Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Nichols, J. D..
The 'Firefly' project has developed and implemented an infrared (IR) remote sensing prototype system based on the concept presented. The Firefly system produces images through smoke that will provide near real-time wildland fire information for fire management and suppression. The prototype will be tested through the 1991 fire season. Results of the testing will be incorporated into the final system design for operational use at the end of 1992.
NASA's JPL has completed a feasibility study using infrared technologies for wildland fire suppression and management. The study surveyed user needs, examined available technologies, matched the user needs with technologies, and defined an integrated infrared wildland fire mapping concept system configuration. System component trade-offs were presented for evaluation in the concept system configuration. The economic benefits of using infrared technologies in fire suppression and management were examined. Follow-on concept system configuration development and implementation were proposed.
An integrated forest fire detection and mapping system that will be based upon technology available in the 1990s was defined. Uncertainties in emerging and advanced technologies related to the conceptual design were identified and recommended for inclusion as preferred system components. System component technologies identified for an end-to-end system include thermal infrared, linear array detectors, automatic georeferencing and signal processing, geosynchronous satellite communication links, and advanced data integration and display. Potential system configuration options were developed and examined for possible inclusion in the preferred system configuration. The preferred system configuration will provide increased performance and be cost effective over the system currently in use. Forest fire management user requirements and the system component emerging technologies were the basis for the system configuration design. A preferred system configuration was defined that warrants continued refinement and development, examined economic aspects of the current and preferred system, and provided preliminary cost estimates for follow-on system prototype development.
A simple plane model of the magnetopause is used to address the question of particle accessibility. Particle motion in the current sheet region is analyzed, showing that the concept of gyromotion is useful even when the electric and magnetic fields vary significantly over the gyroradius, as long as the variation is perpendicular to the drift direction. The first adiabatic invariant for particle motion is defined in such a way that it is preserved in regions of large field gradients, provided that the gradients are in a direction primarily perpendicular to the particle drifts. This generalized invariant provides an adiabatically conserved quantity that can be used to characterize particles as they move from a source region through the drift region and into the magnetopause itself, helping to resolve the accessibility question. Some preliminary results are given for the magnetopause structure based on the location of particle guiding points.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
The author has identified the following significant results. The green number and brightness scatter plots, channel plots of radiance values, and visual study of the imagery indicate separability between barley and spring wheat/oats during the wheat mid-heading to mid-ripe stages. In the LACIE Phase 3 North Dakota data set, the separation time is more specifically the wheat soft dough stage. At this time, the barley is ripening, and is therefore, less green and brighter than the wheat. Only 4 of the 18 segments studied indicate separation of barley/other spring small grain, even though 11 of the segments have acquisitions covering the wheat soft dough stage. The remaining seven segments had less than 5 percent barley based on ground truth data.
The Pacific Northwest Land Resource Inventory Demonstration project is designed to demonstrate to users from state and local agencies in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho the cost effective role that Landsat derived information can play in natural resource planning and management when properly supported by ground and aircraft data. The project has been organized into five main phases: (1) maps and overlays, (2) early digital image analysis, (3) demonstration of applications using interactive image analysis, (4) Landsat products and land resources information systems, and (5) documentation. The demonstration project has been applied to Washington forestry, water inventory in southern Idaho, and monitoring of tansy ragwort in western Oregon.
LANDSAT digital data was successfully used to map and evaluate the wildland fuels of the Santa Monica Mountains in Southern California. A mixed classification scheme was used where training areas of known vegetation types were entered and the maximum likelihood classifier run, followed by an evaluation of the results and an unsupervised retraining of the classifier using an image of the probability of misclassification. Estimation of maturity class and crown closure percents of the major cover types were assigned to each computer class by associating the photointerpretation of 159 large scale photo samples with the resultant computer classes using analysis of variance and analysis of categorized data. The result of the computer classification and statistical analysis were then transformed from the LANDSAT Coordinate California State Plane Coordinate system for use in a digital format in the FIRESCOPE data retrieval and fire modeling system.
An approach to information acquisition is discussed in the context of meeting user-specified needs in a cost-effective, timely manner through the use of remote sensing data, ground data, and multistage sampling techniques. The roles of both LANDSAT imagery and Skylab photography are discussed as first stages of three separate multistage timber inventory systems and results are given for each system. Emphasis is placed on accuracy and meeting user needs.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
The Center for Remote Sensing Research has conducted studies designed to evaluate the potential application of ERTS data in performing agricultural inventories, and to develop efficient methods of data handling and analysis useful in the operational context for performing large area surveys. This work has resulted in the development of an integrated system utilizing both human and computer analysis of ground, aerial, and space imagery, which has been shown to be very efficient for regional crop acreage inventories. The technique involves: (1) the delineation of ERTS images into relatively homogeneous strata by human interpreters, (2) the point-by-point classification of the area within each strata on the basis of crop type using a human/machine interactive digital image processing system; and (3) a multistage sampling procedure for the collection of supporting aerial and ground data used in the adjustment and verification of the classification results.
A quasi-operational study demonstrating that a timber inventory based on manual and automated analysis of ERTS-1, supporting aircraft data and ground data was made using multistage sampling techniques. The inventory proved to be a timely, cost effective alternative to conventional timber inventory techniques. The timber volume on the Quincy Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest was estimated to be 2.44 billion board feet with a sampling error of 8.2 percent. Costs per acre for the inventory procedure at 1.1 cent/acre compared favorably with the costs of a conventional inventory at 25 cents/acre. A point-by-point comparison of CALSCAN-classified ERTS data with human-interpreted low altitude photo plots indicated no significant differences in the overall classification accuracies.
The primary test site for water supply investigations continues to be the Feather River watershed in northeastern California. This test site includes all of the area draining into and including the Oroville Reservoir. The principal effort is to determine the extent to which remote sensing techniques, when properly employed, can provide information useful to those persons concerned with the management and planning of lands and facilities for the production of water, using the Oroville Reservoir and the California Water Project as the focus for the study. In particular, emphasis is being placed on determining the cost effectiveness of information derived through remote sensing as compared with that currently being derived through more conventional means.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
A brief review of the development over the last decade of earth resource information systems is presented. Machine data preprocessing and analysis methods are surveyed and illustrated. These include preprocessing steps intended to modify geometric and radiometric aspects of earth observational image data to enhance the ability of either human interpreters or machine algorithms to extract information from the data. Illustrations of processed and analyzed images from spaceborne sensors including the Earth Resources Technology Satellite are discussed.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.
There are no author-identified significant results in this report.