Chris Stephenson UWF GIS Blog

  This week's lab was about utilizing different spectral combinations to identify features. Different combinations can be utilized to help identify very specific features or phenomena. Analysts in the wild use these different combos to help solve problems such as deforestation, flooding, or change detection. My personal experience is in the military intelligence world, where we utilized these different bands to help us identify or expose dangerous operations. We could use these different combinations to identify changes in equipment location, homemade explosives/IED identification, as well as verifying if a site is operational or not. One example, closely related to this assignment, would be to verify if powerplants were operating. The easiest and quickest way to determine if they were operational would be to look at the stacks/flumes to identify smoke or vapor, or to identify changes in water temperature in the cooling ponds.

      This week's lab was mostly enjoyable for me. It was my first interaction with ERDAS. It is a tool I have heard about extensively, however, I have never had the opportunity to work with it. We utilized it to look at the differences between raster and thematic images. The easiest difference to identify between the two is the pixelization between the two. The raster feels like a bare bones, "This is what is here" type of image. The thematic/multispectral is more defined and you can identify areas more distinctly.     My struggles this week came from determining the wavelengths, frequencies, energies. I have always struggled with math formulas. You put words and numbers together and it's like I have never read before! All in all, I did enjoy this week's lab.