Day 14: Half way

This morning started bright and early, Kerry and I were finally able to finish our classification commands in eCognition! I am so proud of us; I’ll include a screen shot of our process tree below.

Most groups continued to polish their presentations until the early afternoon and then it was just a waiting game until the professors arrived at the barn and the presentations started. I was so impressed by everyone’s work! Even though we all go out at the same time of day and spend literally every second together it was surprising how little we knew about each other’s common product. I’ve been focused on bare ground since that was my assigned task for the completion of the common product, but I’ve always been very interested in vegetation and hydrology. Since I was given the opportunity to work with the vegetation group earlier this week I was able to get a feeling of what their final product would be. The hydrological interest on the other hand, had yet to be further investigated. Gordon and James presentation was awesome and gave me many ideas on what to focus on when it comes to my individual research. Instead of trying to combine vegetation and hydrology, I’ve decided to focus strictly in hydrology and look for answers as to where the ‘disappearing channels’ are hiding. I’m sure many people want to look into using GPR to try to find any underground channels or geological features such as dikes, to explain this phenomenon. If no one else claims this question I’d be more than happy to delve into trying to answer it! My second thought on the same idea is to look at soils data and compare soil types where there are ‘clear streams’ to where these water features disappear. There was lots of talk of a sharp line of new and old alluvium which could also potentially have some answers to these disappearing channels.

After a long day of presentations and discussion we gathered around what seemed like a never ending stack of pizzas. It was nice being able to bounce ideas around with the grad students. Emily was extremely helpful with trying to create a meaningful question and support my ideas!

The plan for tomorrow is to finish up any work left with the common product and start ground-truthing any potential areas for our own research.