For the past six weeks, I have been somewhat distracted from my normal PhD research routine. My passion for rock and mineral mapping has been replaced by a strong interest in satellite bushfire scar mapping. My interest is personal, stemming from the fact that my family and I live on Kangaroo Island, and we have observed the devasting environmental, economic, and social effects that the bushfires have had on our local community. I am hoping that by posting my latest bushfire mapping efforts, this relatively new information may be of assistance to the island community…whether it be for land management, habitat assessment, fire prevention, or just so folks can have a better understanding of the distribution of burnt areas across the island.
Author: Boone Law
I’m a final year PhD Candidate in Environmental Remote Sensing and Spatial Science at the University of Adelaide. Although I started my professional career as a GIS technician, for the better part of the past 20 years I have worked as an archaeological consultant, specializing in heritage surveys and rockshelter excavations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. My PhD research aims to show to how aerial and satellite remote sensing technologies can help us better understand the ancient Aboriginal archaeological record of the Australian arid zone. It has been a lifelong passion of mine to marry my interests in Earth observation imagery with the archaeology—and I love it!
If you’d like to learn more about my academic work, you can check out my University of Adelaide researcher profile. However, I thought I’d spend this paragraph briefly describing ‘the real me.’ I grew up in central Texas, but I’ve been living and working in Australia more-or-less since the mid-199os. I’m a proud dad and I’ve been married to my fabulous wife Sarah for nearly 20 years. We live on Kangaroo Island, where we built a beautiful stone house from the rocks on our land. When I’m not working, I enjoy performing original music at markets and venues around the island. The recent Kangaroo Island bushfires have had a devastating effect on our community. In response, I have been using satellite imagery to map bushfire affected areas for the purpose of assisting recovery efforts. You can help Kangaroo Island with the recovery by supporting local producers and businesses by visiting the island for a holiday in the near future. There is still so much to see and enjoy in this beautiful place.
Hey Spatial Information Group folks! I know many of us are learning how to code and generate spatial raster statistics in R Studio. It is a steep learning curve, but alot of fun once you get through the basics. I have always found that I learn best by working through an example tutorial before applying it to real world data, so in that spirit, here’s my “hot tip” for learning R:
Check out the free tutorial and lessons provided by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The NEON lessons look very well written and presented…and I’m sure most in our group can relate to the example datasets provided.
https://www.neonscience.org/resources/series/introduction-working-raster-data-r