Remote Sensing GIS

Sri Lanka receives a high intensity of rainfall all over the year especially from the two monsoon periods and two inter monsoon periods. According to the geological structure of the country, rainfall pattern has been directly influenced the occurrence of landslide that is one of most recorded natural disasters in Sri Lanka. Road network especially in hilly terrain is affected by landslide in every rainy season. Therefore, the maintenance cost of the Road Development Authority is increasing and roads have to be closed for traffic due to landslides. Hence developing a methodology to identify an optimum route alignment in landslide areas is essential in the planning of roads. To identify the optimum route alignment for Beragala-Koslanda landslide area, geo-informatics approach was used considering engineering factors simultaneously in the present study. 1:10,000 scale topographic map, 30m resolution downloaded USGS DEM, 1:100,000 geology map and 1:50,000 landslide hazard zone map were ...

This research utilizes a similar method from previous spatial clustering research, using what may prove to be more precise spatial statistics to determine clustering tendencies and economic data to assess their location in relation to low income areas. It is important to note that race/ethnicity is not included in this research; rather it focuses on designation of population density and persons living at or below poverty level. This research provides a way to spatially determine if fast food restaurants are more prominent in low socioeconomic areas.

Generally seen as natural peripheries, upland landscapes present particular challenges both in terms of living, and of recording past human activity within. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology has now brought considerable improvement in our ability to record and map surviving archaeological features, but not necessarily increased our appreciation of local agency. Though the iconic landscape around the Iron Age Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa Regia (Romania) and its Roman conquest have long caught the attention of specialists and the wider public, both previous research and more recent results from an airborne LiDAR survey leave considerable gaps in our understanding of networking potential across this challenging landscape. Based on LiDAR and satellite-generated high- and mid-resolution topographic data, our paper employs an innovative combination of GIS (geographic information system) spatial analysis tools to examine the spatial relationships between Roman military base...

The land cover and land use changes are caused by both, natural and anthropogenic factors. This study was conducted in kility Watershed, Amhara Region, North western Ethiopia. The objective of this study was to detect and analyse LULC changes in the watershed. The study has used ArcGIS10.3 and ERDAS IMAGINE 15, Landsat images of 1986 and 2002; Sentinel 2 image for 2019 to analyse land cover and land use changes of Kility watershed. In addition, the survey was conducted to detect the land use class and their drivers of changes. The Maximum Likelihood Algorithm of Supervised Classification has been used to generate land use and land cover maps. For the accuracy of classified Land Use/Land Cover maps, a confusion matrix was used to derive overall accuracy and results were above the minimum and acceptable threshold level. Post classification comparison change detection method was employed to identify gains and losses between Land Use/Land Cover classes. The satellite image results showe...

Spatiotemporal analysis refers to an analysis having both spatial extension and temporal duration. Remote sensing has provided a great tool to quantify changes using satellite data in our area of interest. Population of Indian cities is growing rapidly. That is why human need for shelter is also growing day by day, resulting in fast urbanization. This study uses remote sensing and GIS approaches to delineate the urban growth resulting in decrease of agricultural land. In this study, it is analyzed as to how much change has taken place in a time span of two decades and five years, mainly emphasizing on change and growth of residential, commercial and industrial structures on agricultural land. The use of a time-series of Landsat data to classify the urban footprints since 1986 has enabled detection of spatial and temporal urban sprawl and urban development in the explosively growing large urban agglomerations of the two metropolitan cities of Noida and Greater Noida. In this study, a...

The anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) study was performed on soft sediment samples from a trenched fault zone across the Himalayan frontal thrust (HFT), western Himalaya. AMS orientation of K min axes in the trench sediments is consistent with lateral shortening revealed by geometry of deformed regional structures and recent earthquakes. Well-defined vertical magnetic foliation parallel to the flexure cleavage in which a vertical magnetic lineation is developed, high anisotropy, and triaxial ellipsoids suggest large overprinting of earthquake-related fabrics. The AMS data suggest a gradual variation from layer parallel shortening (LPS) at a distance from the fault trace to a simple shear fabric close to the fault trace. An abrupt change in the shortening direction (K min) from NE–SW to E–W suggests a juxtaposition of pre-existing layer parallel shortening fabric, and bending-related flexure associated with an earthquake. Hence the orientation pattern of magnetic susceptibility axes helps in identifying co-seismic structures in Late Holocene surface sediments.

The accentuated dynamics of the real estate markets of the last 20 years, determined that a large part of the territories in the immediate vicinity of the big urban centers, to change their category of land use, in an accelerated rhythm. Most of the time, the land use changes according to the market requirements, the predominantly agricultural lands being occupied by constructions with residential or industrial functions. Identifying these changes is a difficult task due to the heterogeneity of spatial databases that come from different real estate development projects, so determining and implementing new methods to track land changes are currently highly required. This paper presents a methodologically innovative index-based approach for the rapid mapping of built-up areas, using Landsat-5, Landsat-7, and Landsat-8 satellite imagery. The approach described in this study differs from other conventional methods by the way the analysis was performed and also by the thematic indices us...

Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure is crucial to the health of every community. Globally, rural communities disproportionately lack improved drinking water and sanitation facilities compared to urban communities. West Pokot County, Kenya has a population of 512,690 people of which 91.7% live in rural areas. The Pokot people, the main people group residing in West Pokot County, depend on communal wells, rivers, and other surface water sources presenting the opportunity to consume pathogens and induce diarrheal diseases. Harvester’s International works with Pokot leaders to install community wells to provide an improved drinking water alternative to surface water in order to break the diarrheal disease transmission cycle. Community health epidemiological and spatial data from 67 communities in West Pokot County were assessed using autocorrelation and hot spot analysis in GIS software to identify geographical locations of reported cases of diarrheal diseases and to pr...

The increasingly tensions rising between society's need for resources and space on the one hand, and the capacity of the land to support these needs on the other hand lead to unprecedented changes in landscape configuration, and hence, to the environment.

The Murray Basin is a low-lying but extensive intracratonic depocentre in southeastern Australia, preserving an extraordinary record of Late Neogene sedimentation. New stratigraphic and sedimentologic data allow the long-term evolution of the basin to be re-evaluated and suggest a significant role for: (1) tectonism in controlling basin evolution, and (2) progressive and step-wise climatic change beginning in the early Pleistocene. Tectonic change is associated with regional uplift, occurring at approximately the same rate from the early Pliocene until the present day, and possibly associated with changing mantle circulation patterns or plate boundary processes. This uplift led to the defeat and re-routing of the Murray River, Australia’s major continental drainage system. Key to our interpretation is recognition of timing relationships between four prominent palaeogeographic features e the Loxton-Parilla Sands strandplain, the Gambier coastal plain, palaeo megalake Bungunnia and th...

The increasingly tensions rising between society's need for resources and space on the one hand, and the capacity of the land to support these needs on the other hand lead to unprecedented changes in landscape configuration, and hence, to the environment.