PE&RS June 2008

The cover shows imagery from an airborne hyperspectral survey undertaken in Afghanistan during August - October 2007. Under a USGS contract, Australian companies HyVista Corp (www.hyvista.com) and Integrated Spectronics modified a HyMap sensor to operate from a high altitude aircraft with the objective of imaging most of Afghanistan.

The background image covers an area of 25,000 square kms. The left inset illustrates mineral maps derived from SWIR and shows the distribution of a dickite-pyrophyllite mixture (red), an amphibole-talc mixture (green) and dolomite (blue).

The project imaged about 438,000 square kms of Afghanistan; an area about the size of California. This was accomplished in 28 fl ights resulting in 218 image strips each up to 228 km long and an average width of 16 km.

The imagery will be used to produce surficial material and land use maps as part of the reconstruction effort supported by the Government of Afghanistan. The rapid and detailed mapping of alteration minerals on a country wide basis will accelerate the revitalization of the Afghan natural resources sector and is an example of airborne hyperspectral remote sensing moving into the mainstream of accepted and accessible remote sensing technologies.

The aircraft photograph is by Keith. E. Livo (USGS).
For further information contact Dr. Trude King tking@usgs.gov.

Special Issue Foreword
677 Mapping & Modeling Land Use/Land Cover Dynamics in Frontier Settings
Stephen J. Walsh, Joseph P. Messina, and Daniel G. Brown

Columns & Updates
681 Grids and Datums — Kingdom of Lesotho (Adobe PDF615Kb)
683 Mapping Matters
686 In Memoriam — Albert Carroll “Mac” McCutchen
687 Book Review — Smart Land-Use Analysis – The LUCIS Model (Adobe PDF 643Kb)
689 Headquarters News — 2008 ESRI Best Scientific Paper Award Winners Announced by ASPRS; 2008 Boeing Award for Best Paper in Image Analysis and Interpretation Announced by ASPRS (Adobe PDF581Kb)
690 Industry News

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

Departments
682 New Member List
686 Certification List
689 Region of the Month
692 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 527Kb)
694 Who’s Who in ASPRS
695 Sustaining Members
697 Instructions for Authors
710 Forthcoming Articles
724 Calendar
799 Classifieds
801 Professional Directory
802 Advertiser Index
804 Membership Application

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

699 The Fragmentation of Space in the Amazon Basin: Emergent Road Networks
Eugenio Y. Arima, Robert T. Walker, Marcio Sales, Carlos Souza, Jr., and Stephen G. Perz

Combining geostatistical methods with GIS to replicate a common fragmentation pattern found in tropical forests.

711 Multi-Sensor Data Fusion for Modeling African Palm in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Carolina Santos and Joseph P. Messina

A significant improvement in the classification accuracy obtained through the fusion of optical and RADARSAT texture measures as compared to single sensor classifications.

725 Integration of Hyperion Satellite Data and a Household Social Survey to Characterize the Causes and Consequences of Reforestation Patterns in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon
Stephen J. Walsh, Yang Shao, Carlos F. Mena, and Amy L. McCleary

Examination of Principal Components Analysis, linear mixture modeling, and supervised and unsupervised classifi cations to map forest regrowth, agricultural crops, pasture, and other land uses.

737 Trajectories of Land-use and Land-cover in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon: Temporal Composition, Spatial Configuration, and Probability of Change
Carlos F. Mena

How clusters and probabilities of change can be used to characterize trajectories of Land-use and Land-cover.

753 Disturbance, Management, and Landscape Dynamics: Harmonic Regression of Vegetation Indices in the Lower Okavango Delta, Botswana
Amy L. Neuenschwander and Kelley A. Crews

Utilizing remotely sensed imagery to quantify the impact of flooding, fire, and their interaction as derived through vegetation response over time.

765 Characterizing Patterns of Land Degradation Potential and Agro-Ecological Sustainability in Nang Rong, Thailand
William F. Welsh

Classified multi-temporal Landsat imagery compared with soil suitability and field data using raster GIS modeling to identify regional scale patterns of cropping history.

775 Land-cover Change and Vulnerability to Flooding near Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China
Luguang Jiang, Kathleen M. Bergen, Daniel G. Brown, Tingting Zhao, Qing Tian, and Shuhua Qi

Analyzing patterns of land-cover determined from Landsat were in relation to elevation and levees to assess changes in vulnerability to flooding.

787 Changing Regimes: Forested Land Cover Dynamics in Central Siberia 1974-2001
Kathleen M. Bergen, Tingting Zhao, V. Kharuk, Y. Blam, Daniel G. Brown, L.K. Peterson, and N. Miller

Analyzing forest- and land-cover changes in southern Central Siberia using Landsat 1974 to 2001, and Soviet and post-Soviet era trends compared.