Remote Sensing of Local Warming and Its Application Over Alberta
Date
2018-07-25
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Abstract
The effects of a changing climate (i.e., temperature in particular) vary and will continue to vary significantly from global to local level. Changes of temperature at global and regional scale are somehow defined by using several models and simulations. However, temperature change at local scales (i.e., community or local government level) are not well defined and needs particular attention to address future adaptation policies in the face of climate change. For instance, this thesis is built on a hypothesis that temperature does vary locally in comparison to the predicted models at the regional and global scales. To address this critical issue, this study sets up the goal to delineate local warming maps using satellite-borne remote sensing data at 15 m spatial resolution. In doing so, firstly, 1 km spatial resolution warming map is prepared in the whole province of Alberta for 1961-2010 time period using MODIS-derived 8-days composite images at 1 km spatial resolution. Secondly, to enhance the spatial resolution of derived 1 km warming map, data fusion technique is used from Landsat-8 OLI-derived data to generate high spatial resolution EVI, NDVI, and NDWI. Finally, long-term warming trend map is produced at 15m spatial resolution to represent the changes of temperature normals (i.e., 1961-2010 time period) as a final outcome. Results have demonstrated that the proposed methods of delineating high spatial resolution local warming map has strong accuracy while comparing with the climate station-derived temperature data (r2 = 0.80 in case of 1961-1990; and r2 = 0.78 in case of 1981-2010). Similarly, while comparing the results of warming trend maps derived at 1 km and 15 m spatial resolution, outcomes have proved strong relationship too (r2 = 0.96 in case of 1961-1990; r2 = 0.95 in case of 1981-2010). Finally, this study explicitly brings the notion that of local level warming map can be produced at high spatial resolution and can be critical for local governments to initiate future policies depending on evidence in future climate change adaptation planning.
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climate change, air temperature normal, earth observation, data fusion, MODIS, Landsat
Citation
Rahaman, K. R. (2018). Remote Sensing of Local Warming and Its Application Over Alberta (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32691