The seagrass extent has been declining globally. The human activities that are most likely to cause seagrass loss are those which affect the water quality and clarity. However, turbidity following coastal erosion is often left out from marine ecosystem vulnerability indices. This study quantified the coastal erosion for Tsimipaika Bay in northwestern Madagascar by using change detection analysis of satellite imageries. The annual coastal erosion data was then used to create an index for seagrass vulnerability to turbidity following coastal erosion. Considering that the height of seagrass species plays an important role in their survival following turbidity, the seagrass vulnerability index (SVI) was based on two factors; seagrass species height and their distance to the nearest possible erosion place. The results for the coastal erosion showed that the amount of erosion was particularly high in 1996, 2001 and 2009 for Tsimipaika Bay. The highest erosion occurred in 2001 with a land loss area of about 6.2 km2 . The SVI maps revealed that 40% of the seagrass communities had minimum mean SVI values in 2001 and 50% had the maximum mean SVI during the year 2009. This study showed that it is possible to use coastal erosion to measure seagrass vulnerability; however, the index requires configuration such as including the total amount of annual coastal erosion and incorporating bathymetric data. The entire project was built and automated in Jupyter Notebook using Python programming language, which creates a ground for future studies to develop and modify the project.

Diploma thesis deals with the land cover classification in Sidama region of Ethiopia and 2 kebeles, Chancho and Dangora Morocho. High resolution Sentinel-2 and very high resolution PlanetScope satellite images are used. The development of the classification algorithm is done in the Google Earth Engine cloud based environment. Ten combinations of the 4 most important parameters of the Random Forest classification method are tested. The defined legend contains 8 land cover classes, namely built-up, crops, grassland/pasture, forest, scrubland, bareland, wetland and water body. The training dataset is collected in the field during the fall 2020. The classification results of the two data types at two scales are compared. The highest overall accuracy for land cover classification of Sidama region came out to be 84.1% and kappa index of 0.797, with Random Forest method parameters of 100 trees, 4 spectral bands entering each tree, value of 1 for leaf population and 40% of training data used for each tree. For the land cover classification of Chancho and Dangora Morocho kebele with the same method settings, the overall accuracy came out to be 66.00 and 73.73% and kappa index of 0.545 and 0.601. For the classification of Chancho kebele, a different combination of parameters (80, 3, 1, 0.4) worked out better...

Remote sensing has enabled unprecedented earth observation from space and has proven to be an invaluable tool for agricultural applications and crop management practices. Here we detect seasonal metrics indicating the start of the season (SOS), the end of the season (EOS) and maximum greenness (MAX) based on vegetation spectral signatures and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for a time series of Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and PlanetScope imagery of potato, wheat, watermelon, olive and peach/apricot fields. Seasonal metrics were extracted from NDVI curves and the effect of different spatial and temporal resolutions was assessed. It was found that Landsat-8 overestimated SOS and EOS and underestimated MAX due to its low temporal resolution, while Sentinel-2 offered the most reliable results overall and was used to classify the fields in Aljawf. Planet data reported the most precise SOS and EOS, but proved challenging for the framework because it is not a radiometrically normalized product, contained clouds in its imagery, and was difficult to process because of its large volume. The results demonstrate that a balance between the spatial and temporal resolution of a satellite is important for crop monitoring and classification and that ultimately, monitoring vegetation dynamics via remote sensing enables efficient and data-driven management of agricultural system

Groundwater is a vital non-renewable resource that is being over exploited at an alarming rate. In Saudi Arabia, the majority of groundwater is used for agricultural activities. As such, the mapping of irrigated lands is a crucial step for managing available water resources. Even though traditional in-field mapping is effective, it is expensive, physically demanding, and spatially restricted. The use of remote sensing combined with advanced computational approaches provide a potential solution to this scale problem. However, when attempted at large scales, traditional computing tends to have significant processing and storage limitations. To address the scalability challenge, this project explores open-source cloud-based resources to map and quantify center-pivot irrigation fields on a national scale. This is achieved by first applying a land cover classification using Random Forest which is a machine learning approach, and then implementing a circle detection algorithm. While the analysis represents a preliminary exploration of these emerging cloud-based techniques, there is clear potential for broad application to many problems in the Earth and environmental sciences.

Uppsatsens syfte är att argumentera för ett verklighetsbaserat lärande inom geografiämnet för årskurs 5. Som ett pedagogiskt verktyg för detta ändamål prövar och diskuterar jag sökmotorn Google Earth (GE) och visar genom 4 exempel hur man kan använda detta verktyg. Jag prövar också GE:s lämplighet i förhållande till de tre ämnesfälten kartografi, fördelning och hållbar utveckling genom att formulera tre lektionsförslag. Jag gör också en kritisk granskning av aktuell forskning kring läromedel och ställer detta mot texter hämtade från kursplanen i Geografi. I min analys når jag fram till att fördelarna med att använda sig av GE i förhållande till traditionella läromedel är främst att eleverna på ett naturligt sätt kommer i kontakt med autentiska och aktuella problemfält som rör vår jord. Jag kommer även fram till att GE kan inspirera till grundläggande visuella färdigheter, samt ett kritiskt förhållningssätt till visuella fenomen i omvärlden. Genom detta når jag i min slutsats fram till att även om GE inte skapats för att vara ett pedagogiskt verktyg, så lämpar det sig väl att användas som ett sådant.

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Availability of organized data is required for accurate prediction of structural or functional deterioration in sewer and water pipes. Toward this end, GIS provides a means for viewing, understanding, interpreting, and visualizing complex geographically referenced information to reveal data relationships, patterns, and trends. The primary objective of this research is to develop a standard GIS data model and applications of the model. In the future, these can be used to develop protocols and methods for predicting the remaining life of water and wastewater assets. The source data for this study is the utility data and other publicly available data from resources such as USGS, SSURGO etc. Field mapping files are generated from the source files and the standard data model. These are then programmed to the common Extensible markup Language (XML) file developed as a base which is then converted to the data model where the final form of utility data is stored. The data taken from the utilities is cleansed and analyzed to match the standard data model which is then uploaded through the common XML and stored in the data warehouse as a geospatial database. The geospatial database is an aggregated water and wastewater infrastructure data consisting of the utility data in standard data model format. The data warehouse is developed for utilities to store their data at a centralized server, such as the San Diego Super Computer Center. Web applications demonstrate the publishing, querying and visualization of aggregated data in a map-based browser application. This aggregation of data of multiple utilities will help in providing timely access to asset management information and resources that will lead to more efficient programs. This tool also furnishes the public with a convenient tool to learn about municipal water and wastewater infrastructure systems. This document gives an overview of how this process can be achieved using the above mentioned tools and methodologies. / Master of Science

Skogsbränder är kraftfulla naturfenomen kapabla att åstakomma omfattande skada över stora ytor och medföra omfattande kostnader för sammhället både humanitärt, ekonomiskt och miljömässigt. Det finns därför ett starkt incitament att övervaka och förutspå skogsbränders utveckling och spridning. Traditionellt används kraftfulla skrivbordsklienter för att köra den simulerings-mjukvara som förutspår skogsbränder, vilket begränsar användningsområdet för simuleringar. Webbklienter är naturligt mobila och lättanvända. Genom att flytta bearbetningen till en server överförs majoriteten av arbetet från klienten. Det här projektet utvecklar ett server-klient baserat ramverk för att simulera skogsbränder, visualisera resultatet och hantera data för användning i skogsbrandsbekämpnings och -analys arbetsflöde. Både parametrarna som skickas till servern och simuleringsresultatet som returneras till klienten. Ramverket använder en kombination av HTTPS-kommunikation och websocket-teknologi för att kommunicera data mellan klienten och server i real-time genom Django-ramverket. Brandmodellen på den Kanadensiska empiriska brandmodellen Prometheus som är implementerad i programmeringsspråket Python. Det är optimerat för det svenska klimated för att enkelt kunnas fältsättas i en webbapplikation för svenska myndigheter. Webb-applikationen är tillgänglig genom mobila och stationära enheter där ramverket beräknar och visualiserar förutspådd fortspridning av skogsbrand i realtid. Skogsbrands moduleringsmodellen av applikationen är jämförd med skogsbränderna i Enskogen och Ängra närastaden Kårböle under sommaren 2018. Noggrannhetsbedömningen av modellen påvisar att den simulerade branden tenderar att innehålla den egentliga elden men är benägen att överskatta eldspridningen. Applikationen utvärderades även genom ett formulär om applikationens funktionallitet som skickades till en provgrupp av personer som arbetar med skogsbränder eller annat relevant område. Provgruppen var nöjd med applikationen och såg ett anvädningsområde för applikationen i sitt arbetsflöde. Mycket arbete återstår för att göra applikationen fältduglig genom integration av myndigheters datatjänster och andra databaser som innehåller riskobjekt, byggnader, kraftledningar e.g. Trots detta ansågs brandingejörer inom räddningstjänster en möjlighet att använda verktygen i dess nuvarande tillstånd om simuleringsresultatet anses korrekt nog för att fungera som underlag för beslut. Detta understryker behovet av en liknande applikation, med vidare funktionalitet och integration med data-system. / Wildfires are powerful natural forces capable of causing extensive damage to large areas of lands and induce a high societal cost in both humanitarian, economic and environmental terms. As such there is a strong incentive to track and predict wildfires' development and spread. Traditionally heavy desktop clients are required to run the simulation-software required to perform wildfire spread predictions, which limits their use and versatility. Conversely, web-based clients are lightweight and versatile by design. By moving the processing of the simulation to a server the bulk of the workload is removed from the client. This project aims to produce a server-client framework for simulating wildfires, visualising the result and handling the fire data for use in the workflow of wildfire suppression and analysis. Both the parameters sent to the server and the simulation result returned to the client. It utilises a combination of HTTPS-requests and websockets-technology to communicate data and information between the client and server in real-time through the Django framework. The fire simulation is based upon the Canadian empirical fire-model Prometheus. The implementation of the algorithm were adopted in the programming language python and optimized for the Swedish climate to be easily deployed in a web-application to be used by Swedish organisations. The web-application was accessible though mobile and stationary devices where the framework calculated and visualised the progression of the wildfire in real-time. The wildfire progression model of the application was compared to the wildfires Enskogen and Ängra, close to the town of Kårböle during the summer of 2018. The accuracy assessment of the fire progression model found that the simulated wildfire progression tend to contain the observed fire and prone to overestimate the wildfires progression. The application was evaluated though a questionnaire which was answered by a sample group composed of persons working with wildfires or wildfire related fields. The sample group were satisfied by the application and broadly found that the application could be implemented into their workflow.  Much work remain to operationalise the application, such as integration of municipal data sources and other databases containing resources, risk-objects, buildings, power-lines. In spite of this Fire-engineers in emergency services state a possibility for use of the application as is, if the simulations are deemed accurate enough and provide a better basis for decision making and measures. This underlines the need of an application such as this in the field, and with further functionalities and integration's with data-systems.