PE&RS October 2009

View of forest mortality from the Quad County Tornado of 2007 (left) in Wisconsin and insect-induced forest defoliation in Michigan (right), primarily by the Forest Tent Caterpillar. This product was computed from MODIS MOD13 maximum NDVI attained from 2002 to 2008 between June 10–23 as red, and maximum NDVI from eMODIS during the same period in 2009 as blue and green color guns. Damaged forests (with reduced NDVI) show up as red in the false color image. Although not yet operating synopti-cally, such methods may form the basis for a national forest disturbance monitoring system. Photo credits: Cover defoliation inset: Dale G. Young, Detroit News; Cover tornado inset: Paul F. Sweeney, USDA FS. For more information contact William Har-grove with the US Forest Service at hnw@geobabble.org.

Highlight Article
1150 Toward a National Early Warning System for Forest DisturbancesUsing Remotely Sensed Canopy Phenology (Adobe PDF 5.56Mb)
William W. Hargrove, Joseph P. Spruce, Gerald E. Gasser, and Forrest M. Hoffman

Columns & Updates
1158 Grids and Datums — Republic of Indonesia (Adobe PDF 462Kb)
1163 Book Review — Topographic Laser Ranging and Scanning: Principles and Processing (Adobe PDF 436Kb)
1165 Reflection of the Past (Adobe PDF 514Kb)
1167 Headquarters News (Adobe PDF 1.1MKb)
1167 Proposed ASPRS BYLAWS Amendment (Adobe PDF 1.1Mb)
1168 ASPRS Board of Directors Approves Guidelines for the Procurement of Professional Services (Adobe PDF 1.1Mb)
1169 Industry News (Adobe PDF 285Kb)
1170 Federal Wetlands Mapping Standard Approved (Adobe PDF 285Kb)

Departments
1156 New Members
1159 Certification List
1164 ASPRS Member Champions (Adobe PDF 164Kb)
1167 Region of the Month
1171 Classifieds
1171 Advertiser Index
1172 Who’s Who in ASPRS
1173 Sustaining Members
1175 Instructions for Authors
1190 Forthcoming Articles
1212 Calendar
1239 Professional Directory
1240 Membership Application

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

1177 Small-footprint Laser Scanning Simulator for System Validation, Error Assessment, and Algorithm Development
Antero Kukko and Juha Hyyppä

Using a high quality model of the small-footprint scanning laser system and of the interaction between the laser beam and the object, it is possible to simulate and verify future scanning lidar systems and concepts to determine the most reasonable set of flight parameters for any current mapping tasks, and to test change detection concepts reliably.

1191 Examination of the Land Surface Temperature Response for Santiago, Chile
Marco A. Peña

The relationship of land surface temperature with land-cover types, vegetation cover, soil moisture content, and albedo is examined in an attempt to assess the surface urban heat island of Santiago, Chile.

1201 Tree Crown Detection on Multispectral VHR Satellite Imagery
Ioannis N. Daliakopoulos, Emmanouil G. Grillakis, Aristeidis G. Koutroulis, and Ioannis K. Tsanis

A new method called Arbor Crown Enumerator was developed for tree crown detection from multispectral Very High Resolution satellite imagery.

1213 A Wavelet and IHS Integration Method to Fuse High Resolution SAR with Moderate Resolution Multispectral Images
Gang Hong, Yun Zhang, and Bryan Mercer

Successful results are achieved in the fusion of all SAR and MS images from a variety of sensors with significant spatial and spectral variations using the proposed image fusion method.

1225 Spectral Distance Decay: Assessing Species Beta-diversity by Quantile Regression
Duccio Rocchini, Harini Nagendra, Rucha Ghate, and Brian S. Cade

Examining the potential of using quantile rather than OLS regression in modeling spectral distance decay in a dry tropical forest in central India.

1231 Synchronicity between Satellite-Measured Leaf Phenology and Rainfall Regimes in Tropical Forests
Sunyurp Park

The leaf phenology of Hawaiian forests extracted from satellite observations suggested that seasonal canopy greenness was well synchronized with distinct rainfall seasonality in dry areas, but it was negatively influenced by wetness in perhumid areas.