PE&RS December 2009

The cover image is a Shakemap of a region in Indonesia affected by a recent earthquake. It is a product of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earthquake Hazards Program in conjunction with regional seismic network operators and was produced by the USGS Pacific Disaster Center.

The ShakeMap Program (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/ shakemap/) is designed as a rapid response tool to portray the extent and variation of ground shaking throughout the affected region immediately following significant earthquakes. Ground motion and intensity maps are derived from peak ground motion amplitudes recorded on seismic sensors (accelerometers), with interpolation based on both estimated amplitudes where data are lacking, and site amplifi cation corrections. Color-coded instrumental intensity maps are derived from empirical relations between peak ground motions and Modifi ed Mercalli intensity.

The Shakemap was overlaid on a Landsat satellite image. The Landsat satellite image, provided by USGS and NASA, illustrates the region affected. The data from Landsat through the Pacifi ic Disaster Center are shared with the members of the International Charter for Disaster Response consortium and with relief organizations in Indonesia. The sharing of data improves understanding of the area affected, the impact of the event, and the scale of response required.

Highlight Article
1342 Disaster Response and the International Charter Program (Adobe PDF 514Kb)
Timothy Stryker and Brenda Jones

Feature Article
1346 Guidelines for Procurement of Professional Aerial Imagery, Photogrammetry, Lidar and Related Remote Sensor-based Geospatial Mapping Services (Adobe PDF 1.68Mb)

Columns & Updates
1367 Grids and Datums — Gibraltar (Adobe PDF 303Kb)
1369 Book Review — Quality Aspects in
Spatial Data Mining (Adobe PDF 177Kb)
1371 Reflection of the Past (Adobe PDF 152Kb)
1374 Industry News

Departments
1366 New Members
1366 Certification List
1372 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 572Kb)
1372 Region of the Month
1378 Who’s Who in ASPRS
1379 Sustaining Members
1381 Instructions for Authors
1396 Forthcoming Articles
1424 Calendar
1490 Classifieds
1490 Advertiser Index
1491 Professional Directory
1492 Membership Application

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

1383 Influence of Resolution in Irrigated Area Mapping and Area Estimation
N.M. Velpuri, P.S. Thenkabail, M.K. Gumma, C. Biradar, V. Dheeravath, P. Noojipady, and L. Yuanjie

A comparison of irrigated areas derived from four different spatial resolutions is performed to ascertain the influence of resolution on irrigated area mapping and area estimation.

1397 A Case Study of Developing An Olive Tree Database For Turkey
Nihal Ceylan, Ediz Unal, and Josiane Masson

An implementation of OLICOUNT software for counting olive trees over satellite imagery to test its practicability and to develop an olive database in Burhaniye County, Balıkesir, Turkey.

1407 An Object-space Simulation Method for Low-cost Digital Camera Stability Testing
Derek D. Lichti, Ayman Habib, and Ivan Detchev

A new simulation method for assessing the stability of low-cost digital cameras based on the accuracy of terrain reconstruction in object space.

1415 A New Approach for Pass-point Generation from Aerial Video Imagery
Benjamin E. Wilkinson, Bon A. Dewitt, Adam C. Watts, Ahmed H. Mohamed, and Matthew A. Burgess

A novel method for automatically matching pass-points using video taken from a small unmanned autonomous aircraft.

1425 A Simplified Analytical Model for a-priori Lidar Pointpositioning Error Estimation and a Review of Lidar Error Sources
Mihaela Triglav- Čekada, Fabio Crosilla, and Mojca Kosmatin-Fras

A simplified analytical model for a-priori lidar pointpositioning error estimation enables a quick calculation of a-priori plausible values of the average and maximum expected error sizes in different geometrical configurations.

1441 Thematic Accuracy Consequences in Cadastre Landcover Enrichment from a Pixel and from a Polygon Perspective
P. Serra, G. Moré, and X. Pons

An analysis of thematic accuracy consequences of being more or less restrictive at the classification stage and of applying different mode restrictions in polygon enrichment.

1451 A Two Stage Method to Estimate Species-specific Growing Stock
Petteri Packalén, Aki Suvanto, and Matti Maltamo

Species-specific volumes and total volume are estimated using a two stage procedure which combines ALS data with unrectified aerial photographs of known orientation; ALS points are first classified by tree species utilizing the DN values of aerial photographs and then volumes are estimated using the k-MSN method.