PE&RS August 2008

The cover image shows a shaded relief model of the Los Coconucos volcanic chain located in the Central Cordillera of Colombia. The image is based on a 3-m-posted digital elevation model produced from X- and P-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) data, collected using Fugro EarthData’s airborne GeoSAR system (see p. 939) .

The northwestern-most volcanic crater is Puracé, one of Colombia’s most active volcanoes, whose peaks are seldom seen as the chain is shrouded in near-permanent cloud cover. Puracé rises to an elevation of over 4,650 m above sea level and has a 500-m-wide summit crater. An estimated 200,000 people live within 35 km of the rim. Several associated cinder cones are also clearly defined, as well as lava and mudflows.

This detailed model illustrated the advances in airborne IFSAR mapping over the past decade. The high level of detail shown here is a result of the combined X- and P-band data, which enables accurate updates to contours and topographic maps, even over equatorial regions characteristically obscured by persistent cloud cover and dense vegetation. For more information, contact Dr. Tom Carson at tcarson@earthdata.com or go to our website at www.fugroearthdata.com.

Highlight Article
939 Topographic Mapping in the Equatorial Belt Using Dualfrequency Airborne IFSAR (GeoSAR) (Adobe PDF 2.96Mb)
Thomas M. Carson

Columns & Updates
944 Letter to the Editor (Adobe PDF 60Kb)
947 Mapping Matters
949 Grids and Datums — Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Adobe PDF 145Kb)
955 Book Review — Programming ArcObjects with VBA: A Task-Oriented Approach (Adobe PDF 340Kb)
961 Industry News
967 Headquarters News (Adobe PDF 51Kb)

Announcements
679 Correction to May 2008 PE&RS
800 Pecora 17 — The Future of Land Imaging...Going Operational

Departments
944 PE&RS Corrections
951 Certification List
953 Reflection of the Past (Adobe PDF 346Kb)
954 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 527Kb)
954 New Member List
968 Who’s Who in ASPRS
969 Sustaining Members
971 Instructions for Authors
986 Forthcoming Articles
1056 Calendar
1057 Classifieds
1057 Region of the Month
1058 Professional Directory
1059 Advertiser Index
1060 Membership Application

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

973 MODIS-based Change Detection for Grizzly Bear Habitat Mapping in Alberta
Alysha D. Pape and Steven E. Franklin

Multiple spatial resolution, polygon-based, image change detection in Boreal forests for Grizzly Bear Management.

987 Quantitative Mapping of Hydrodynamic Vegetation Density of Floodplain Forests Under Leaf-off Conditions Using Airborne Laser Scanning
Menno W. Straatsma

Assessing the predictive quality of Airborne Laser Scanning for the quantitative mapping of hydrodynamic vegetation density of deciduous lowland floodplain forests.

999 Urban Change Detection Based on Coherence and Intensity Characteristics of SAR Imagery
Mingsheng Liao, Liming Jiang, Hui Lin, Bo Huang, and Jianya Gong

An unsupervised approach combining coherence and intensity characteristics of SAR imagery to detect and map landcover changes in an urban area.

1007 Factors Affecting Spatial Variation of Classification Uncertainty in an Image Object-based Vegetation Mapping
Qian Yu, Peng Gong, Yong Q. Tian, Ruiliang Pu and Jun Yang

A mixed linear model to examine the effect of six categories of factors on classification uncertainty in an object-based vegetation mapping, including general membership, topography, sample object density, spatial composition, sample object reliability and object features.

1019 Evaluating Neural Networks and Evidence Pooling for Land Cover Mapping
M.J. Aitkenhead, S. Flaherty, and M.E.J. Cutler

Integrating evidence from a range of data sources was to produce land cover mapping based on neural networks trained to identify specific land cover classes.

1033 Lidar-based Mapping of Forest Volume and Biomass by Taxonomic Group Using Structurally Homogenous Segments
Jan A.N. van Aardt, Randolph H. Wynne, and John A. Scrivani

An evaluation of an object-oriented approach to deciduous and coniferous forest classification, as well as volume and biomass estimation, using small-footprint lidar height and intensity distributions, and highlights of the potential of perobject lidar data analysis for stand-level forest inventories.

1045 Comparison of Spectral Analysis Techniques for Impervious Surface Estimation Using Landsat Imagery
Fei Yuan, Changshan Wu, and Marvin E. Bauer

Three common spectral analytical techniques (regression modeling, regression tree, and normalized spectral mixture analysis) for estimation of percent impervious surface area explored and compared in terms of model accuracy, factors that influence model performance, and cost of image processing.