PE&RS January 2007

This month’s cover is a digital aerial image of the Belaggio in Las Vegas, Nevada was captured by Keystone Aerial Surveys using the new Microsoft Vexcel UltraCam-X at a flying height of 7700 feet above sea level and a pixel size of 15 centimeters (GSD).

As large scale mapping applications are rapidly becoming important, the ability to deliver imagery at fast intervals has become critical. The UtraCamX collects pixels at a sustained rate of 3 GBits per second. It maintains a forward overlap of 70% at 3 cm pixels and an 80% overlap at 5 cm pixels is feasible at normal flying speeds.

Technology Results include:

• Urban mapping with minimal occlusions
• Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with no spikes or holes
• Ortho-photo production from only the most central image portions
• Support of automated image analysis

Features

• UltraCam-X employs 7.2 micrometer pixel CCD technology, providing the largest available image format at 14,430 x 9,420 pixels, without sacrificing radiometric performance.
• All-new optical system by LINOS maintains image sharpness and high radiometric range well into the corners of each image.
• “Best in class” data generation at ~ 3 Gigabit per second.
• Removable data storage units allow for unlimited storage capacity.

Highlight Article

5 Report to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Future Land Imaging Working Group on the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Survey on the Future of Land Imaging (Adobe PDF 540Kb)
Kass Green, Jim Plasker, Gerald Nelson, and Don Lauer

Columns & Updates
11 Grids and Datums— Republic of Chile (Adobe PDF
13 Book Review — Remote Sensing of Snow and Ice (Adobe PDF 168Kb)
17 Headquarters News— ASPRS Vice Presidential Candidates for 2007 (Adobe PDF 70Kb)
18 Industry News

Announcements
17 New Sustaining Members — Dudley Thompson Mapping Corp. Valtus Imagery Services (Adobe PDF 70Kb)
88 Call for Papers — The 21st Biennial Workshop on Aerial Photography, Videography, and High Resolution Digital Imagery for Resource Assessment (Adobe PDF 101Kb)
88 Call for Papers — Artificial Intelligence in Remote Sensing

Departments
15 New Member List
15 Region of the Month
16 Certification List
20 Who’s Who in ASPRS
21 Sustaining Member List
23 Instructions to Authors
44 Forthcoming Articles
66 Calendar
99 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 106Kb)
101 Classifieds
102 Professional Directory
103 Advertiser Index
104 Membership Application

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

25 New Methodologies for True Orthophoto Generation
Ayman F. Habib, Eui-Myoung Kim, and Chang-Jae Kim

A new methodology for true orthophoto generation while circumventing the problems associated with existing tech-niques.

37 Land-cover Classification Using Radarsat and Landsat Imagery for St. Louis, Missouri
Heng Huang, Justin Legarsky, and Maslina Othman

An investigation of the classification accuracy of merging satellite imagery from Radarsat and Landsat missions.

45 Monitoring Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Photosynthesis with a Portable Hyperspectral Imaging System
Uwe Rascher, Caroline J. Nichol, Christopher Small, and Leif Hendricks

A case study to quantify photosynthetic efficiency on geneti-cally modified Arabidopis thaliana (L.) Heynh. plants and on leaves of four drought stressed tropical tree species.

57 Mapping Urban Land Cover Using Quickbird NDVI and GIS Spatial Modeling for Runoff Coefficient Determination
Pravara Thanapura, Dennis L. Helder, Suzette Burckhard, Eric Warmath, Mary O’ Neill, and Dwight Galster

A remote sensing process, GIS model, and analysis to generate the spatial representative runoff coefficient, C, for urban storm-water runoff estimation and to validate a composite runoff index geographic model.

67 Investigating the Effects of DEM Error in Scaling Analysis
Timothy D. James, Patrice E. Carbonneau, and Stuart N. Lane

A new method of scaling analysis to investigate the effects of common photogrammetric errors through numerical simulation.

79 An Enhanced Spatio-spectral Template for Automatic Small Recreational Vessel Detection
Kevin Pegler, David Colemen, Ronald Pelot, and C. Peter Keller

The utility of an enhanced spatio-spectral template used in conjunction with Ikonos imagery to detect small recreational vessels.

89 Performance Analysis of Integrated Sensor Orientation
Alain Ip, Naser El-Sheimy, and Mohamed Mostafa

The performance characteristics of an aerial mapping system using integrated sensor orientation under different qualities of differential GPS and IMU data.