salinity gradient, and used these to predict avian abundance.

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Survival of oaks and tanoaks after 8 years of SOD monitoring

McPherson, B. M., D. L. Wood, S. Mori, M. Kelly, A. J. Storer, P. Svihra, and R. B. Standiford. 2010. Survival of oaks and tanoaks after eight years of sudden oak death monitoring in coastal California. Forest Ecology and Management 259: 2248-2255

We report on the survival of trees (coast live oaks, black oaks, and tanoaks) in long-term SOD monitoring plots in Marin County.

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Urban influence on changes in linear forest edge structure

De Chant, T., A. H. Gallego, J. V. Saornil and M. Kelly. 2010. Urban influence on changes in linear forest edge structure. Landscape and Urban Planning 96: 12-18

An example of changing edge sinuosity We studied how forest edges at two California coastal oak woodlands (Pacheco Valle and China Camp) in the San Francisco Bay Area in California changed in the decades following urbanization using remote sensing and object based image analysis.

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Individual object change detection for hardwood forest disease monitoring

De Chant, T. and M. Kelly. 2009. Individual object change detection for monitoring the impact of a forest pathogen on a hardwood forest. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 75(8): 1005-1014

Using 4-band, 1 m spatial resolution aerial photography, we classified four annual images (2000 to 2003) with object-based image analysis and employed a GIS for our change detection technique to follow the fate of forest gaps caused by sudden oak death.

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Interactions among wildland fires in the Sierra Nevada

Collins, B., J. Miller, M. Kelly, J.W. van Wagtendonk, and S. L. Stephens. 2009. Interactions among wildland fires in a long-established Sierra Nevada natural fire area. Ecosystems 12(1): 114-128. DOI: 10.1007/s10021-008-9211-7

We investigate interactions between successive naturally occurring fires, and assess to what extent the environments in which fires burn influence these interactions.

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Large-scale deforestation in Jinotega, Nicaragua: 1978-1999

Zeledon, E. and M. Kelly. 2009. Understanding large-scale deforestation in southern Jinotega, Nicaragua from 1978 to 1999 through the examination of changes in land use and land cover. Journal of Environmental Management 90: 2866-2872

Keywords: Agricultural frontier . Applied remote sensing . Central America . Forest cover . Postclassification

Spatial pattern dynamics of oak mortality & disease symptoms

Kelly et al. 2008. Journal of Forest Research. We used two-dimensional spatial analysis tools with data gathered in point-centered-quarter format in 2001 and 2004 to quantify 1) population density of the disease through time; 2) spatial pattern of tree mortality across scales through time; and 3) spatial co-occurrence of disease symptoms with crown mortality through time.

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Historic map analysis: spatial error in the CA VTM dataset

Kelly, M., K. Ueda and B. Allen-Diaz. 2008. Considerations for ecological reconstruction of historic vegetation: Analysis of the spatial uncertainties in the California Vegetation Type Map dataset. Plant Ecology 194 (1): 37-49

Uncertainty surrounding plot centersWe examine the spatial uncertainties associated with 18,000 vegetation plots in the VTM dataset that has been digitized for use in modern ecological analysis. We examine the relationship between plot location error and basemap year, basemap scale, plot elevation, plot slope, and general plot habitat type. Pdf download. Journal link.

Keywords: CART . Historical vegetation data . Spatial error . VTM

OBIA for classifying urban environments for fire management

Cleve, C., M. Kelly F. Kearns and M. Moritz. 2008. Classification of urban environments for fire management support: A comparison of pixel- and object-based classifications using high-resolution aerial photography. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 32: 317–326

We explore the accuracy of pixel-based and object-based classification methods used for mapping in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) with free, readily available, high spatial resolution urban imagery, which is available in many places to municipal and local fire management agencies. Results indicate that an object-based classification approach provides a higher accuracy than a pixel-based classification approach when distinguishing between the selected land-use and land-cover categories. Pdf download. Journal link.

Keywords: Wildland–urban interface . Classification . Image analysis . Object-based methods . Remote sensing

Including the spatial relations of objects in classification

Liu, et al. 2008. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. We establish a context where objects are areal (not points or lines) and non-overlapping (we call this “single-valued” space), and propose a framework of binary spatial relations between segmented objects to aid in object classification.

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