PE&RS January 2009

This month’s cover shows two possible ways of representing light detection and ranging (lidar) data collected over the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) center facility outside Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The main image is an example of a traditional surface representation from all of the lidar points collected, with imagery overlaid on top of this rendered surface. The inset shows a volumetric, or voxel, representation of the same data set, using a fusion of lidar laser intensity and the corresponding red band from the imagery used in the surface example. The voxel matrix model has many fundamental properties that have shown promise for representing and modeling geospatial data in three dimensions. A discussion of using voxels to represent lidar and model in three dimensions will be discussed in the February PE&RS Highlight Article. For more information on this image, contact Jason Stoker, Physical Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey, jstoker@usgs.gov.

Columns & Updates
5 Grids and Datums — Federative Republic of Brazil (Adobe PDF 672Kb)
9 Mapping Matters
10 Book Review — High Performance Computing in Remote Sensing (Adobe PDF 676Kb)
11 Book Review — Topographic Mapping (Adobe PDF 811Kb)
13 Reflection of the Past (Adobe PDF 763Kb)
15 Industry News

Announcements
2 ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference — Reflection of the Past, Vision for the Future
20 New Sustaining Member— National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
80 Call for Papers — MultiTemp 2009 — Fifth International Workshop on the Analysis of Multitemporal Remote Sensing Imagesg

Departments
6 Certification List
8 Region of the Month
8 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 572Kb)
14 New Members
18 Calendar
19 Who’s Who in ASPRS
20 Classifieds
21 Sustaining Members
23 Instructions for Authors
36 Forthcoming Articles
94 Professional Directory
95 Advertiser Index
96 Membership Application

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

25 Automated 3D Forest Surface Model Extraction from Balloon Stereo Photographs
Keiji Kushida, Kunihiko Yoshino, Toshihide Nagano, and Tomoyasu Ishida

An automated forest digital surface model (DSM) extraction method from balloon stereo photographs upgraded through the evaluations of the image matching accuracy and forest surface height estimation of a tropical peat swamp forest in Narathiwat, Thailand

37 Understory Bamboo Discrimination Using a Winter Image
Tiejun Wang, Andrew K. Skidmore, Albertus G. Toxopeus, and Xuehua Liu

A new approach combining forest phenology and Landsat vegetation indices to estimate evergreen understory bamboo coverage in a mixed temperate forest.

49 Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models based on Approximation Theory
Peng Hu, Xiaohang Liu, and Hai Hu

Approximation theory is applied for the fi rst time to account for the theoretical reasons underlying the correlation between DEM errors and terrain morphology, sampling density, and interpolation method.

57 A Conceptual Framework for the Simultaneous Extraction of Sub-pixel Spatial Extent and Spectral Characteristics of Crops
Ben Somers, Stephanie Delalieux, Willem W. Verstraeten, and Pol Coppin

Incorporating soil reflectance models in unmixing algorithms for the simultaneous extraction of sub-pixel crop cover fraction and its pure spectral features.

69 Estimation of Bluffl ines Using Topographic Lidar Data and Orthoimages
Jung-Kung Liu, Rongxing Li, Sagar Deshpande, Xutong Niu, and Tian-Yuan Shih

A method of bluffline extraction from the combination of lidar data and orthoimages.

81 Accuracy Assessment of Canadian Digital Elevation Data using ICESat
Alexandre Beaulieu and Daniel Clavet

A demonstration of the quality of ICESat data and its potential for the validation of the accuracy of digital elevation models.

87 DEM Generation Using a Digital Large Format Frame Camera
Joachim Höhle

On the basis of several tests with a digital, large format frame camera and discussions on the recent innovations in hardware and software, the current status in automated photogrammetric DEM generation is presented.