Amethyst Brook Dam Removal

Some footage from last week's dam removal on a stream that we (Dartmouth) have been doing extensive monitoring on in West-central Massachusetts (near Amherst).

More photos of the site post-removal are here: https://goo.gl/photos/xxTxe34HzTcnPozr8 (some are thanks to Alex Hackman of Mass. Fish and Game)

Calculating Spatial Resolutions for Aerial Imagery

I've often needed to calculate/predict the spatial resolution for aerial imagery collections that I do (the life of a remote sensing researcher). I wrote a Matlab script for some helicopter aerial photography as part of my dissertation research. But, I needed a more streamlined script for some of my current work with UAVs. So, here is a brand new Python script to do all the calculations for me (and you).

Strapping a NIR Camera onto the Inspire 1

I finally went and did it...strapped my near-infrared camera (NIR) onto our DJI Inspire 1. Here are some of the results from this quick test flight.

For those unfamiliar with NIR imaging, in Geography we primarily use the near-infrared portion of the spectrum to help us measure a multitude of things just beyond the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of the primary uses for NIR imaging are to measure vegetation types, vegetation health, and help differentiate different landuse/landcover types. Here's a NASA link to more information on NIR and another on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (results below).