[ANFES] 2013-02-24 NRMI: This Issue: Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 2 of 3) and Some Other Good Things

2013-02-24 NRMI: NATURAL RESOURCE MONITORING ITEMS OF INTEREST

This Issue: Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 2 of 3) and Some Other Good Things

RELIABILITY OF FOREST INVENTORIES AND REMOTE SENSING. (Part 2 of 3) – Recently I was doing some searching for publications on the reliability of forest inventories and remote sensing. Here are some of the sites that I found. If you know of others, please send me the information and I will post in the next NRMI. Thanks, Gyde (gyde@comcast.net).

Goodenough, D.G. et al. 1997. Automated forest inventory update with SEIDAM. Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 1997. IGARSS '97. Remote Sensing - A Scientific Vision for Sustainable Development., 1997 IEEE International. Abstract.

Gregg, Tommy F.; Hummel, Susan Stevens. N.d. Assessing Uncertainty in FVS Projections Using a Bootstrap Resampling Method. 29 slides.

Gross, Claus-Peter; Adler, Petra.1996? Reliability of Area Mapping by Delineation in Aerial Photographs. 5 p.

Gupta, Anshu; Singh, Jagdish. 2010. An Investigation of Reliability on Remote Sensing and GIS Data as an Aid to Urban Development Plan: A Case Study on Bhopal. Institute of Town Planners, India Journal 7(4): 90-100.

Helms, J. R. ;Shain, W. A. 1981. Problems Related to the Use of Remote Sensing for Inventory and Mapping of Lower Coastal Plain Forests. LARS Symposia. Paper 464. 5 p.

Hill, Timothy B. 1993. Taking the " " out of "ground truth" - objective accuracy assessment. 13 p.

Hofmann, Peter et al. 2011.Mapping Green Spaces in Bishkek—How Reliable can Spatial Analysis Be? Remote Sens 3: 1088-1103.

Kelle, Olavi et al. 2011.Remote sensing and probabilistic sampling based forest inventory method. l and http://www.google.com/patents/US7639842

Kleinn, C. 2002. New technologies and methodologies for national forest inventories. 10 p.

Köhl, Michael et al. 2011. Implications of sampling design and sample size for national carbon accounting systems. Carbon Balance and Management, 6:10.

Lackmann, Stefen. 2011. Lesson 8 - Good Practice in Designing a Forest Inventory. 75 p.

Lessard, Veronica C. 2001. Updating Indiana Annual Forest Inventory and Analysis Plot Data Using Eastern Broadleaf Forest Diameter Growth Models. In: Reams, Gregory A.; McRoberts, Ronald E.; Van Deusen, Paul C., eds. 2001. Proceedings of the second annual Forest Inventory and Analysis symposium; 2000 October 17-18; Salt Lake City, UT. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-47. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station. pp. 66-69.

Lund, H. Gyde; Thomas, Charles E. tech. coords. 1995. A primer on evaluation and use of natural resource information for corporate data bases. Gen. Tech. Report WO-62. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 168 p.

Magnussen, S. et al. 2010. Reliability of LiDAR derived predictors of forest inventory attributes: A case study with Norway spruce. Remote Sensing of Environment 114(4): 700–712.

Mäkinen, Antti M. et al. 2010. Identifying the Presence of Assessment Errors in Forest Inventory Data by Data Mining. Forest Science 56(3): 301-312. Abstract

Matanuska-Susitna Borough Forest Inventory (2009)

SOME OTHER PUBLICATIONS/URLS OF INTEREST

Scheffers, B.R., et al. 2012. What we know and don't know about Earth's missing biodiversity. Trends Ecol. Evol. 27(9):501-510.

Sciencenetwork. 2013. Monitoring tool to protect forests

Sewell, D., et al. 2012. When is a species declining? Optimizing survey effort to detect population changes in reptiles. PLoS ONE 7(8):e43387.

Seymour, C.L., et al. 2010.Twenty years of rest returns grazing potential, but not palatable plant diversity, to Karoo rangeland, South Africa. Journal of Applied Ecology 47 (4): 859-867.

Simonson, W.D., et al. 2012. Use of an airborne lidar system to model plant species composition and diversity of Mediterranean oak forests. Conserv. Biol. 26(5):840-850. Abstract.

Vallejo, V.R., et al. 2012. Perspectives in dryland restoration: approaches for climate change adaptation. New Forest. 43(5-6):561-579. Abstract.

Verburg, P.H., et al. 2010. Challenges in using land use and land cover data for global change studies. Global Change Biology 17 (2): 974-989.

Villard, M.A.; Haché, S. 2012. Conifer plantations consistently act as barriers to movement in a deciduous forest songbird: a translocation experiment. Biol. Conserv. 155:33-37. Abstract.

Vojta, J.; Drhovská, L. 2012. Are abandoned wooded pastures suitable refugia for forest species? J. Veg. Sci. 23(5):880-891 Listing.

Vuohelainen, A.J., et a.. 2012. The effectiveness of contrasting protected areas in preventing deforestation in Madre de Dios, Peru. Environ. Manage. 50(4):645-663. Abstract.

Washington-Allen, R.A., et al. 2008. Quantification of the ecological resilience of drylands using digital remote sensing. Ecology and Society 13 (1), art. no. 33

Watts, Jonathan. 2013. Amazon showing signs of degradation due to climate change, NASA warns. The Guardian.

Watts, Jonathan. 2013. Brazil plans Amazon tree census to assess deforestation. The Guardian.

FEEDBACK ON CONVERSION FACTORS – List member and retired forester Jamie Benson provided this feedback on last week’s NRMI…In the late 1970's early 1980's Canada went through the process of selecting units and calculating conversion factors for switching to metric (SI) unit. Two publications from the Canadian Forestry Service were very useful, but both are out of print and I cannot find them either at the Canadian government publications site or on line. These were: Selected metric (SI) units and conversion factors for Canadian forestry, by Murray Bowen (which is a fold out pamphlet; I have a copy), and Metric Units in Forestry, by G.M. Bonnor; I do not have a copy of this one. Both publications came out as a result of work by several Forestry Sector Working Groups of the Canadian Metric Commission, which was disbanded in about 1985 (their work was done). For the specific values requested, from the Selected values pamphlet, 1 m squared / hectare equals 4.356 00 square feet per acre; the zeros are important, since the intent was for the conversion to work both ways and to cover significant rounding errors. For the other conversion requested: 1 square foot per acre equals 0.229 568 square metres per hectare. Note the spelling of 'metre', which comes from the fact that we are using SI units, which recognizes that a metre is a measure of distance, while a meter is a measuring device (the distinction between which generated some amount of discussion during meetings of the metric forestry sectors in which I participated - I was an active member of 2 of the 5 Forestry Sector Working Groups). Other selected units are in the pamphlet, and which I could copy, but I am unsure about the copyright issues associated with just making a copy. There may be no copyright issues since all of the factors are available mathematically.

 On the question of the reliability of forest inventories, our first estimates of reliability were based on the Standard Error of the Estimate for sampling error; of course the relevance of this measure diminished as time passed since the date of survey; introducing growth factors also introduces additional sampling errors, to say nothing of other factors that reduce reliability, such as land use changes between surveys. At a certain unacceptable level of risk, it only makes sense to create a new baseline by re-doing the survey. A continuous replenishment of inventory data (xx% per year) makes financial and practical sense, especially to maintain an acceptable level of error risk, and continuity in available expertise within an organization. Thank you for this information Jamie

KEEPING UP-TO-DATE – PRODUCTS, NEWSLETTERS, EMAIL LISTS, JOURNALS. See also http://botany.si.edu/puhttps://www.createspace.com/3489254bs/bcn/links.cfm, http://scholar.google.com/, and Directory of Open Access Journals. http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals.

INFOSYLVA – You can now find issue No. 03./2013 at http://www.fao.org/forestry/36186-09f003cb5c6deec08f04c3ddc7b72e388.pdf

Latest Global Map of Irrigation Areas - The Latest Global Map of Irrigation Areas (Ver. 4.0.1) is available as a free download. The map shows the amount of area equipped for irrigation around the turn of the 20th century in percentage of the total area on a raster with a resolution of 5 minutes. The area actually irrigated was smaller, but is unknown for most countries. A special note has to be made for Australia and India where the map shows the total area actually irrigated. This is due to the fact that statistics collected in Australia and India refer to actually irrigated area as opposed to statistics with area equipped for irrigation which are collected in most other countries. An explanation of the different terminology to indicate areas under irrigation is given in the glossary. Full details at http://free-gis-data.blogspot.com/2012/04/latest-global-map-of-irrigation-areas.html. From Shaan W. IFL List.

Forests Born of Fire. Video. Western US forests burned by high-intensity fire are important and rare wildlife habitat -- but widespread policies of salvage logging and logging intended to prevent the likelihood of fire on private and public lands harms this habitat.  The video demonstrates the beauty and life found where burned forests are left to wild nature.  http://www.wildnatureinstitute.org/1/post/2013/02/forests-born-of-fire.html  From MarcFink, Appeal list.

WORKING SMARTER - WORKSHOPS, MEETINGS, EVENTS, ETC. – See also: http://www.gfis.net, http://www.iufro.org/events/calendar/ and http://www.iufro.org/discover/noticeboard/.

27-28 March 2013. Financial Analysis for Resource Managers. Olympia, Washington, USA. For details see http://www.westernforestry.org/Events/conference/financial-analysis-for-resource-managers-2/ From Richard Zabel, WFCA.

11-12 April 2013. Inventory and Data Collection: From Tactical to Strategic . Wilsonville, Oregon, USA. As inventory systems move away from intensive sampling to less intensive sampling, it becomes all the more important to maintain a reliable and quality inventory database. This session will offer a wealth of ideas and advice to keep your system on track. For more details see . http://www.westernforestry.org/Events/conference/inventory-and-data-collection-from-tactical-to-strategic/ From Richard Zabel, WFCA.

10-14 February 2014.Trees for Life: Accelerating the Impacts of Agroforestry, World Congress on Agroforestry. Dehli, India. Over 1000 selected participants drawn from the private sector, research and development will share the current state of knowledge and seek to accelerate the positive financial, environmental and social impacts of agroforestry. Offering a unique opportunity for the business and research communities to interact, the Congress will be built around a structure dealing with science and innovation; food and nutrition; environmental protection; enterprise; knowledge and policy environment, and climate change. It will produce a global roadmap for agroforestry in the context of world development and create a deliberate and tangible legacy in terms of recognition, partnership, investment and impact. Further information will soon be distributed on the details of the agenda and the method of registration. In the meantime, see www.wca2014.org for further details or email wca2014@CGIAR.org to register your interest.From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

MOVING AHEAD – OPPORTUNITIES – See also: Scholarships-Positions, Forestry, Arboriculture, Agriculture, Agronomy & Natural Resource Management Jobs at http://www.earthworks-jobs.com/forest.htm, Riley Guide to Agriculture, Forestry, & Farming Jobs http://www.rileyguide.com/agric.html, Finding Your Dream Job in Natural Resources http://www.cyber-sierra.com/nrjobs/, http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/index.html The Job Seekers Guide for International and Environmental Careers http://timresch.net/ejobs/index.htm and Scholarship Listing http://www.scholarshiplisting.com/.

NEXT ISSUE – Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 3 of 3).

Pay It Forward – Cheers, Gyde

 

 

--   H. Gyde Lund    Forest Information Services  6238 Settlers Trail Place  Gainesville, VA 20155-1374 USA  Tel: +1-703-743-1755  Email: gyde<at>comcast.net    URL: http://www.forestinfoservices.com  CV: http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/cv.html.   Publications: http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/lundpub.htm.   Skype: forestgyde   

[ANFES] 2013-02-17 NRMI: This Issue: Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 1) and Some Other Good Things

2013-02-17 NRMI: NATURAL RESOURCE MONITORING ITEMS OF INTEREST

This Issue: Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 1) and Some Other Good Things

BUT FIRST WON’T YOU PLEASE HELP? Conversion factor from green/fresh to dry weight. Shiva Shankar Pandey writes, “I am wondering to find conversion factors to estimate dry biomass from the fresh Biomass of the trees ( less than 5 cm Diameter at breast height). if you have idea and information about research reports, articles, thesis related to some regression models or conversion factors applicable to the mixed species forest stand of Nepal, please kindly inform me.” If you can assist, please contact Shiva at shivaspandey@yahoo.com.

OTHER CONVERSION FACTORS - Another list member asked, “Does anyone have an easy method they could share with the list for converting meters squared per hectare to square feet per acre?” Here is what I found on the web: 1 square meter per hectare = 4.356 square feet per acre and 1 square foot per acre = 0.2296 square meters per hectare.  1 cubic meter per hectare = 14.291 cubic feet per acre and 1 cubic foot per acre = 0.06997 cubic meters per hectare.

RELIABILITY OF FOREST INVENTORIES AND REMOTE SENSING. – Recently I was doing some searching for publications on the reliability of forest inventories and remote sensing. Here are some of the sites that I found. If you know of others, please send me the information and I will post in the next NRMI. Thanks, Gyde (gyde@comcast.net).

ADB. 2011. Multi-Resource Forest Inventory for Preparation of a Land Allocation Plan. Republic of Congo. 47 p.

Andersson, Krister. 2009. National forest carbon inventories: policy needs and assessment capacity. Climatic Change 93:69–101.

ASPRS. 2009. Guidelines for Procurement of Professional Aerial Imagery, Photogrammetry, Lidar and Related Remote Sensor-based Geospatial Mapping Services. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing. December.: 1346-1365.

Avitabile, Valerio et al. 2011.Mapping biomass with remote sensing: a comparison of methods for the case study of Uganda. Carbon Balance and Management 6:7. 14 p.

Beard, Kate. 1998. Detecting and Evaluating Errors by Graphical Methods. NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience.

Cedamon, Edwin D., et al.2007? Evaluation of the reliability of a village-based inventory of smallholder tree farms on Leyte Island, the Philippines. 10 p.

Cedamon, Edwin et al. 2010? Reliability of the barangay-based smallholder tree farm inventory: research and policy implications. 10 p.

Congalton, Russell G. 1991. A Review of Assessing the Accuracy of Classifications of Remotely Sensed Data. Remote Sens. Environ. 37:35-46.

Congalton, Russell G.; Green, Kass. 1998. Assessing the Accuracy of Remotely Sensed Data Principles and Practices. CRC Press

Corves, C.; Place, C.J. 1994. Mapping the reliability of satellite-derived landcover maps-an example for the Central Brazilian Amazon Basin. Int. J. Remote Sensing 15(6):1283-1294. First page preview.

Cunia, T. 1995. Some Theory on Reliability of Volume Estimates in a Forest Inventory Sample. Forest Science 11(1): 115-128. Abstract.

Dean, A.M.; Smith, G.M. 2003. An evaluation of per-parcel land cover mapping using maximum likelihood class probabilities. Int. J. Remote Sensing 24(14): 2905-2920.

Ducey, M.J. et al. 2010? Creating Compatible Maps from Remotely Sensed and Forest Inventory Data Using Radial Basis Functions. 5 p.

Forest Inventory - Geographic Information Systems. Nova Scotia.

Fuller, R. M. et al. 2003. The characterisation and measurement of land cover change through remote sensing: problems in operational applications?  International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 4(3): 243 - 253. Abstract

SOME OTHER PUBLICATIONS/URLS OF INTEREST

Forest Inventory Systems Advertisement

Mackey, B., et al. 2012. Ecosystem greenspots: identifying potential drought, fire, and climate-change micro-refuges. Ecol. Appl. 22(6):1852-1864. Abstract.

Marshall, A.R., et al. 2012. Measuring and modelling above-ground carbon and tree allometry along a tropical elevation gradient. Biol. Conserv. 154:20-33.

Mason, N.W.H., et al. 2012. Will use of non-biodiversity objectives to select areas for ecological restoration always compromise biodiversity gains? Biol. Conserv. 155:157-168

Mateus,. M.; Neves, R. eds. 2013. Ocean modelling for coastal management - Case studies with MOHID. IST Press; From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

Matthews, Richard. 2013. 2012 Review of Forests and Trees. The Green Market Oracle. From Barry Carter, Appeal List

Mishra, Alok K. N 2013.Study to assess impact of mining on forests. The times of India.

Moore, J.L.; Runge, M.C. 2012. Combining structured decision making and value-of-information analyses to identify robust management strategies. Conserv. Biol. 26(5):810-820. Abstract.

Neves, R. et al. eds. 2008. Integrated Coastal Zone Management in South America. IST Press; 620 p. From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

Norris, R.H., et al. 2012. Analyzing cause and effect in environmental assessments: using weighted evidence from the literature. Freshwater Sci. 31(1):5-21.

Noss, A.J., et al. 2012. Comparison of density estimation methods for mammal populations with camera traps in the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco landscape. Anim. Conserv. 15(5):527-535. Abstract.

Papanastasis, V.P. 2009. Restoration of degraded grazing lands through grazing management: Can it work? Restoration Ecology 17 (4): 441-445. Abstract.

Parks. 2008. Principles and Guidelines for Ecological Restoration in Canada's Protected Natural Areas. Canadian Parks Council. 108 p.

Reeves, M.C., Mitchell, J.E. 2011. Extent of coterminous US rangelands: Quantifying implications of differing agency perspectives. Rangeland Ecology and Management 64 (6): 585-597

Ritten, J.P., et al. 2010. Optimal rangeland stocking decisions under stochastic and climate-impacted weather.  American Journal of Agricultural Economics 92 (4): 1242-1255. Abstract.

Rittenhouse, C.D., et al. 2012. Land-cover change and avian diversity in the conterminous United States. Conserv. Biol. 26(5):821-829. Abstract.

KEEPING UP-TO-DATE – PRODUCTS, NEWSLETTERS, EMAIL LISTS, JOURNALS. See also http://botany.si.edu/puhttps://www.createspace.com/3489254bs/bcn/links.cfm, http://scholar.google.com/, and Directory of Open Access Journals. http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals.

WORKING SMARTER - WORKSHOPS, MEETINGS, EVENTS, ETC. – See also: http://www.gfis.net, http://www.iufro.org/events/calendar/ and http://www.iufro.org/discover/noticeboard/.

SummerSchool AniMove 2013 – (remote sensing, species distribution and animal movement within conservation). This Summer School provides you with profound knowledge of remote sensing and species distribution and animal movement within conservation. It includes hand-on exercises ranging from land cover and species distribution analysis to modeling of animal movement. This applied Summer School focuses on addressing conservation issues using remote sensing and modelling. Only Open Source software will be used to allow participants to apply them after the Summer School as well. Programs learnt will be: R (raster, sp, dismo, rgdal etc.), GRASS (with add-ons like r.pi), QGIS. For more information see http://remote-sensing-biodiversity.org/animove2013. From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

MOVING AHEAD – OPPORTUNITIES – See also: Scholarships-Positions, Forestry, Arboriculture, Agriculture, Agronomy & Natural Resource Management Jobs at http://www.earthworks-jobs.com/forest.htm, Riley Guide to Agriculture, Forestry, & Farming Jobs http://www.rileyguide.com/agric.html, Finding Your Dream Job in Natural Resources http://www.cyber-sierra.com/nrjobs/, http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/index.html The Job Seekers Guide for International and Environmental Careers http://timresch.net/ejobs/index.htm and Scholarship Listing http://www.scholarshiplisting.com/.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing -- "Global Land Cover Mapping and Monitoring: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities" – see http://www.journals.elsevier.com/isprs-journal-of-photogrammetry-and-remote-sensing/call-for-papers/theme-issue-global-land-cover-mapping-monitoring/ From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

Post-doctoral position: Biodiversity observation systems and supporting computational tools. A 30-month post-doctoral fellowship is open at CIBIO (http://cibio.up.pt), University of Porto, Portugal, for the Biodiversity and Conservation group to develop applied ecological research focused on biodiversity observation systems and supporting computational tools. The successful candidate should hold a Ph.D. degree in biological, environmental, mathematical or computer sciences, and have a relevant scientific CV demonstrating experience in scientific research and international communication of results. Significant experience in the use of statistical and spatial analysis tools will be highly valued, particularly in the context of ecological or environmental modelling. Knowledge of plant or animal ecology and/or diversity and experience in biodiversity surveys will be additional selection factors. The fellowship holder will collaborate actively in the development of statistical and computational tools to support the design and optimization of monitoring programs for habitats and several groups of flora and fauna. Research will focus on the specification of monitoring programs, on the statistical and spatial design of optimized sampling networks for species and habitats under environmental and social-ecological change scenarios, on the development of modelling and simulation algorithms, on the development of supporting computational tools for data management, and on the development of quality control routines. The grant holder will participate actively in several research activities and is expected to pursue scientific communication of results in international high-impact journals. The candidate should be a good communicator and speak and write fluent English. The ranking of candidates will result from a global appreciation of the Curriculum vitae, possibly followed by a job interview. The grant will correspond to 1450 € per month (12 months). Applications including a detailed CV, a statement of research interests and motivation, as well as the emails of at least three referees will start immediately and be accepted until February 21th, 2013. However, the committee will begin reviewing applications immediately and continue until the position is filled. The position is expected to start in March 1st, 2013. Informal inquiries and applications should be addressed to:Dra. Sara Ferreira, Gestora de Ciência e Tecnologia, CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, 4485-661 Vairão Portugal, Telef: +351.252660411 Fax: +351.252661780, Email: cibio.up@cibio.up.pt. From Artur Gil, Applied GIS RS List.

NEXT ISSUE – Reliability of Forest Inventories and Remote Sensing (Part 2).

Pay It Forward – Cheers, Gyde

 

 

--   H. Gyde Lund    Forest Information Services  6238 Settlers Trail Place  Gainesville, VA 20155-1374 USA  Tel: +1-703-743-1755  Email: gyde<at>comcast.net    URL: http://www.forestinfoservices.com  CV: http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/cv.html.   Publications: http://home.comcast.net/~gyde/lundpub.htm.   Skype: forestgyde