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S.C. Laine

Publications and source records attributed to S.C. Laine.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS1999

Using multiple-polarization L-band radar to monitor marsh burn recovery

Aircraft L-band VV-, HH-, and VH-polarizations were examined as tools for monitoring burn recovery in a coastal marsh. Significant relationships were observed between time-since-burn (difference between burn and image collection dates; 550-900 days after burn) and returns related to all polarizations. As marsh burn recovery progressed, VV returns decreased while HH and VH returns increased. Radar returns extracted from control sites adjacent to each burn-simulated nonburn marsh and were not individually or in combination significantly related to the timesince-burn. Normalized by the control data, VH-polarization explained up to 83% of the total variations. Overall, the L-band multipolarization radars estimated time-since-burn within ±59 to ±92 days.

Florida↗
USGS1998

Generation of coastal marsh topography with radar and ground-based measurements

A topographic surface of a low lying coastal marsh was created by using three flood extent vectors digitized from ERS-1 SAR images and two elevation contours from U.S. Geological Survey topographic quadrangles. Point measurement of water depth at the times of the SAR collections allowed conversion of the radar measured flood extent vectors to topographic contours. Generation of the topographic surface was accomplished with a surface gridding algorithm, SAR and on-site measures. Errors in the generated topography were mainly associated with the lack of input contours covering narrow to broad plateaus and topographic highs and lows. The misplacement of SAR derived flood extent vectors also caused errors in sparsely vegetated high marsh, at convoluted marsh-forest boundaries, and at topographic depressions. Overall, the standard deviation of differences between measured and predicted elevations at 747 points was 19 cm. Excluding the above mentioned abrupt boundaries and topographic highs and lows outside the range of available contours, standard deviation differences averaged about 14 cm, but most often averaged about 8 cm. This suggested a 5 to 9 factor improvement over the 150 cm topographic resolution currently available for this area.

Journal of Coastal Research↗
USGS1997

Comparison of Landsat Thematic Mapper and high resolution photography to Identify change in complex coastal wetlands

Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images were used to generate pre- and post- hurricane classifications of a complex wetland environment in southern Louisiana. Accuracies were estimated as 77% and 81.5% for the pre- and post- classifications that included water, emergent vegetation, floating vegetation, and mud flats. From the two classifications, areas of emergent vegetation loss were identified. The classifications and change map were compared to similar output generated from high resolution color infrared photography. The comparison showed spatial scale of the sensor was the most important factor in separation of classes in this type of wetland environment. Classifications derived by using the TM images provided good class separation when one class dominated more extensive areas (>30 m), but not when mixtures of wetland types were on the same order as the TM sensor spatial resolution. Boundary pixel mixtures were problematic, however problems also occurred in areas of fairly continuous canopies containing small pockets of water and floating vegetation, and in areas of degrading marsh. Both areas were predominately misclassified as emergent vegetation. In the case of change detection, loss of emergent vegetation occurring as small pockets was not identified, whereas loss of degraded marsh was identified but the spatial continuity and extent overemphasized. In combination, these misclassifications resulted in the TM change analysis overpredicting emergent vegetation loss by about 40%.

Louisiana↗