PE&RS March 1997

Cover Image

This image shows the site of the tragic ValuJet Flight 592 crash in the Florida Everglades on 11 May 1996. The image was acquired on 15 August 1996, as part of a U.S. Geological Survey ecosystem study, using the Digital Multispectral Video (DMSV) system developed by SpecTerra Ltd., Perth, Australia, and the U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center. The DMSV is a four-camera, multispectral imaging system that allows specific spectral bands to be selected using filtered fore-optics. The false color composite comprises three 25-nm-wide spectral bands centered at 770 nm (red), 650 nm (green), and 550 nm (blue). The image array is 740 by 578 pixels with a resolution of about 0.3 m, and covers an area of 5.2 hectares in this scene. Evident features include the impact zone where open water appears black along with the major airboat trails that resulted from recovery operations. Sawgrass (Cladium jamaicense) and other types of aquatic vegetation are shown in hues of red, pink, and orange, with numerous airboat scars that are evident as striations throughout the image. Algal periphyton is shown in white, and dead vegetation caused by spilled jet fuel adjacent to the impact zone is shown in bluish green. The DMSV was mounted in a Piper Aztec twin-engine aircraft operated by Pro-Flight Aviation of Macon, Ga., and is one of several sensors being used to develop land characteristics data sets in support of USGS's South Florida Ecosystem Program.

Highlight Article

224-229 Reflectance Calibrated Digital Multispectral Video: A Test-Bed for High Spectral and Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing (Adobe PDF 1.57Mb)
John E. Anderson, Gregory B. Desmond, George P. Lemeshewsky, and Donald R. Morgan

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

263-265 An Examination of Measuring Selected Water Quality Trophic Indicators with SPOT Satellite HRV Data
Stefan H. Cairns, Kenneth L. Dickson, and Samuel F. Atkinson

Concurrent in situ measurements of Chlorophyll a, pheophytin a, total suspended solids, total dissolved solids, and turbidity were compared with SPOT data for three reservoirs in north Texas.

267-271 The Role of Spatial Resolution in Quantifying SSC from Airborne Remotely Sensed Data
Jay Gao and Stephen M. O'Leary

The regressed relationship between in situ suspended sediment concentration level and its digital number from scanned aerial photographs was tested and was most accurate at 10 m among the four spatial resolutions studied.  

273-279 Flood-Tide Deltaic Wetlands: Detection of Their Sequential Spatial Evolution
Qizhong Guo and Norbert P. Psuty

Utilizing digitized aerial photographs and topographic maps in a GIS, changes in area, shift of centroid, and rotation of marsh islands were quantified.

281-291 Monitoring South Florida Wetlands Using ERS-1 SAR Imagery
Eric S. Kasischke and Laura L. Bourgeau-Chavez

The results from the radar observations were found to be consistent with theoretical microwave scattering models that predict variations in backscatter as a function of vegetation structure, soil moisture, surface roughness, and the presence or absence of standing water.

293-297 AVHRR Imagery Used to Identify Hurricane Damage in a Forested Wetland of Louisiana
Elijah W. Ramsey III, Dal K. Chappell, and Dan G. Baldwin

Comparison of three sites before, during, and after the hurricane passage corraborated the atypical phenology of the impacted forested wetland and directly related the cause to the hurricane passage.

299-306 Assessing Corn Yield and Nitrogen Uptake Variability with Digitized Aerial Infrared Photographs
M.D. Tomer, J.L. Anderson, and J.A. Lamb

Digitized infrared photographs can be used to map crop growth within fields for precision farming applications, but multi-year studies are recommended to determine effects of climate on crop variability and mapping precision.

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ASPRS 1997 Annual Meeting
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1997 Geospatial Information Age- ACSM/ASPRS/RTI Annual Meeting & AutoCarto 13
Meeting: Softcopy Photogrammetry Applications: Using the Tools
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