Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 1995. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-175). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-107). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-94).

This paper examines the issues that arise in the use of visual interpretation of Landsat data during the analysis, classification and mapping of the natural vegetation of the semi-arid Northern Cape. Initial research involved the classifying and mapping of the vegetation using conventional methods. A vegetation map, accompanying legend and descriptive key were produced. The problems encountered during this process, and the constraints of manpower, time and funds, stimulated the investigation of Landsat imagery as a means of improving the speed and accuracy of vegetation classification and mapping. A study area comprising one Landsat scene and which met certain requirements was selected: a) The area had already been surveyed and mapped at a scale of 1:250 000. b) As many vegetation units as possible were included. c) There was maximum diversity, complexity and variability in terms of soil, geology and terrain morphology. Initially a suitable mapping scale was selected, viz. 1:250 000, as it met the requirements of nature conservation authorities and agricultural planners. The scales of survey and remote sensing were based on this. The basic unit of survey was the 1:50 000 topographical map and satellite imagery at a scale of 1:250 000 was found to meet the requirements of reconnaissance level mapping. The usefulness of Landsat imagery was markedly affected by the quality of image production and enhancement. Optimum image production was vitally important and to this end, interaction between the user and the operations engineer at the Satellite Applications Centre, Hartebeeshoek was essential. All images used, were edge-enhanced and systematically corrected. While these procedures were costly, they proved to be fundamental to the success of the investigation. Precision geometric correction was not required for reconnaissance level investigation. The manual superimposition of the UTM grid, using ground control points from 1:250 000 topographical maps, proved to be accurate and convenient. Pattern recognition on single-band, panchromatic imagery was difficult. The scene lacked crispness and contrast, and it was evident that black and white imagery did not satisfy the objectives of the study. Three-band false colour composite imagery was superior to single-band imagery in terms of clarity and number of cover classes. The addition of colour undoubtedly facilitated visual interpretation. False colour composite imagery was investigated further to establish which year, season and possibly time of season would best suit the objectives of the investigation. It was found that the environmental parameters affecting reflectance are relatively stable over time and it was not necessary to acquire imagery of the same year as field surveys. However, the year of imagery should be chosen so that similar climatic conditions prevail. While, in certain instances, imagery captured during winter had advantages in separating complex mosaics, summer imagery was superior in most respects. Furthermore, given "normal" climatic conditions, the ideal period during which there was maximum contrast between and within ground classes, and thus spectral classes, was narrowed to mid-January to mid-April. Units which were acceptably heterogeneous (relatively homogeneous) in terms of reflectance levels were delineated manually on the image. This delineation was done at three levels of complexity and the units were compared with the vegetation map. A series of field trips aided the interpretation of the images, especially where discrepancies occurred between the map and the image. In general, there was a close degree of correspondence between the prepared vegetation map and the delineated image. Field investigation revealed the image units to be more accurate than those on the vegetation map, and the image served to highlight the inadequacies inherent in classifying and mapping vegetation of extensive areas with limited resources.

Orientador: Marcílio Vieira Martins Filho / Coorientador: Renato Farias Valle Júnior / Banca: Teresa Cristina Tarle Pissarra / Banca: José Eduardo Pitelli Turco / Banca: Fabricio Anibal Corradini / Banca: Vera Lucia Abdala / Resumo: Os aspectos pertinentes ao uso dos recursos ofertados pelo meio natural têm sido alvo de diferentes abordagens, seja pela necessidade de aproveitamento ou pelas limitações à sua captação pelo homem. Sendo os elementos que compõem o meio físico passiveis de análises mais apuradas quanto ao seu manuseio, envolvendo técnicas que reduzam os impactos gerados pela sua exploração direta e indireta. A espacialização das informações obtidas de forma direta ou indireta, acerca dos recursos ofertados pelo meio físico, representa uma possibilidade de interação entre as fontes fornecedoras de recursos naturais e sua localização, sendo essa passível de ser mapeada e circunscrita na superfície terrestre. Essa espacialização gera uma poderosa ferramenta de gestão e planejamento das atividades antrópicas. A delimitação de compartimentos da paisagem a partir de unidades do modelado do relevo apresentou resultados satisfatórios quanto as estabilidades dos compartimentos analisados. Assim, a delimitação de compartimentos da paisagem na bacia hidrográfica do ribeirão Santa Gertrudes que se localiza entre os munícipios de Uberaba e Veríssimo, na região do Triângulo Mineiro no estado de Minas Gerais, com 321 Km2 de área e é tributária da margem direita do rio Uberaba, teve como proposta buscar, analisar e compreender a dinâmica interna da mesma e suas alterações em função da ocupação antrópica e das atividades decorrentes dessa forma de ocupação. O objetivo deste trabalho, foi determinar compartime... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Relevant aspects of the use of resources offered by the natural environment have been the subject of different approaches, either the need for exploitation or the limitations of uptake by man. The elements that compound the physical environment are subject of more accurate analysis regarding handling, involving techniques that reduce the impacts generated by your direct and indirect exploitation. The spatialization of information obtained directly or indirectly about the resources offered by the physical environment, what represents a possibility of interaction between the natural resources sources and location to be mapped and circumscribed on the Earth's surface. This spatialization generates a powerful management and planning tool of human activities. The Santa Gertrudes Creek watershed is located between the municipalities of Uberaba and Veríssimo, in the State of Minas Gerais, with 321 Km2 of area and is a right tributary of Uberaba River. It was proposed to search, analyze and understand the internal dynamics of the watershed and its changes as a function of human occupation and activities resulting from this form of occupation. The use of landscapes compartments from relief units enabled the development of an environmental matrix for land use, pointing potentialities and weaknesses. The aim of this work was the preparation of landscape compartments from the mapping of relief units, what subsidized the elaboration of maps of environmental potentialities and weaknesses for the watershed under study. To do so, maps of geology, slope, geomorphology, and land use have been drawn up and infiltration tests and particle size analysis of soils were performed. It is worth noting, that by using a geographic information system, the information was spatialized in thematic maps and the crossing of them within a multicri... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

O município de Limeira SP enfrentou um crescimento urbano intenso e desordenado, após a segunda metade do século XX, oriundo dos incentivos públicos de descentralização industrial da capital paulista, que provocou grandes problemas socioambientais. O presente estudo procura analisar as fragilidades e potencialidades da organização do espaço em Limeira através da metodologia da Cartografia Ambiental de Síntese, pois esta possibilita a delimitação de unidades individualizadas da paisagem a partir da síntese dos atributos físicos e sociais presentes no espaço. Para tanto, foi realizado um levantamento bibliográfico dos principais conceitos e metodologias dos estudos ambientais na Geografia, dando destaque à Cartografia e aos novos instrumentos de coleta e manipulação de dados espaciais. Em seguida, foram coletadas informações sobre o município através de pesquisa bibliográfica, imagens de satélite e trabalhos de campo. Estas informações foram organizadas no software SPRING para a confecção dos mapas temáticos e do mapa ambiental de síntese. De posse do mapa final foi possível analisar cada unidade de paisagem isoladamente segundo seus atributos, podendo servir de suporte a outros estudos no município e para a administração pública a fim de subsidiar um planejamento territorial mais compatível com a realidade local. / The county of Limeira - SP faced an intense and disorganized urban growth, since the second half of the twentieth century, due to the industrial decentralization of the state capital, by government incentives, which caused major social and environmental problems. This study seeks to analyze the weaknesses and strengths of the space organization in Limeira through the methodology of Environmental Synthesis Cartography, since this enables the delineation of individual units of landscape from the synthesis of physical and social attributes present in the space. For this, we carried out a literature review of the main concepts and methodologies of environmental studies in Geography, focusing on the Cartography and the new spatial data collection and manipulation instruments. Then, we collected information on the county through literature search, satellite images and field work. This information was organized in the SPRING software to elaborate thematic maps and the final environmental synthesis map. In possession of the final map it became possible to parse each landscape unit separately according to their attributes, providing a support to other studies in the county and to the government in creating a territorial planning more compatible with local realities.

A temática ambiental tem despertado enorme interesse em diversos seguimentos da sociedade, especialmente de pesquisadores da área, que vêem contribuindo com a produção de inúmeras publicações. No entanto, a bibliografia produzida para a Cartografia Ambiental tem apresentado lacunas, principalmente no trato do embasamento das pesquisas com enfoque teórico-metodológico. Este trabalho revisa as propostas metodológicas elaboradas por André Journaux, Jean Tricart, Helmut Troppmair e Carlos Augusto de Figueiredo Monteiro para o mapeamento ambiental. Trata inicialmente da conexão existente entre a Geografia, os estudos ambientais e a ciência cartográfica, que é a própria interface entre os dois primeiros, expondo, dentro de um contexto histórico, várias visões da relação sociedade - natureza. Adotamos uma postura fundamentada pelo construto do Geossistema e da Semiologia Gráfica para que as representações possam refletir o espaço geográfico como um todo indissociável de objetos e ações. Alguns critérios inerentes à cartografia também foram abordados, para que servissem de baliza ao estudo: o problema das ordens de grandeza; a questão do dinamismo do mundo real versus a condição estática dos mapas; a almejada síntese cartográfica, a qual consideramos ser a forma ideal para os mapas ambientais; e a busca por uma legenda significativa, que auxilie o usuário em desvendar o mapa. / Environmental thematic has grown enormous interest in several segments of society, especially from area researchers who have been contributing to the production of countless publications. However, the bibliography produced for Environmental Cartography has had some gaps mainly on dealing with the foundation of theoretical and methodological focus. This work reviews the methodological proposals by André Journaux, Jean Tricart, Helmut Troppmair and Carlos Augusto de Figueiredo Monteiro for environmental mapping. It has come up from the existing connection among Geography, environmental studies and cartographic science which is the actual interface between the two former ones, demonstrating in a historical context, several insights of the relation society nature. We have adopted a framework based on the building of Geosystems and Graphic Semiology so that the representations could reflect the geographic space as a set inseparable from objects and actions. Some criteria inherent to cartography were also approached in order to be support to the study: problems with magnitude; the issue of the dynamism of the real world versus the static condition of maps; the targeted cartographic synthesis we consider as being the ideal form for environmental mapping; and the search for a meaningful legend that may help the user uncover the map.

In this dissertation, we first introduce an equal-area spherical map, HEALPix, which is borrowed from astrophysics. Its associated sample pattern is uniformly distributed over the sphere surface. Then we discuss its application in environment mapping. Although the HEALPix representation is more balanced than the traditional cubemap, it cannot utilize the built-in hardware operations like cubemap, and the mipmapping construction is more complicated. Therefore, its rendering speed is not comparable to that of the cubemap. This motivates us to invent a new six-face spherical map, called isocube. Unlike cubemap, isocube is an equal-area mapping, i.e., each texel spans the same area and is equally important. Due to the six-face representation, isocube can fit nicely into the cubemap hardware and hence can fully exploit the hardware operations tailored for cubemap. In addition, its mapping computation only involves a small overhead. Therefore the look-up speed for isocube is very fast. / Next we discuss another application of HEALPix map, the dynamic environment sequence sampling. Previous work only considers the static case where the environment map is approximated by finite directional light sources. In the dynamic case, the individual regeneration of samples for each frame may introduce abrupt, changes in the rendering animation. To handle this temporal inconsistency problem, we propose spherical q2-tree based on IIEALPix map. The adaptiveness of the quadtree can suppress the abrupt changes between consecutive frames, and hence a rather smooth rendering can be produced. This method, however, generates sample pattern independently for each environment frame, and therefore it may still cause unexpected, lumps in some situations. To fully utilize the temporal coherence in the sequence, we present a global sampling approach which treats the dynamic environment sequence as a all volume and performs sampling in the volume. The volumetric sampling adapts the sample number according to each frame and restricts the temporal/spatial changes within small subdivided volumes, and hence ensures a smooth sampling sequence. Within the framework, we present a volumetric importance metric and develop a binary-quad tree to perform stratification. Experimental results show that our volumetric sampling method can generate light samples with a better temporal consistency. / Spherical map is the foundation for many applications in computer graphics, such as environment mapping, precomputed radiance transfer, radiosity and image-based rendering. For these applications that involve intensive computation on spherical domain, it is generally desirable to employ equal-area and uniform spherical maps as the underlying parameterization. However, equal-area spherical maps are less exploited in graphics. / Wan, Liang. / "August 2007." / Adviser: Tien-Tsin Wong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: B, page: 1121. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-123). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-73).

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-133). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.