Assessment of Algal Blooms in Lake Champlain

Investigator: 
Sumana Serchan
Advisor: 
Graeme Berlyn
Start Date: 
May, 2013
Description: 

Anthropogenic activities, natural disasters, and natural processes play significant roles in changes that are evident in earth’s land use and land cover.  These land use land cover (LULC) changes are dynamic both in temporal and spatial scales.  Understanding the process of LULC change and their dynamic nature is vital for formulating policies and designing management plans of natural resources.  Analysis of LULC changes is important in order to (a) update land use information and (b) for the development of sustainable land use plans for planning and management purposes.  Considered as one of the critical science issues of the 21st century and the most practical way of analyzing land cover, the technique of LULC in remote sensing has gained popularity in the last two decades.  This technique has also become important in monitoring environmental changes.

While the application of LULC change is widespread, digital change detection is affected by spatial, spectral, temporal and thematic constraints and the different types of change detection methods can have a profound effect on the qualitative and quantitative estimates of the change.  The objective for my project is to deploy different change detection techniques to spatially and temporally assess the algal blooms in Lake Champlain between 1990 and 1995 and to understand how the LULC changes in Lake Champlain Basin (LCB) contributes to the lake’s health and ecosystem.