Landscape dynamics of northeastern forests

This project involves collaborative research with Stephen W. Pacala and Simon A. Levin of Princeton University to calibrate, test, and analyze models of heterogeneous forested landscapes containing a diverse array of habitats. The project is an extension of previous, NASA-supported research to develop a spatially-explicit model of forest dynamics at the scale of an individual forest stand (hectares to square kilometer spatial scales). That model (SORTIE) has been thoroughly parameterized from field studies in the modal upland environment of western Connecticut. Under our current funding, we are scaling-up the model and parameterizing it for the broad range of upland environments in the region. Our most basic goal is to understand the linkages between stand-level dynamics (as revealed in our previous research) and landscape-level dynamics of forest composition and structure

Application of Spot to GIS/LIS in land capability evaluation for regional planning of Jaico semi-arid region of Piauí, Brazil

Remote Sensing provides one or a few of the many data required in GIS/LIS for evaluation of various types of land capabilities, such as land capability for urban land use, agricultural use, and for forestry use. In northeastern Brazil, satellite data such as SPOT HRV and Landsat-TM have been utilized to provide land use information for the semi-arid areas of the region. The present investigation was conducted over an area of approximately 700 Km2 in northeastern Brazil at JAICO and its environs located in the south of the Piaui state. A Raster based Computer Mapping System-ERDAS (Earth Resources Data Analysis System) for a hybridized unsupervised-supervised classification (Maximum Likelihood) approach was used in order to extract of 17 land use/land cover classes at the Level II of Anderson Classification (USGS, 1976). These classes were recoded in order to detect the 11 soil association classes in accordance with the Brazilian and USDA Systems (Brazil, 1983 and USDA, 1975, 1983), which were then recoded into 9 land capability units using the Brazilian and American Systems (USDA, 1966, 1983 and Brazili, 1971, 1983). Finally, three maps were derived for the objectives of regional planning under this investigation: 1) Land use/Land cover map, 2) Soil Associations map, and 3) Land Capability Units map. This system is used to store information of various properties of land development for regional planning in NE Brazil. Comparison of digital interpretation with reference information indicated that digital interpretation, closely resembled field observation and the overall classification accuracy was observed 84.7%.Pages: 144-15