Remote Sensing and Image Analysis

GE 324

Tuesday/Thursday

Instructor: Dr. Greg Gaston

119 Wesleyan Hall

765-4588

Office hours to be posted…. If you need to meet another time, send me an email and we’ll set up a time.

Goals for each student completing this class:

  • Understand how various wavelengths of reflected (or emitted) electromagnetic radiation can be used to obtain information about objects from a distance.
  • Become familiar with the various sensors and imaging tools available
  • Develop the skills necessary to ‘read’ and interpret a remote sensing image
  • Understand the unique properties of each sensor package as required to accurately interpret the images
  • Understand a digital image, and use the appropriate digital image processing tools and techniques to enhance the information content of a digital image
  • Internalize the specialized terms and acronyms so the student can not only understand a conversation between RS specialists, but also can then correctly use the terms and acronyms from remote sensing to completely baffle and frustrate anyone not in the field.
  • Practice using imagery to interpret conditions in an object from a distance.

Text:Fundamentals of Remote Sensing and Airphoto Interepretation, Avery and Berlin

While expensive, this is a pretty good text. If you plan on staying in the field, I would recommend it as a good purchase. We will use this same text for the AirPhoto Interp class. I will put a copy of the text on reserve in the Library for those who do not choose to (or cannot) purchase the text.

Topics:

The EM spectrum

Atmospheric ‘windows’

Radiation interactions

Spectral signatures

Active and passive systems

(Chapter 1)

Thermal Imaging

(Chapter 6)

RADAR imaging

(Chapter 7)

LIDAR

(FIRST EXAM)

Electro Optical Sensors

Sensor Construction (Pushbroom scanners vs. rotating mirror)

Scanner distortion and use

Multi Spectral Imaging

“Hyper”spectral images

MSS

TM

SPOT

IRS

Ikonos

QuickBird

MODUS etc.

Band Combinations

Digital Image Processing

Digital numbers

Noise removal

Creating and reading histograms

Simple statistics

Histogram stretching

Filters

(Chapter 15)

(SECOND EXAM)

Grading:

The Grading for this course will consist of 2 exams, a final project and a number of lab exercises

Each of these will account for 25% of your final grade for the course.

The Exams will be split fairly evenly through the term. The exams will be short answer, most requiring you to construct diagrams or will involve calculations

While this class does not have a designated lab time, we will do some hands on projects using both hard copy imagery and digital imagery. You will be responsible for creating a lab ‘notebook’ that contains all the work you do throughout the term. This collection of materials will be evaluated and this ‘lab’ grade will be an equal share of your overall course grade.

As a final project, each student will create a poster describing/highlighting an application of remote sensing data. Each student will present their poster to the rest of the class during the last week of class.

Proposed Lab Topics

  • Thermal Imagery 1. The thermal ‘still life’
  • Thermal Imagery 2. Image interpretation
  • RADAR principles and interpretation
  • RADAR images 2
  • LIDAR
  • Landsat Band combinations
  • Interpreting the landscape using Landsat TM or MSS
  • ‘hyper’ spectral data, using ATLAS data
  • Image processing introduction
  • Image classification