GIS Online Student Spotlight - 9/11/15

Congratulations to Brittany Burdelsky on being named GIS Online Student Spotlight for her outstanding work in Remote Sensing (GIS 4035)

 

Welcome to the spotlight, Brittany! Brittany lives in Aurora, CO with her husband Greg and cat, Howl. She is a graduate of FSU and FAU, with degrees in biology and anthropology, respectively. Her other areas of interest are dental anthropology, bioarchaeology, and paleopathology. When she saw that GIS knowledge was increasing in demand, Brittany decided GIS certification was the career move for her.

To follow Brittany's work within the program, visit her blog at There and Back with GIS.
 

Module 2 - Interpreting Aerial Photography

Instructor Brian Fulfrost

This module introduces aerial imagery interpretation. There are several elements of interpretation that help in determining what features are in aerial imagery. Tone, texture, size, and shape are among the basic elements while pattern, shadow, and association are more complex methods of interpretation. Independently and in concert these elements help in the analysis of an image.

 

Student Learning Outcomes:

• Interpret the tone and texture of aerial photographs
• Identify land features in an aerial photograph based on several visual attributes
• Compare similar land features in true color and false color infrared (IR) photographs project name

What we like: A number of students in Remote Sensing demonstrated a high level of comprehension of how to use recognition elements (also called image elements) to interpret different types of geographic features from aerial photos. However, we thought Brittany's blog posting was especially good. Brittany's maps and blog postings demonstrate a high level of comprehension of how recognition elements are utilized to interpret aerial photography. Her maps are well organized and also demonstrate a good design sense. For each exercise, Brittany provided easy to understand and concise description and overview of each recognition type. In addition, her explanations of how she utilized these recognition elements to identify features are clear and well illustrated in her maps. The features on her first map are well labeled, and combined with her descriptions, provide good examples of how various types of features can have different tone and texture. Her map also contain a small amount of additional of text that makes it easy for the reader to understand the map.

Her second map also provides distinct descriptions of each of the 4 additional recognition elements (shape/size, pattern, association, and shadow) and how each recognition element was used to derive different types of geographic features (peg pier, beach, residential area, sign, etc.). Brittany also provides a good introduction to image interpretation (with links) as well as an excellent discussion of the differences between true vs false color imagery (an exercise that didn't require a map output).

This map shows various regions highlighted and classified by tone and texture

This map displays features identified by shape/size, shadow, pattern, and association

 Thanks again for your excellent submissions Brittany!