Remote Sensing and GIS for Ecologists

Using Open Source Software

Edited by Martin Wegmann, Benjamin Leutner, Stefan Dech

Publication date:

01 February 2016

Publisher

Pelagic Publishing

Dimensions:

244x170mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781784270230

This is a book about how ecologists can integrate remote sensing and GIS in their daily work. It will allow ecologists to get started with the application of remote sensing and to understand its potential and limitations. Using practical examples, the book covers all necessary steps from planning field campaigns to deriving ecologically relevant information through remote sensing and modelling of species distributions.

All practical examples in this book rely on OpenSource software and freely available data sets. Quantum GIS (QGIS) is introduced for basic GIS data handling, and in-depth spatial analytics and statistics are conducted with the software packages R and GRASS.

Readers will learn how to apply remote sensing within ecological research projects, how to approach spatial data sampling and how to interpret remote sensing derived products. The authors discuss a wide range of statistical analyses with regard to satellite data as well as specialised topics such as time-series analysis. Extended scripts on how to create professional looking maps and graphics are also provided.

This book is a valuable resource for students and scientists in the fields of conservation and ecology interested in learning how to get started in applying remote sensing in ecological research and conservation planning.

Introduction
1 Spatial Data and Software
2 Introduction to Remote Sensing and GIS
3 Where to Obtain Spatial Data?
4 Spatial Data Analysis for Ecologists: First Steps
5 Pre-Processing Remote Sensing Data
6 Field Data for Remote Sensing Data Analysis
7 From Spectral to Ecological Information
8 Land Cover or Image Classification Approaches
9 Land Cover Change or Change Detection
10 Continuous Land Cover Information
11 Time Series Analysis
12 Spatial Land Cover Pattern Analysis
13 Modelling Species Distributions
14 Introduction to the added value of Animal Movement Analysis and Remote Sensing
Outlook and Acknowledgements
Index

The insights that remote sensing and GIS can provide to ecologists offer an amazing opportunity to advance research, but the learning curve to use such tools can be steep. This book helps the reader wade through what could feel like an overwhelming amount of information to practically apply remote sensing and GIS to ecological questions. Importantly, this book enables the reader to learn a high-level concept and become familiar with the overall language used in the discipline, and then zoom in to the nuts and bolts of how to actually execute an analysis. Consequently, the book will be a valuable resource to ecological researchers, particularly because of the focus on open source software.