PE&RS October 2000

Cover Image

The cover for this special issue on Decision Support Systems shows a range of the applications that are being developed at the NASA Great Plains RESAC/Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) Program utilizing AVHRR NDVI imagery and associated data. The background image is a grayscale NDVI biweekly composite of the United States. From these composites, RESAC/KARS researchers create extensive data sets and produce a variety of vegetation mapping products. (See Highlight article, pp. 1158-1165.)

Center: The Average Onset of Greenness map for the Great Plains region indicates the start of vegetative photosynthetic activity. Upper Right: A 1998 Corn Yield estimate map of Iowa, produced several months before harvest, identifies flood, hail, and wind damaged areas in red. In these areas, yields were lower than expected. Bottom Right: In 1999, the spread of drought on the east coast of the United States was illustrated when vegetation conditions from the months of May, June, and July were compared to the average. Bottom Left: In 1997, record winter wheat crops were harvested in Kansas and Oklahoma. When 1997 crop conditions were compared to those observed for the same time period in 1996, the resulting map highlighted areas of increased production.

Vegetation maps like these are providing KARS/RESAC with the basis for developing applications and decision support tools for agriculture, forestry, and other land resources.

Highlight Article

1158 Building on Three Decades of Remote Sensing and Decision Support: The NASA Great Plains RESAC and the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) Program
Edward A. Martinko, Kevin P. Price, Stephen L. Egbert, Jerry L. Whistler, Mark E. Jakubauskas and Theresa J. Crooks

Introduction

1184 Special Issue on Decision Support Systems
Ronald J. Birk and Timothy Foresman

Peer-Reviewed Articles (Click the linked titles to see the full abstract)

1185 Decision Support System for Flood Risk Analysis for the River Thames, United Kingdom
Richard Sanders and Shigeko Tabuchi

The use of airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) map products in the development of a large-scale flood risk assessment model is described.

1195 A Decision Support Information System for Urban Landscape Management Using  Thermal Infrared Data
Dale A. Quattrochi, Jeffrey C. Luvall, Douglas L. Rickman, Maurice G. Estes, Jr., Charles A. Laymon, and Burgess F. Howell

Thermal maps are being used as one of the key elements by stakeholders for developing heat island mitigation action plans.

1209 Multi-Attribute Vegetation Maps of Forest Service Lands in California Supporting Resource Management Decisions
Janet Franklin, Curtis E. Woodcock, and Ralph Warbington

The vegetation databases are intended to support national and regional land-cover inventorying and monitoring, interagency conservation and fire risk assesment, and wildlife habitat evaluation, as well as land management planning.

1219 Testing Components Toward a Remote-Sensing-Based Decision Support System for Cotton Production
Richard Campanella

The role of remote sensing in the variable-rate applicaation of seeds, insecticide, plant-growth regulator, nitrogen, and other inputs, with the eventual goal of incorporating the most promising techniques into a Decision Support System for cotton, is being tested.

1229 Semantic Modeling and Decision Support in Hydrology
Sudha Ram, Vijay Khatri, Yousub Hwang, and Stephen R. Yool

The application of semantic modeling and ontology to achieve context-based information integration is described.

1241 Capturing and Modeling Geographic Object Change: A SpatioTemporal Gazetteer Framework
Peggy Agouris, Kate Beard, Georgios Mountrakis, and Anthony Stefanidis

The Gazetteer framework links an image repository, that is the source of change information, to instances of geographic entities, and is change specific to these instances.

1251 Remote-Sensing-Enhanced Outreach  Education as a Decision Support System for Local Land-Use Officials
Chester L. Arnold, Jr., Daniel L. Civco, Michael P. Prisloe, Jr., James D. Hurd, and Joel W. Stocker

Descriptions, analyses, and discussions are presented for three case studies that use remote-sensing-derived information as the foundation for educational outreach programs designed to assist local land-use officials plan their communities.

1261 Web-Based Decision Support Tool for Floodplain Management Using High-Resolution DEM
Ramanathan Sugumaran, Curt Davis, Jim Meyer,  Tony Prato, and Chris Fulcher

A Web-based decision support or advisory tool that allows developers, planners, and other local government decision makers to utilize a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) and floodplain-related geographical information system (GIS) data layers in making floodplain management decisions is described.

Announcements
1218 ASPRS Scholarship Application
1229 ASPRS & ACSM Fall 2000 Conference —  Practical Applications in the Geospatial  Information Sciences

Columns & Updates
1166 Headquarters News
1169 ISPRS Conference (108kb .pdf)
1171 Remote Sensing — The New Regulatory Framework for Commercial Remote Sensing
1173 Remote Sensing — 10-Year Industry Forecast Report (205kb .pdf)
1079 Grids & Datums — The Republic of Fuji Islands

Departments
1169 New Members
1182 Who’s Who in ASPRS
1183 Sustaining Members
1194 Index to Advertisers
1208 Forthcoming Articles
1240 Instructions to Authors
1266 Calendar
1267 Classifieds
1271 Bookstore
1275 Professional Directory
1280 Membership Application 

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