LECTURES
Introduction and course overview
Data acquisition and integration
- mapping natural phenomena, concept of continuous fields and discrete sampling, on-ground/in-situ, airborne, satellite, and lidar data acquisition
- projections, coordinate transformations, georeferencing
- raster and vector data models
- raster-vector conversions and resampling
- geospatial formats, conversions, geospatial data abstraction library
- data repositories, metadata
Slides Section 1, Slides Section 2
Data display and visualization
- display of continuous and discrete data, use of color, shading, symbols to extract the spatial pattern and relationships
- 3D visualization: multiple surfaces and volumes, 3D vector objects
- visualization for data analysis (lighting, zscaling, transparency, cutting planes, animations)
- principles and tools for sharing data on-line (Google earth/maps, Sketchup, GPS visualizer)
Geospatial Analysis I: global, zonal and focal operations, map algebra
- global and zonal statistics
- neighborhood (focal) operations
- raster map algebra
- expressions, operators, functions and variables
- basic calculations, integer and floating point data
- "if" conditions, handling NULLs and creating masks
- raster map patching and overlay
- raster map reclassification and rescaling
Geospatial Analysis II: buffers, cost surfaces, least cost path
- raster maps correlation
- buffer operations
- cost surfaces, least cost path
Geomorphometry and modeling of processes
Terrain modeling
- 3D mapping technologies: topography and bathymetry
- mathematical and digital terrain models
- point clouds, multiple return data, CLICK, LDART
- triangular irregular networks
- regular grid (raster), NED, SRTM, CRM
- isolines and meshes
- representation of strutctures
Spatial interpolation and approximation
Section I- definitions, principles and applications
- transformation from vector points or lines to raster
- different methods and their properties:
(Voronoi polygons, TIN-based, IDW, splines, kriging)
Section II
- influence of interpolation parameters: tension/range and smoothing
- implementation - point selection techniques
- special cases: contours, profiles, anisotropy
- trivariate interpolation of volumes and topo-climatology
- evaluating interpolation accuracy, crossvalidation
Spatial and temporal terrain analysis
- summary parameters: volumes, surface areas, roughness index, fractal dimension
- first and second order point parameters: general approach
- methods for slope, aspect and curvatures using polynomial and spline approximation
- combining parameters to map landforms and terrain features
- computing parameters from noisy data, accuracy and uncertainty, scale and level of detail
- raster time series analysis, quantification of coastal change
Flow tracing, watershed analysis
- cumulative terrain parameters based on flow tracing: definitions and general approach (flow path length, flow accumulation, stream networks, watershed boundaries, ridge lines)
- methods for computing flow direction (D*8, Dinf), flow tracing (SFD,MFD, uniform, weighted)
- methods for flow tracing through depressions and flat areas (filling, carving, hybrid, least cost path)
Midterm
Modeling Geospatial Processes : Hydrologic and erosion modeling
- spatially explicit modeling: principles and applications, role of GIS
- geospatial aspects of models: spatially averaged and distributed models
- general approaches and methods: empirical and physics based components of models
- steady state, continuous time and dynamic models and related modeling tools
- spatial hydrologic modeling: processes and methods
- spatial modeling of erosion, sediment transport and landscape evolution
- deriving input parameters, analysis and visualization of modeling results
- simulating impact of landuse and climate change, working with TanGIS
Erosion modeling tutorial (old but useful document)
Viewshed, solar energy potential analysis
- line of sight, viewshed and cumulative viewshed: principle and applications
- solar radiation: components and dynamics
- solar radiation in complex terrain, cast shadows
- cumulative solar irradiation, solar energy potential