Date of Award

Fall 12-2011

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Coastal Science, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory

School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Committee Chair

Wei Wu

Committee Chair Department

Coastal Sciences, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory

Committee Chair School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Committee Member 2

Greg Carter

Committee Member 2 School

Coastal Resilience

Committee Member 3

Maria Kalcic

Abstract

Coastal Wetlands are changing at unprecedented rates (Reyes et al., 2000 & 2004) and the ability to monitor their changes remotely over time has become increasingly important (Hilbert, 2006 & Blaschke, 1996). The focus of this project was to complete a historical sub-pixel prediction land use classification map for six land classes: water estuarine emergent wetlands, fresh water wetlands, forests, low intensity developed areas and high intensity developed areas using high spatial resolution imagery and applying the proportions to medium resolution imagery for the past twenty-seven years (1984-2011) for the Western Lower Pascagoula River Basin. The other main objective was to complete an analysis of how the estuarine emergent marsh has changed during this historical time series. Landsat (medium resolution) and Quickbird (high resolution) imagery will be utilized to complete a regression tree based on the digital numbers and predictions will be completed by comparing multiple methods including pruning, bootstrapping and random forest. Then an image differencing will be performed to show areas of marsh change.

Available for download on Friday, July 14, 2073

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