The Geospatial Laboratory for Environmental Dynamics members teach a variety of natural resource measurements courses including:
FOR 274: Forest Measurements and Inventory (3cr). Practical techniques for the design and execution of the measurement and inventory of forest resources. One three hour lab and three one-hour lectures.
FOR 375: Airphoto Interpretation and Mapping (3 cr). Methods and techniques of obtaining quantitative and qualitative spatial information from aerial photographs, maps, and the Global Positioning System for input into geographic information systems and planning processes for natural resources land management.
NR 402: GIS Applications in Natural Resources (1 cr). Application of GIS principles to natural resource problems. Topics include GIS/GPS integration, habitat inventory, site suitability studies, risk assessment, sources of spatial data, map accuracy, etc. ArcView software and extensions will be used in hands on exercises.
RNGE 406: GIS Applications in Fire Ecology and Management (1 cr). This course introduces the student to applications of GIS in fire ecology research and management. The course gives the student insight in fire incident mapping, creation of fire progression maps, GIS overlay analysis, fire severity assessments using remote sensing, fire atlas data, the role of GIS in the Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) concept and the National Fire Plan.
FOR/RNGE 429: Landscape Ecology (2 cr). Ecological relationships and conservation issues for biotic communities across the landscape, including spatial and temporal dynamics and patterns, and importance of landscapes in maintenance of ecosystem diversity and function.
FOR 435: Remote Sensing of Active Fire and Post-fire Effects (2cr). Application, potential and limitations of methods for the remote sensing of active fire and post-fire effects, and interpretation of the results. Clarification of definitions of fire descriptors (fire intensity, fire severity, and burn severity) and relative merits of remote sensing tools for address them. How to identify an appropriate mapping approach applicable to different types of imagery (depending on the specific questions to be addressed) and provide decision support for the user community.
FOR 451: Fuels Inventory and Mapping (3cr). In-depth analysis of recent developments in remote sensing, as well as tools to support fuels planning, including potential and limitations of mapping fuels with Lidar and from satellite imagery such as Landsat and ASTER (with and without gradient modeling). Application of tools for characterizing fuels over large, diverse areas. Quantitative analysis and interpretation of the ecological impacts of fires on plants and soils.
FOR 472: Remote Sensing of the Environment (3-4 cr). Current airborne and satellite systems, data acquisition on ground and from remote locations, instrumentation, imagery interpretation and digital analysis, applications for natural resource management.
FOR 474: Forest Inventory (3cr). Principles and practice of natural resources dynamics and forest growth and yield simulation, applied mathematical programming techniques, quantitative decision support.
FOR 504: Advanced Spatial Measurement Methods (3cr). Techniques and tools to use geospatial methods to characterize tree-stand-landscape scale vegetation characteristics
FOR ID&WS572: Spatial and Biophysical Modeling (3 cr). WSU SoilS 574. Development of concepts, techniques, and methods for the fusion of remote sensing, GIS and biogeochemical modeling techniques for analyzing energy and material pathways and cycles; review latest methods for temporal and spatial scaling of datasets and models to develop and test hypotheses for understanding forest ecosystem structure and function.