title: Forest change mapping using remote sensing and Google Earth Engine

authors: Walawe Durage, Kalpanie Vimarshana Nandasena

subjects: Google Earth Engine

abstract: With advancements in data sources, software, and image analysis techniques, remote sensing has become an efficient method for forest classification. However, access to this technology has been limited for developing countries due to the high cost of high resolution images and analysis software. A potential solution is that NASA and the European Space Agency provide free access to mid-low resolution satellite images. In addition, Google Earth Engine (GEE), a free cloud-based geospatial analysis platform, has allowed researchers from developing countries to conduct research without relying on costly remote sensing software. This study evaluates the suitability of the freely available images and the GEE platform for different forest management applications in Sri Lanka. The research focused on three different scenarios in vegetation mapping: identifying home gardens, monitoring invasive pines, and forest cover mapping in a tropical montane region.
Home garden is an agroforestry class seen in tropical countries often overshadowed by global land cover classifications. This study used a random forest classification algorithm to classify the home garden, utilizing terrain data and Sentinel-2A images as the dataset. The results confirmed that the red band of Sentinel-2 and textural metrics derived from grey-level co-occurrence matrix analysis are effective in identifying home gardens from other forestry classes.
Monitoring the spread of invasive pines is important for forest management in Sri Lanka. This study used Landsat satellite images for the years 2000 and 2021 to detect the exotic Pinus caribaea species invasion of native habitats. By using an image difference technique, this research identified that the extent of these invasive pines had an overall decline over the past 21 years. Further, results showed that broadleaved forests and grasslands located within 100m of the pine plantations’ borders were susceptible to invasion.

In tropical regions, analysing forests can be difficult due to cloud cover. This research also focused on methods to enhance classification accuracy using multiple data sources: Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, PALSAR-2, and elevation. Six different methods were tested. It was found that combining radar data with optical and topographical data improved vegetation classification accuracy. In addition, feature importance analysis using the random forest algorithm indicated that radar data plays a significant role in tropical land use classification.
The three case studies used in this research demonstrate that GEE and the freely available mid-low resolution satellite images make the application of remote sensing in Sri Lanka a viable solution for the monitoring and mapping of landcover.

text: Forest change mapping using remote sensing and Google Earth Engine With advancements in data sources, software, and image analysis techniques, remote sensing has become an efficient method for forest classification. However, access to this technology has been limited for developing countries due to the high cost of high resolution images and analysis software. A potential solution is that NASA and the European Space Agency provide free access to mid-low resolution satellite images. In addition, Google Earth Engine (GEE), a free cloud-based geospatial analysis platform, has allowed researchers from developing countries to conduct research without relying on costly remote sensing software. This study evaluates the suitability of the freely available images and the GEE platform for different forest management applications in Sri Lanka. The research focused on three different scenarios in vegetation mapping: identifying home gardens, monitoring invasive pines, and forest cover mapping in a tropical montane region.
Home garden is an agroforestry class seen in tropical countries often overshadowed by global land cover classifications. This study used a random forest classification algorithm to classify the home garden, utilizing terrain data and Sentinel-2A images as the dataset. The results confirmed that the red band of Sentinel-2 and textural metrics derived from grey-level co-occurrence matrix analysis are effective in identifying home gardens from other forestry classes.
Monitoring the spread of invasive pines is important for forest management in Sri Lanka. This study used Landsat satellite images for the years 2000 and 2021 to detect the exotic Pinus caribaea species invasion of native habitats. By using an image difference technique, this research identified that the extent of these invasive pines had an overall decline over the past 21 years. Further, results showed that broadleaved forests and grasslands located within 100m of the pine plantations’ borders were susceptible to invasion.

In tropical regions, analysing forests can be difficult due to cloud cover. This research also focused on methods to enhance classification accuracy using multiple data sources: Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, PALSAR-2, and elevation. Six different methods were tested. It was found that combining radar data with optical and topographical data improved vegetation classification accuracy. In addition, feature importance analysis using the random forest algorithm indicated that radar data plays a significant role in tropical land use classification.
The three case studies used in this research demonstrate that GEE and the freely available mid-low resolution satellite images make the application of remote sensing in Sri Lanka a viable solution for the monitoring and mapping of landcover.

year: 2023

title: Whither Sustainability?

authors: Daya-Winterbottom, Trevor

abstract: This paper will critically analyse the promise inherent in these proposed reforms for the evolution of domestic environmental law and keeping pace with ecological realities by using the writings of Klaus Bosselmann to interrogate how the transformative concepts of sustainability, ecological governance, and justice can be used to re-imagine environmental law more generally. My presentation will be divided into two broad parts:
• Sustainability, ecological governance, and justice; and
• The promise inherent in the proposed RMA reforms

text: Whither Sustainability? This paper will critically analyse the promise inherent in these proposed reforms for the evolution of domestic environmental law and keeping pace with ecological realities by using the writings of Klaus Bosselmann to interrogate how the transformative concepts of sustainability, ecological governance, and justice can be used to re-imagine environmental law more generally. My presentation will be divided into two broad parts:
• Sustainability, ecological governance, and justice; and
• The promise inherent in the proposed RMA reforms

year: 2022

title: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling

authors: Fitzpatrick, Katie

subjects: Health

abstract: This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

text: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

year: 2010