PE&RS February 1997

Cover Image

The images on the cover illustrate the effect of a projected sea level rise on the Cua-Lo region of North-Central Vietnam. Vietnam is a net exporter of rice, the majority of which is cultivated at elevations be-low 1 m. There is thus considerable concern about the effects of global accelerated sea level rise as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. The image is a composite of Landsat TM bands 3, 4 and 5, while the elevation model was developed from 1 m contour interval topographic sheets, with supplemental heights for the elevations below 1 m being developed from spot heights and land cover associations. Current national estimates of sea level rise by the year 2100 range from 0.32 to 0.64 m, with a mean level of 0.48 m and a standard deviation of 0.08 m. Given this uncertainty, and the inherent error in the elevation model itself (which was assumed to have an RMS of 0.30 m), it is therefore impossible to say definitively which areas would be inundated or not. As a result, the uncertainty management features of the IDRISI Software system were used to determine the probability of being inundated by this mean level, and subsequently the areas that would be affected given a 5% decision risk (lower image).

For more information‹phone: 508-793 7526; fax: 508-793-8842; IDRISI@CLARKU.EDU; http://www.idrisi.clarku.edu.

Highlight Article

129-136+159-160 Operational Multispectral Information Extraction: The DLPO Image Extraction Program (Adobe PDF 6.27 Mb)
Charlene T. Sailer, Erik L.E. Eason and Joseph L. Brickey 

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

161-167 GIS Modeling of Elk Calving Habitat in a Prairie Environment with Statistics
Ling Bian and Eric West

A logistic regression model was developed to assess the relationship between observed calving sites and a set of biophysical and anthropogenic habitat variables. 

171-178 Predicting Soil Drainage Class Using Remotely Sensed and Digital Elevation Data
A.T. Cialella, R. Dubayah, W. Lawrence, and E. Levine

Classification tree analysis predicted soil drainage class with an average of 78 percent accuracy. 

179-181 Integrating Eucalypt Forest Inventory and GIS in Western Australia
R.D. Spencer, M.A. Green, and P.H. Biggs

The method, which provides flexible and responsive information for forest management, was applied successfully to a recent resource-level inventory.

183-191 Landform Characterization with Geographic Information Systems
Jacek S. Blaszczynski

GIS-based methods for mapping and classification of the landscape surface into what can be understood as fourth-order-of-relief features and include convex areas and their crests, concave areas and their troughs, open concavities and enclosed basins, and horizontal and sloping flats are suggested. 

193-203 Qualitative Aspects of Chromo-Stereoscopy for Depth Perception
Thierry Toutin

Chromo-stereoscopy enables the generation of flat color composite images from multisource data in which depth information is coded into colors.