Geog 477 - Lab4Due October 30, 2006

Lab 4: Term Project – Part 1

Data collection and preparation – Report writing

This is the first part of three labs designed to guide you through the process of conducting astudy using remotely sensed data and organizing and communicating your results. Your completed lab report will be in the style of a journal article submission. The report should include roughly 2-4 paragraphs for each of the following sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Methods
  3. Results
  4. Discussion

Refer to papers in Remote Sensing of the Environment for guidance on written content and help with formatting.

You will be graded on execution of methods, quality of figures, and ability to communicate information in writing.

Length: 4-6 pages + table, figures, and references

For additional writing assistance on campus check out the CarolinaWritingCenter:

This lab will have two basic components: reporting and data prep.

Part I - Report Writing.

For this lab you will focus on the first two sections of the report – Intro and Methods. Your task is to compose a draft of your introduction section and the first two parts of the methods section (study area and data). You will then outline the rest of the analytical methodswith steps you expect to take to answer your research objectives.

Introduction:

The following are the types of questions you should be addressing in your introduction: Describe the system you are studying in a narrative overview. Where is it? What makes it interesting? Why is it compelling as a focus for study: Is it under development pressures or climatic stress? What do you plan on doing to address this issue?

Conclude your introduction with a clear statement of your objectives. State the problem and formulate a few objectives you will meet. Your objectives should be specific and quantifiable.

For additional guidance on what an introduction should contain for scientific writing you might check out the following website and scroll down to the section on introductions:

Methods

Your methods section will address your study area, data, and the analytical methods you will employ to answer your research objectives. Please write out the study area in paragraph form. For the Analytical Methods section, a thorough outline is all we are asking of you for you know. This would be an appropriate place to pose questions to Aaron and I if you are uncertain on the appropriate methods to employ. Treat this section as a brainstorm section detailing the possible avenues of analysis you might employ.

Study Area

This section should describe what the system is like. Summarize the landscape in terms of its chief compositional and structural attributes. Is the region mostly arid? Urban? Mixed deciduous forest? Or is the landscape highly variable? Describe the dominate physical gradients on the landscape both longitudinally (east to west) and latitudinal (north to south). If there have been studies conducted in your area before summarize (succinctly) and cite them.

Data

This section should briefly describe the data you will be using. It might be nice to summarize the data you will be using in a table which states the source, data name, and various resolutions.

Analytical Methods - outline this section

What do you plan on doing with this data? What are the particular techniques that you will employ?

Part II – Data Collection and Preparation

In this section you be asked to collect all of the necessary data for your analysis and get it into a usable format. For those of you conducting your own research project as well as those planning on working on the drought/productivity project you should aim to accomplish the following tasks in this section:

  1. Collect all of the necessary data for your analysis
  2. Prep the data for analysis (reproject) – if necessary resample, stretch, and aggregate to similar timescales
  3. Based on your outlined methods from above conduct a few preliminary analyses
  4. Identify any potential data processing issues – i.e. not being able to get the data necessary to perform your analysis, projection problems, etc.
  5. Include a brief report describing the data you have compiled and some preliminary results – this can be in bullet format.

For those of you looking at the spatial and temporal trends in productivity in NC, SC, and VA complete Part IIa below.

Part IIa – Data Preparation for the NC, SC, and VA drought analysis project

This study will examine the spatial and temporal trends in productivity in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia using MODIS vegetation indices (NPP, PSN, NDVI, EVI) for 2000-2007. NPP is an annual product available from 2000-2006. We will use NDVI and EVI16-dayproducts 250 m data for the years of 2000-2006 (MOD13Q1 - Vegetation Indices 16-Day L3 Global 250m SIN Grid V005). We will examine 8-day PSN data for the growing seasons of 2006 and 2007 (as available - MOD17A2). In your analysis you should focus on NPP, PSN and either NDVI or EVI.

We will provide you with the NPP, NDVI, EVI data for 2000-2006. These datasets are stored in their respective folders at:

data\termProject

You will be responsible for downloading data for 2007. You can use the EDGEor the UMT (for PSN) website for downloading the data (Refer back to lab 2 and 3). When importing the raw .hdf files into Imagine make sure you choose MODIS EOS HDFFormat, not HDF Raster (Direct Read) or HDF Scientific (Direct Read). Also remember we are using MODIS tile h11v05. You could restrict your search by -79 to -77 longitude, and 33-35 latitude to pick up the right data granule. Finally - try to use the following naming convention to keep things consistent:

npp_2004.tif,

ndvi_2002_193.img

evi_2002_193.img

psn_2002_185.img

Note: The number following the data type and year indicates the Julian date for the NDVI, EVI, and PSN images.

Here is the MODIS naming convention to make this process less painful:

For your reference, there are several users manuals for the MOD productsas well as a Manual created by Dahl Winters to help you along in the process downloading data and interpreting different MODIS products. All of this help can be found at: \Data\termProject\help.

Also you might check this out: See for information on MODIS NDVI and EVI products.

The MODIS NPP units are in Kg C/m^2/yr after you multiply by 0.0001. The range for annual MODIS NPP is less than 32700, and a detailed explanation for the values above 32700 is on page 33 of the MOD17 user's guide.

Complete the following steps as preliminary analysis.

  • Import the MODIS NPP tiff files into img files for years 2000 and 2006
  • Open the image for year 2000 in Viewer 1
  • Examine the image statistics under Utility | Layer Info… in Viewer 1
  • Export this information by selecting File | Print to File and save the resulting txt file to your working directory.
  • Repeat the previous 3 steps for each MODIS NPP image and include a table of these values in your report.
  • Perform a change detection analysis between the different years for NPP. You might have to adjust the percent change to more than 10% in order to get an interpretable result. Include in you report a summary of your findings.

You are encouraged to work together on this project. You will be responsible for your own lab write-up but it would be beneficial to pair-up and form work groups. This will also help reduce the amount of redundant data that you request from the EDGE and download and store on the afs space.

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Your completed lab assignments should be saved to your directory as onyen_lab4.doc by 5 PM on Tuesday, October 30. We will not accept paper labs.

Note that there are limits to available disk space. Please keep your directories clear of redundant and/or unnecessary files.