Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
4333 BROOKLYN AVE NE
SEATTLE,WA 98195
Performing Department
Sustainable Resource Management
Non Technical Summary
The main purpose of this project is to provide guided analytical training to urban foresters, land managers, and city planners in an innovative technique to quantify tree canopy cover using high-resolution aerial imagery, calculate forest change metrics, and select sampling sites for ground-based tree inventories. The benefits of this workshop to local urban and community forestry programs are numerous but can be categorized by outreach scale: 1. State-level benefits: We are moving forward with the goals of the 2008 Evergreen Communities Act (ECA), by "assisting cities, towns, and counties in Washington improve their community and urban forests and reap the benefits provided by city trees". This is accomplished by offering this workshop to city and county employees in Pierce County (one of the two ECA study areas). One of the inventory protocols under ECA is a canopy cover assessment. During this workshop, canopy cover assessments protocol will be established and conducted for 2009 for the City of Tacoma. After establishing benchmark datasets, future changes in canopy cover can be monitored. The potential for continuation of the project is great; as imagery becomes available, additional assessments can be conducted using the same techniques learned in the workshop at a time schedule according to the individual needs of each community. 2. Community-level benefits: Outreach is essential to maintaining close ties with communities. Analysis techniques developed by the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory (RSGAL) will be applied to real world issues through this hands-on workshop. Participants benefit by being the first to receive these technology transfers and at a relatively low cost. For example, object-based image analysis has been in use by academia and private industry for several years now, but it is not widely available to the public because most cities cannot afford the marketed products, standard software, or professional training. Through this free workshop, we aim to educate an under-represented audience in the field of remote sensing technologies in hopes of providing innovative, time- and cost-efficient approaches to sustainable urban management. We anticipate opening a dialogue with city, county, and state agencies about their needs for additional services. It is our ultimate goal to establish durable working relationships between RSGAL and the public service sector of Washington State. 3. Individual-level benefits: Each workshop attendee will receive education and training in image analysis techniques. This is a win-win situation for participants who cant otherwise afford to do so. The workshop provides participants with technical expertise in scientifically evaluating reports containing remotely sensed assessments. We are attempting to establish these methods as a standardized protocol that can be implemented statewide, or even nationwide, as it is replicable on future acquisition dates, at other locations, or on other datasets (e.g., impervious surfaces, agricultural land-use change, etc.). After the workshop is complete, this training module will then be freely available to anyone online.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The main purpose of this project is to provide guided analytical training to urban foresters, land managers, and city planners in an innovative technique to quantify tree canopy cover using high-resolution aerial imagery, calculate forest change metrics, and select sampling sites for ground-based tree inventories. The benefit of undergoing such training is the ability to deliver the results from the report produced in the workshop with confidence and authority for advocacy purposes. OUTPUTS: During a free, 2-day workshop at the University of Washington (Seattle Campus) participants will be provided with: 1) Preprocessed sample imagery from the 2009 National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). 2) An accurate technique for analyzing these data that is repeatable on future dates, other locations, or other datasets (e.g., canopy cover, impervious surfaces, agriculture, land use land cover classifications). 3) Skills in quantifying and assessing the accuracy of the technique and how results can be used to develop a field sampling regime for more in-depth canopy assessment. 4) Skills in producing and understanding landscape metrics for multi-temporal change analysis. 5) Understanding of how the products can be used as the 1st step in land use and land cover mapping. 6) A summary report of their findings. This workshop module (description of method, training exercise, and report template) will then be freely available online to the general public. This workshop fills a need for city and county personnel in the state of Washington, who may not otherwise be able to afford training in the use of these new technologies in order to protect natural resources in their communities. After the workshop the University of Washington will work on a revision to the protocol based on the feedback provided by the workshop participants. The report will be on the project website hosted by the UW Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory (RSGAL) along with revised workshop manual and module.
Project Methods
Land-use change resulting from urban expansion is a leading field of study in remote sensing. We have targeted The City of Tacoma as our study area, and workshop participants will be selected primarily from Tacoma, as well as other cities and towns in Pierce County. Urban development in the county has been substantial over the past decade and is projected to continue. Increasing populations will only expand the conversion of land from natural to urban uses, posing a major threat to the sustainability and health of those forests that remain. As such, examinations to quantify existing forest extent and assess correlations to land-use changes in surrounding areas are strongly needed. Traditional remote sensing techniques are not generally appropriate for assessing complex scenes like that of urban areas. Though historically used for earth observation, the spatial resolution of Landsat imagery (30 meters) limits the ability to map small features found within urban areas. In such cases, aerial imagery is generally preferred. A relatively new method, geo-object-based image analysis (GEOBIA), sometimes referred to as feature extraction or object-based remote sensing, allows for use of additional variables such as texture, shape, and context to segment and classify image features. This can both improve accuracy results and allow us to map very small urban features, such as mature individual trees or small clusters of shrubs. Our workshop participants will be trained to interpret images by examining objects in context to their surroundings and then making intelligence choices to assign those objects to land use land cover classes (e.g., forest, grass, water, road, building). University of Washington (UW) participants include two faculty members, who will oversee project administration, coordination, paperwork, and act as the workshop instructors, and a UW Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory (RSGAL) graduate student, who will provide assistance with workshop material preparation. Finally, the monetary benefits of this workshop complete its attractiveness. The website, including the final workshop manual, will be freely to the public, and will be hosted and maintained at the UW RSGAL.