Final Project

For our final project assignment we were given two basic choices: either apply what we've learned to a pre-fab project, or do the same to one we've created on our own.  I went with the latter option mainly because I was curious as to how the 2013 Rim Fire has affected the overall forest health in the area.  Given that the state of California is currently in a severe drought I suspected that these effects would also be highly visible on Landsat imagery.

Unsupervised classification of my study area.  MMU was 1:100,000 so take this with a grain of salt.

To start, I'd like to mention that I'm not a botanist, so a lot of the plant terminology and spectral analysis discussion mentioned throughout the course was something I've only recently picked up.  Before this class I had no idea what a NDVI was, or even how to tell one tree from another when viewing various multi-spectral data (I still can't, unless I've been given pointers on what to look for first!).  So in the spirit of applying all that I'd learned over this course I focused on a project that required the classification of healthy vs. non-healthy vegetation.

The first image shows a very rough classification of healthy vs. non-healthy vegetation.  The MMU was at 1:100,000, which at first I had done for time saving purposes (mostly to not go crazy during the analysis portion).  I now feel that I made the right call, since the study area is rather large, and I was trying to quantify general trends.  For something more in-depth, perhaps a 1:50,000 or larger scale should be used.

Comparison view of three years shown across two different band combinations.

The comparison of the multi-spectral imagery was perhaps the most exciting part of this project, and also the most enlightening.  For example, on the bottom left of the image above you'll see a map inset with a lot of bright green - that's healthy (fast-growing) vegetation.  The image in the middle was taken during the Rim Fire, and one can see how dark the remaining vegetation had become.  Part of this could be due to the change of Landsat satellites used - 2010 marked the wane of the Landsat TM 5, and since 2012 Landsat 8 has been generating imagery for the United States.  With the change of satellites marked a change in the number of bands, which is why I've listed two band combinations on the map.

The 2015 imagery had smoke cover... but the website said no cloud cover!  Which I suppose is technically true.  The smoke made interpretation of the image very difficult, although if nothing else the image shows how pollutants in the air can be visualized.


*Originally published December 9, 2015.  Updated on 2/27/2017 to repair image links.