SEAL at US-IALE

Nick Kruskamp and Josh Gray presented research at the annual US-IALE meeting in Ft. Collins, Colorado. NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics was well-represented with additional presentations from Chris Jones, Lindsey Smart, Devon Gaydos, Nikki Inglis, Kunwar Singh, and Georgina Sanchez.

Nick presented his work on identifying forest disturbances using dense time series of Landsat imagery and the CCDC algorithm. Substantial advances over the past 8 years have have unlocked the considerable potential of image time series analysis to identify land cover change and high-magnitude forest disturbances such as fire and harvest. Lower magnitude disturbances, like infectious diseases and pests, have a more subtle spectral manifestation and are much more difficult to accurately characterize. Using Sudden Oak Death as a case study, Nick demonstrated that algorithms like CCDC are less successful in mapping these types of changes, with important implications for disease management.