All in Landscape

Spring from the car window

Spring is here! As early-blooming flowers pop out, it’s a great time of year to learn to recognize plants. If you are quarantined or locked down at home, you may still catch glimpses on dashes to the grocery store or strolls around the neighborhood. Join me to learn what some of those colorful blurs are.

Making my own map (Object-based imagery analysis of remotely sensed data)

I am working on mapping sites to recognize patterns on the land between plants and stormwater. Object-based analysis is an approach to classification that uses the color of groups of pixels rather than single pixels and adds spatial information to the spectral information. The output of object-based image analysis is accurate categories of fine-scale objects and landscape types along with relationships between them.

The Influence of Landscape Context on Native Plant Species in Stormwater Detention Basins

One of the ways I am using the data from my fieldwork is to study the way the surrounding landscape influences the plant species found at a site. I found the percent native species at a site is negatively affected by commercial and services land use and transportation and utility areas in the surrounding area but positively affected by wooded wetlands and recreation land nearby. This can help land managers fine tune restoration decisions for different kinds of sites.