Accurate and replicable measurements of changes to land cover from drought conditions are essential for monitoring ecosystem disturbances. Techniques designed to measure land cover changes have been developed using data from remote sensing but with variable success. In my three study areas of southeastern parts of the American State of Texas, the change vector analysis (CVA) technique was tested on remote sensing data captured by the Landsat TM sensor taken in the years 2009, 2010, and 2011. This study monitors land use/land cover (LULC) changes due to the extreme Texas drought of 2011; the worst single year drought ever recorded in the state. The Landsat data are converted to vegetation indices; the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), bare soil index (BI), normalized difference moisture index (NDMI), as well as Tasseled Cap Transformations (TCT) brightness, greenness and wetness. CVA was used to determine the intensity of change (magnitude) and the type of changes that occurred (direction) between the multi-temporal data. This represents a new and improved method for calculating the direction component. Additionally, the relationship between NDVI and NDMI and between TCT variables and their application in CVA are further explored. The results show that land cover changes occurred due to an increase in precipitation in 2010 as well as considerable decrease of precipitation in 2011 resulting in the devastating drought. Validation procedures show that the CVA method was effective in capturing both magnitude of change and type of change that occurred. The remote sensing approach to monitoring drought-induced land cover changes is systematic, replicable and globally available at any time. Such a reliable methodology is essential for measuring ecosystem threats and human population vulnerability. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / March 31, 2017. / Change vector analysis, Drought, Landsat, Remote sensing / Includes bibliographical references. / Victor Mesev, Professor Directing Dissertation; Xiuwen Liu, University Representative; Stephanie Pau, Committee Member; Xiaojun Yang, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_507724 |
| Contributors | Rahman, Shoumik (authoraut), Mesev, Victor (professor directing dissertation), Liu, Xiuwen, 1966- (university representative), Pau, Stephanie (committee member), Yang, Xiaojun, 1965- (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (degree granting college), Department of Geography (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (161 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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