UMN departments using DigitalGlobe Basemap[/caption]
Several graduate students have relied on the imagery for their dissertations, on topics ranging from threatened bird habitat to land-use changes in watershed areas to archeological site identification and field mapping in the Cordillera mountain range. Several courses are also incorporating the data to teach students how to use remotely sensed imagery.
[caption id="attachment_4407" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Training labs at UMN[/caption]
Other students have used DigitalGlobe imagery to research habitats, identify water resources near an Engineers Without Borders site, to identify archaeological sites, inform a long-term (30 year) community development project in Zimbabwe, and analyze agricultural land use throughout the world.
Anup Joshi, a research associate in conservation biology, used DigitalGlobe Basemap to calculate baseline reference of emissions level for Nepal. Like many developing countries, Nepal lacks data on regular forest inventory and changes in forest cover, which are necessary to calculate baseline forest carbon emission levels. Combining Landsat and DigitalGlobe Basemap imagery resulted in a more accurate model predicting an average annual net emission of 4,353,833 ± 587,767 tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) at 95 percent confidence level. The government of Nepal has submitted an application for funding to the Forest Carbon Funds at the World Bank for an emission reduction project based on this research. This would not have happened without the use of DigitalGlobe imagery, according to Dr. Joshi. “A creditable carbon emission level and subsequent funding opportunity for emission reduction program wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t have an access to DigitalGlobe Basemap,” he says.
[caption id="attachment_4411" align="alignright" width="460"]
Deforestation & forest degradation in Basanta forest in Terai Arc Landscape, Nepal between 1999 and 2011. Deforestation (red) and degradation (cyan) from Landsat satellite data analysis were verified on the DigitalGlobe Basemap.[/caption]
Other ways in which UMN is putting DigitalGlobe Basemap to use include:
- Assessing the impact of industrial palm oil plantation expansion on land use and livelihoods in Southeast Asia
- Supporting multiple field ecology research projects related to biodiversity and ecosystem services
- Detailing the complexities of ecosystems at Cedar Creek, an ecological research station in Minnesota
- Evaluating sea turtle nesting beaches, including vegetation changes
- Studying agricultural land use and irrigation
- Understanding changes and trends in agricultural field size in South America
- Researching earth science to determine flooding history in the Upper Midwest
- Conducting field work for fossil collecting and geological sampling sponsored by the Leakey Foundation
- Tracking wildlife in Kenya and the decreased range of sun bears in Southeast Asia associated with tree cover loss