Quantifying Land Cover Changes in Maine

Resources from this project
Archived resources from this project

This exercise, created by the Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training Project (iGETT), uses real-world Landsat data on vegetation from northeastern Maine to assess changes in ground cover over four years as it relates to blueberry cultivation and its impact on the local environment. Students examine changes in blueberry crops as well as associated factors like the prevalence of shade trees and erosion "using a Landsat 5 scene from 2010 and a Landsat 7 scene from 1999, so that they can quantify changes over that time period."

By completing the exercise, students will learn intermediate geo-processing skills in ArcGIS 10, including skills in locating regions of interest in satellite images; converting Landsat digital numbers to radiance and reflectance; and understanding and applying supervised classification, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), band combinations, and change detection. The tutorial builds skills in critical thinking and data analysis.

The entire tutorial is expected to take four to five 90-100 minute class sessions. This intermediate tutorial assumes a working knowledge of ArcGIS, and requires ArcGIS 10 with Spatial Analyst Extensions and Service Pack 2, but can be adapted to Open Source software.

Contents:

The attached files associated with this tutorial exist in a variety of formats and a variety of geospatial data file types.

Below is a list of the files contained in the .zip attachment, with the file name and size provided in parenthesis.

Tjohn.zip

Exercise Summary (TJohnson_webpage_link_Final.doc 1MB)
Student Handout (TJohnson_SH_Arc_Final.pdf 3.8MB)
Cover_Change_TJohnson.zip
- Cover_Change_TJohnson
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_SG_Arc_2012REVISED.pdf 2.5MB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_IG_Arc_2011.pdf 421KB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_IG_Arc_2011.doc 382KB)
  - (Webpage_Link__Johnson_T_Draft_April_4_2012.doc 1MB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_SG_Arc_2012REVISED.doc 3.7MB)
  - (Table_for_input_values.xls 11KB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_PPT_Arc_2011.pdf 8.8MB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_PPT_Arc_2011.ppt 10.2MB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_HO_Arc_2011.pdf 242KB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_HO_Arc_2011.ppt 475KB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_CS_Arc_2011.pdf 91KB)
  - (Cover_Change_TJohnson_CS_Arc_2011.doc 112KB)
  - (training_samples_1999.dbf 2KB)
  - (training_samples_1999.prj 400 bytes)
  - (training_samples_1999.shp 6KB)
  - (training_samples_1999.shx 156 bytes)
  - (training_samples_2010.dbf 2KB)
  - (training_samples_2010.shp 7KB)
  - (training_samples_2010.shx 156 bytes)
  - (training_samples_2010.prj 400 bytes)
  - (study_area.dbf 73 bytes)
  - (study_area.sbn 132 bytes)
  - (study_area.sbx 116 bytes)
  - (study_area.shp 236 bytes)
  - (study_area.shx 108 bytes)
  - (study_area.prj 400 bytes)
  - (maine_orthos_1996_1998.lyr 9KB)
  - (LT50100291999246PAC00.tar.gz 98.6MB)
  - (Julian_Day_Tables.xls 15KB)
  - (Landsat_Calibration_Summary_RSE.pdf 1.3MB)
  - (LT50100292010244EDC00.tar.gz 99.6MB)