Richard Walker's Dissertation UCSB Biogeography Lab Publications Abstracts Investigations in vegetation map rectification, and the remotely sensed detection and measurement of natural vegetation changes. Richard Eugene Walker Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. As projected climate changes loom, the monitoring of the response of natural vegetation becomes important for both science and management.
Successful monitoring requires good baseline information and vegetation change detection techniques.
These studies focused on the Sierra Nevada of California, and in particular Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park was mapped using these techniques in the late 1930s. Geometric inaccuracies in the 19th century USGS basemaps were mitigated using newly available GIS and remote sensing tools, enabling the rectified VTMs, to be integrated into the National Park s vegetation monitoring work. Lastly, based upon Principal Components Analysis, I developed an algorithm for separating spectral changes resulting from vegetation changes on the ground from other changes present but not of concern to monitoring. Three vectors were derived using 6 of 7 Thematic Mapper bands.