ES 775 Announcements

ES 775
Announcements

May 9: The final exam is now available. Please follow instructions for turning in your results by the deadline.
May 7: GSA program reminder. Small-format aerial photography will be taught this summer in June--see ES 555. This is a required course for the graduate GSA certificate and an elective course for the GSA undergrad minor. The course is taught every other year, so now is the time to enroll!
May 3: The semester is near at hand! Individual project reports are due this coming week by Thursday, the 8th. On-campus students should be prepared to give brief overviews of your projects in class on Tuesday. The final exam will be placed online Friday, May 9th.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email May 4-5th.
April 28: Continue working on your individual projects. Final project reports are due next week--see requirements for details about report formats. On-campus students should be prepared to present your projects informally in class next week.
April 21: As we approach the end of the semester, all students should be working on individual projects. Contact your instructor with any questions or comments about project progress. Did you hear about the earthquake? See USGS quake map.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email later this week, April 25-27.
April 14: Students should complete lab 6 (and all other exercises) this week. Also complete textbook reading with chap. 13. Thereafter, focus your attention on project work.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email later this week, April 16-19.
April 9: Your instructor recently received an institutional grant to purchase a digital color-infrared camera--see Tetracam ADC. The camera records green, red, and near-infrared bands for color-infrared imagery and vegetation indices. The intention is to acquire the camera and build a radio-controlled rig for kite aerial photography in time for ES 555 field trips in June.
April 7: Our last lab exercise begins this week--see lab 6. Reading includes textbook chap. 12 as well as RST Morro Bay, CA: Part 16 through Part 20.
Note: ESU's annual research and creativity forum will be held on Thursday, April 10th, 1:00-4:00 pm in the Colonial Ballroom of the Union. Faculty and students will have various poster presentations on their research projects. Students are welcome to stop by and have a look. Your instructor will have a poster about high-altitude kite aerial photography.
April 2: GSA course available on campus and for distance-learning in the fall semester--see GIS applications (pdf file).
April 1: Students should complete lab 5 this week; reading includes textbook chap. 11 and RST Morro Bay, CA: Part 12 through Part 15. Time has come to finalize individual projects; contact your instructor with your topic.
March 26: The Kansas Academy of Science will hold its 140th annual meeting at ESU this week, Mar. 28-29--see KAS meeting. This is a major event for us; KAS meets here about once a decade. All students are encouraged to participate in this special opportunity.
Note: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Mar. 30-31. Please do not send any messages or assignments Mar. 29-31.
March 24: Welcome back from spring break! This week students should work on exercise 5. See below (Mar. 11) for additional instructions on the digitizing procedure. Reading includes textbook chap. 9 as well as RST Morro Bay, CA: part 8 through part 11.
Note: all students should decide on a project topic at this time--see requirements. Contact your instructor with your ideas.
March 14: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Mar. 19-22. Please do not send any messages or assignments during this period. Have a great spring break!
March 11: Some students have started working ahead on exercise 5 and encountered problems with the digitizing process. First read the Digitize section under Program Modules in Idrisi Help. Here are some additional tips for digitizing.
The digitizing tool is the red-and-yellow "wheel" icon near the center of the tool bar. Click it. Enter the name of the layer to be created, such as WET1, click the "text" button, and then click OK.
Now move the cursor to the point you wish to digitize for a site in the photo layer, and left click the mouse. A window with digitizing options will appear. The key is to enter the appropriate text code in the "caption" box. Here's an example of the text code to enter for a digitized point in the photo layer. This is for the nature trail (site 3: wet):
```
Nature Trail  < CB16.jpg > {090} < CB17.jpg > {045} < CB18.jpg > {300} < CB19.jpg > {270} 
```
After entering the caption text, click "specify rotation angle," and make sure the "center" position and 90° are selected (defaults). Finally click OK, and the caption should appear on the digitized point.
Hint: when you have finished digitizing all points for the photo caption layer, right click the mouse anywhere on the image. This will bring up the "save" icon (red arrow) in the digitizing portion of the tool bar. Click the red arrow to save the file.
In order to activate the photo caption layer, turn on "feature properties" in the Composer window. Now move the cursor to a text label and click. The associated photos should appear in correct azimuth directions around the site.
March 9: Students should complete lab exercise 4 this week, prior to spring break. See textbook chap. 8 and RST Morro Bay, CA: Part 1 through Part 3.

Updated student roster (ver. 2.0).

March 3: Well, March certainly roared in like a lion here in Kansas with a late winter storm. Exercise 3 is due at this time, and students should begin lab exercise 4. Reading includes textbook chap. 7 as well as RST Morro Bay, CA: Part 1 through Part 3.
Feb. 22: Students should complete lab exercise 3 next week. Readings include textbook chap. 6 and RST elevation data.
Note: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Feb. 23-25 and Feb. 29-Mar. 1st. Please do not send messages or assignments during these times.
Feb. 17: For the coming week, continue reading about Landsat applications and image processing. Begin working on lab exercise 3 based on a high-resolution, commercial Ikonos dataset. The multispectral bands are similar to Landsat TM bands 1, 2, 3, and 4. Note: the Ikonos raster (rst) files are large (~6 MB each).
Note: The environmental field methods session has been rescheduled for Thursday, Feb. 21st (see below).
Feb. 11: Students should complete and turn in exercise 2 this week. Our reading includes textbook chap. 5 and Landsat image interpretation.
Note for GSA students: the first session for Environmental Field Methods will take place on Friday, Feb. 15th. The focus of the session is field acquisition of elevation data, and will feature a demonstration of GPS, total station, and automatic level survey methods by Steve Brosmer of Geotech Inc.
The introduction will take place at 8:30 am and last about an hour in the Memorial Union's Hornet's Nest. The remainder of the day will be spent using the three approaches to obtain measurements at ESU's on-campus hydrogeology teaching and research station as part of a class exercise. All students in the geospatial analysis program are welcome to participate in any aspect for all or part of the day.
Feb. 4: The first lab exercise is due at this time. This week begin working on lab exercise 2. For readings, see textbook chap. 4, Landsat technical characteristics, and RST Landsat thematic mapper.

ES 775 student roster (ver. 1.0).

Jan. 28: Continue working on exercise 1 this week. Reading is textbook chapter 3 plus RST GIS analysis.
Note: Distance-learning student Steve Lowe recommends Landsat.org for free Landsat datasets.
Jan. 21: On-campus students meet for the first time tomorrow at 1 o'clock in the GSA lab (SH 16). Our reading this week includes Landsat introduction (only) and RST Landsat multispectral scanner, as well as textbook chap. 2. We begin our first exercise based on a Landsat MSS dataset of the Andes Mountains in Venezuela.
Jan. 14: The spring semester begins this week! On-campus students do not meet this week--see syllabus for course details. All distance-learning students should be in contact your instructor at this time. For those students not familiar with our software, begin working through Idrisi tutorials 1-1 to 1-4 (do not turn in, not graded).
For background reading, see textbook chap. 1, as well as RST introduction and interpretation.
Welcome! ES 775 will be taught in the spring 2008 semester, beginning in January. At this time, a preliminary syllabus and schedule are available. For more information, contact the instructor, J.S. Aber, e-mail: jaber@emporia.edu.
Distance-learning students must have access to Idrisi Andes software, which is the primary image-processing software utilized for this course. Distance-learning students can obtain the "Student starter license" for $95, upon proof of student status. Note: Idrisi is for PC computers; it does not run on "Mac" computers.