Forest fire, thinning, and flood in wildland-urban interface: UAV and lidar-based estimate of natural disaster impacts
Authors (first, second and last of 4)
Collection
Collection: Advances and Applications of Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) Research in Landscape Ecology
Small Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS; aka drones) have become increasingly popular research tools in the environmental sciences, allowing scientist to generate low-cost, high quality and high-resolution imagery that are complimentary to other remote sensing data. Very-high resolution UAS image products and surface models are particularly suited for observing ecosystems at local-scales and are increasingly being used to fill a gap between field surveys and satellite remote sensing. Landscape ecologists have long depended on satellite and aerial remote sensing data to address questions about landscape patterns, structure, processes, and landscape changes. However, we have been slow to embrace and exploit UAS technologies, perhaps due to the scale mismatch between UAS data and other coarse-resolution remote sensing data typically used in studying landscape patterns and processes.
The purpose of this collection is to highlight new research and ideas presented during the symposium “Advances and Applications of Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS) Research in Landscape Ecology” held during the IALE-North America Annual Meeting—national chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology—on March 19-23, 2023; and to integrate UAS data into landscape-scale analysis. We welcome manuscripts that: 1) demonstrate innovative UAS research applications that address current knowledge gaps and span spatial scales, 2) highlight advances in UAS hardware, software, and sensor technologies, and 3) provide thoughtful discussion about the opportunities, limitations, and challenges of working with UAS data. We welcome papers across a diversity of topics and ecosystems (i.e., wildfire, drought, climate change, landcover and vegetation changes, urban landscapes, wildlife studies) as well as technological and methodological advances (i.e., applications of hyperspectral and thermal-IR data, photogrammetry, scaling from UAS to satellite, open source and cloud-based workflows). Some of the contributions will support United Nation Sustainable Development Goals 13: Climate Action and 15: Life on Land.
Students and Early Career Researchers are encouraged to submit their research to this collection.
Pre-submission enquiries are welcome.
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Editors
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Miguel Villarreal
Research Geographer with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Geographic Science Center, Dr. Villarreal's research involves using multi-scale remote sensing data and spatial analyses to better understand how disturbances such as wildfire, invasive species, and energy development affect ecosystems, ecosystem services, and human communities. His geographic focus is on water-limited (dryland) regions of North America, which are particularly sensitive to complex interactions between human land use, natural disturbances, and climate change.
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Tara B. B. Bishop
Research ecologist at Utah Valley University in Orem, UT, USA, Dr. Bishop's current research interests involve desert community ecology focusing on how disturbance, such as wildfire, climate change, and grazing, affect the plant community. Recent research projects include using drones to quantify effects of invasion of exotic grasses in rare endemic plant habitat in the Mojave Desert, how extreme drought and different grazing strategies will alter desert perennial grasslands on the Colorado Platea, and how changes in precipitation timing and wildfire affect plant competition and invasion patterns.
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Temuulen Tsagaan Sankey
Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, Dr. Sankey teaches remote sensing, geoinformatics, and spatial analysis. Her research focuses on UAS data fusion with other remote sensing images in landscape ecology applications. Specifically, Dr. Sankey develops remote sensing methods with UAS lidar, hyperspectral, thermal, and multispectral images in forestry, rangeland, ecohydrology, and fire science research.
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William Kolby Smith
Associate Professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and PI of the Smith Lab at the University of Arizona, Dr. Smith's area of expertise is in ecosystem ecology with a specialization in multi-scale remote sensing techniques. The Smith lab focuses on understanding the complex responses of the terrestrial biosphere to climate change, rising atmospheric CO2, and land-use change across temporal and spatial scales through the integration of remote sensing observations, field network data, and ecosystem process models.
