Direct georeferencing of aerial imagery has the potential to meet escalating demand for image data sets of increasingly higher temporal and spatial resolution. However, variability in terms of spatial accuracy within the resulting images may severely limit the use of this technology with regard to operations involving other data sets. Spatial misalignment between data sets can be corrected manually; however, an automated solution is preferable given the volume of data involved. This research has developed and tested an automated custom solution to the spatial misalignment between directly georeference aerial thermal imagery and vector data representing building outlines. The procedure uses geometric matches between image features and vector objects to relate pixel locations to geographic coordinates. The results suggest that the concept is valid and capable of significantly improving the spatial accuracy of directly georeferencing aerial imagery.

In certain rural areas of Manitoba, the character of the rural residential population has changed. People have built or bought houses around land that had been previously used exclusively for agriculture. These rural residents have invested in their property and are very sensitive to any activity that may interfere with their “rural lifestyle” or affect the value of their property. In the past, livestock production, in particular hog production was generally one component of mixed farming operation. Livestock production in Manitoba has undergone significant changes in recent years, both in size of operation and production method. It has now become a specialized industry where operations have become much larger and more capital intensive than farms of thirty years ago. These factors have resulted in situations where land use conflicts have and continue to occur. Typically, regulatory zoning, in conjunction with manual review of land cover overlay and topographic maps have been used to select sites for livestock operations. This approach can be time consuming and expensive. An alternative approach is the development of a geographic information system (GIS) to define optimal locations for livestock operations and non-farm rural residents. The use of such a model has the capability to reduce the number of rural land use conflicts. This study starts by documenting the significant changes in recent years of rural residential development and the size as well as the production method of hog operations in Manitoba. It then draws on a series of interviews to gain insight into the complex land use conflicts within the study area and to inform the creation of a geographic information system (GIS) model. This practicum explores “smart” land use analysis using a combination of GIS and Land Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS) modeling to represent the spatial consequences of land use decisions. This research has resulted in the development of a GIS model to be used as a decision support tool in developing policy surrounding future development and land use; including appropriate locations of any new or expanding livestock operations and rural non-farm residents within the Rural Municipality (RM) of St. Andrews, MB.

No description available.

No description available.

To aid in reclamation planning for the Genesee Coal Mine in Alberta, I qualified the pre-mined state of wetlands and measured land use and land cover (LULC) change between 1982 and 2007. A generalized linear model (GLM) was developed to explain the presence of wetlands on the pre-mined landscape. Environmental variables used to model the distribution of the wetlands included categorical LULC variables (agricultural land, vegetation, roads, structures, rivers, streams and tributaries), and elevation or elevation-derived terrain variables (slope, terrain ruggedness index, compound topographic index, sinks). Results from the model suggest that pre-mined wetland presence is best explained by agricultural land use, distance to tributaries, terrain ruggedness, distance to rivers, and the interaction between agriculture and roads. Landscape metrics were used to measure changes in landscape fragmentation and wetland structure. Differences in metric values suggest that the landscape has more surface water, less forested or vegetated land cover, and greater fragmentation. / Conservation Biology

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are proving difficult to both define and effectively implement in Victorian Local Government. Current innovation diffusion theory, and emerging GIS and IS implementation theory are used to develop a framework for the implementation of either a new GIS, or for improving a currently ineffective GIS. The thesis describes a method of practically redefining GIS in the Local Government environment and then applying diffusion principles during the implementation of GIS. The first area of new investigation in the thesis is the approach to defining the GIS requirements of Local Government. In this thesis, GIS in Local Government is defined by starting with the business requirements and then letting them define the high level technical and functional requirements. This obtains a different answer from the traditional approach of assuming that current generic high level technical and functional definitions of GIS are correct, and that implementation is a selection and fine tuning process. The new approach is based mainly on the “productional perspective”; developed in recent theoretical GIS diffusion studies. The major difference is that GIS implementation in Local Government does not necessarily include the requirement for the design and construction of a specific GIS database. The GIS simply consists of graphical maps that spatially index and read existing non spatial databases within the Local Government IS environment. (For complete abstract open document)

Dissertation thesis: Contribution to the evaluation of different approaches to the modelling of soil loss by water erosion in GIS, is a set of five studies published or accepted for publication in scientific journals. Thematically the work deals with the question of linking the erosion modelling together with geographic information systems. The work is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, the issue of erosion and rainfall-runoff modelling is described. A particular focus is placed on the concept and the basic equations underlying erosion modelling. The second chapter contains 2 studies that deal with modelling rainfall-runoff conditions in the area of experimental area using KINFIL model. The chapter also discusses the selection of a suitable model and source datasets that forms the basis for the evaluation of physiographic parameters of a catchment. The third chapter is thematically focused in calculating the rainfall factor based on long-term precipitation records from 32 meteorological stations in the Czech Republic. It partially overlaps with the previous chapter because one of the outcomes of the study is the REDES database containing values of R-factor. However, the chapter focuses more on the time scale, and especially the influence of the time step in the simulation on resulting outcomes of the model. The fourth chapter is dealing by erosion modelling in GIS based on analysis of digital terrain models. It contains a study that addresses the influence of various algorithms and/or equations to calculate topographical factor and its effect on the overall prediction of soil loss.

In today's knowledge-based economy, issues concerning equitable access to telecommunication services and their quality remain an important public policy focus. Wireline broadband Internet brings a significant expense of installation and maintenance, especially in less densely populated rural and remote areas. The rural, sparsely populated areas of southern Illinois are considered the broadband periphery and are underserved in terms of equitable access to high speed Internet. This study explores utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool to identify relevant local obstructions ("clutter") in the development of a more reliable, cost effective metrics for the deployment of wireless towers. After performing extensive quality control on tower coordinates obtained from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which were only 47% accurate, a spatial model to represent and analyze wireless broadband infrastructure and demand in the twenty-one county southern Illinois study region was developed. The key factors extracted for wireless broadband propagation are the land cover surrounding the tower, elevation and slope of the terrain, and tower height. Geographically weighted regression analysis was used to determine typical characteristics of users of wireless technology, with income, age, and education having the most significant effect. According to Census data for the year 2000, 33,910 of the 174,959 households in southern Illinois have poor or no wireless coverage. Based on the results of the study and policy recommendations, wireless broadband technologies are viable solutions to help bridge the broadband gap in southern Illinois and rural America.

For the past three decades, biologists and geographers have increasingly incorporated geographical information systems to inventory and analyze spatially organized data. The proliferation of computational tools and models for visualizing, processing, and quantifying landscape patterns has continued sometimes without thorough scrutiny and scientific understanding of their benefits and limitations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the structure and accuracy of the ecological modeling program Land Change Modeler for ArcGIS (LCM) and its analytical methods. A case study rich in land use change at Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge was used to focus on the program's ability to utilize imagery at multiple levels of spatial resolution and to quantify landscape change. The case study evaluated the LCM module on three primary criteria 1) inputs and outputs, 2) the impacts of scale and resolution in terms of proposed analytical methods, and 3) program structure, simplicity, flexibility, and function definitions. The study revealed that the module based structure of LCM demands specific inputs which allow for the assessment of landscape change, habitat, and biodiversity. But, the program is difficult to navigate and requires prior knowledge of analytical methods. The study also showed that the appropriate utilization of ecological computational programs should be based upon fundamental concepts of landscape ecology, the intended use of the outputs, and the prior knowledge of the user.

No description available.