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CURRENT RESEARCH:
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NAGEM Research
Group
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The Navigation, Georeferencing, and Mapping (NaGeM) Research Group at the University of
Florida Geomatics Program is a multidisciplinary
team focused on integrating technologies to create precision georeferenced remote sensing data on mobile platforms.
By developing modular sensor platforms with well defined
error models and flexible integration-oriented architecture, we build a
foundation for a variety of applications. This provides a range of
potential systems, from lightweight unmanned aircraft systems to precision
ground-based platforms. The modular design lends itself to a variety of
remote sensing technologies including, visual, infrared, multispectral, hyperspectral, and LiDAR
imaging.
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Unmanned
Aerial Vehicle Systems for Natural Resource Assessment
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The Florida
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit's multidisciplinary UAS
research program with the UF Department of Aerospace and Mechanical
Engineering, Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory, the UF School of Forest
Resources and Conservation, Geomatics Program,
the UF Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, and others- is
developing unmanned aerial vehicle systems (UAV or UAS) whose goals include
the development of a highly-capable UAV system that is both affordable and
user-friendly for natural resource assessments and monitoring. The systems
offer ease and rapid deployment, simplified transportation to remote
locations that lack runways, and reduced logistical burdens. Using a
custom-designed composite airframe with a customized commercial
autopilot/GPS avionics suite and image-collection systems, georeferenced imagery from small UAVs can provide the
ability to rapidly locate and assess objects on the ground in specific
areas.
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Governance, Land Use and Resource Rights in Southern Africa: Paths toward Grassroots
Democratization Funded by UF Research and Graduate Programs Seed
Fund (2006-2007)
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Southern Africa is at the leading edge of the devolution of
wildlife resource rights to private and communal landholders. We study the linkages between resource
rights and democratization on the one hand, and with economics, land use
change and environmental sustainability on the other. We seek to identify the conditions under
which devolution of governance leads to genuine democratization. We address
this through the lens of land use and resource rights. We contend that
devolution of land use and resource rights will encourage democratization
and economic freedoms, contributing simultaneously to poverty alleviation,
improved governance and environmental sustainability?
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Detection of
potential seepage zones along levees on Lake Okeechobee’s southern shore
using an Unmanned Autonomous Airplane and a Thermal Infrared Camera
Franklin Percival and Adam Watts (USGS Wildlife
Cooperative), Peter Ifu (Aeronautical
Engineering), Bon Dewitt, Scot Smith,
Ahmed Mohamed, Amr Abd-Elrahman
Funded by the US Army Corps of Engineers
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Rapid Assessment of Urban Forest Following a Hurricane:
Damage and Debris
Francisco
Escobedo (PI), Mary Duryea, Scot
Smith, Christina Staudhammer, Bon Dewitt, Ahmed
Mohamed
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 The project will develop a preliminary
assessment model for urban forest damage and debris estimates based on the
severity of different windstorm events, remote sensing, and urban forest
structure data. The methods and model will provide city, county, and
regional authorities, preliminary pre-disaster debris planning tools and
post-disaster debris estimates. Utilization of hurricane and urban forest
management wood waste will be explored.
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Infrastructure Change, Human Agency, and
Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Funded by National Science Foundation (2005-2009)…….[“Roadies” interdisciplinary group on UF
campus]
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New roads bring complex
changes to regions, including ecological degradation, social conflict, and
economic development. We focus on human agency as it relates to livelihood
decisions and resource use. We
examine how these factors not only respond to new infrastructure, but also
lead to ecological and institutional changes that in turn generate feedback
effects that impact human well-being. Using an interdisciplinary complex
systems framework we focus on social-ecological systems as integrated
wholes via the interface of infrastructure and land tenure. We draw on the
concept of resilience, a property of complex systems, and reformulate it in
terms of system components, relationships, innovations and continuity. This gives us a means of observing system
properties relevant to the retention or loss of system identity. The research focuses on a global
biodiversity hotspot in the southwestern Amazon where Brazil, Bolivia
and Peru
meet.
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Fire in the Juniper Prairie Wilderness: Is it a viable tool for ecosystem
management?
Leda Kobziar (PI), Janaki Alavalapati, Shibu Jose, Alan Long, Francis Putz,
Kathryn Sieving, Scot Smith,
Taylor Stein, Melvin Sunquist, George Tanner
Funded by the IFAS Innovation Fund
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Inside the
Polygon: The Efficacy of Community
Tenure in the Western Property Paradigm.
Funded
by John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2004-2007)…..[Barnes, Ankersen, Mueller, Ruppert]
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In this project we examine the historical
evolution of communal land tenure in western legal systems, and its
development into a formal tool to address contemporary development, conservation
and human rights interests. At the
same time, we contrast this against indigenous and/or traditional
community-based land tenure systems.
In focusing on the nexus of these two property traditions we are
able to better understand the dynamics of these complex social-ecological
systems through a focus on land and resource tenure. Through several case studies in Latin America we analyze the extent to which
communities are embracing or adapting property law and technological
innovation to their own needs, and developing the means and capacity to
record increasingly complex information.
From this we draw conclusions concerning the adaptability and
resilience of community tenure arrangements within the dominant western
property paradigm. Ultimately, our
goal is to expand current property and tenure theory to embrace a more
nuanced understanding of community property arrangements in light of
technology and other external drivers.
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Development of Rapid, Affordable Property Surveying Methods
using GPS in Developing Countries
Funded by
USAID, World Bank, DANIDA, U Wisconsin Land Tenure Center and others
(1994-)
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Beginning in the early 1990s development banks
like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) began to make
more funding available for large property formalization projects in LAC and
elsewhere. This funding, and the
corresponding demand for property formalization, led to a huge demand for
boundary surveying as almost every project included a component for
adjudicating and surveying large numbers of parcels in rural areas. These countries were therefore faced with
a sudden need to survey massive numbers of parcels within a relatively
short period of time, typically 4 to 5 years. Conventional surveying approaches for
rural parcels would not meet the time and cost constraints posed by these
projects. In addition, since these
projects were often aimed at poorer rural land holders, who were mostly
occupying low value land, the cost of a conventional survey could actually
exceed the value of the parcel in rural areas. There was therefore a huge
demand for an alternative methodology that was less costly and more
efficient.
In this research we have used sub-meter accuracy
GPS as the basis for developing a rapid and cost-effective methodology for
cadastral surveying in developing countries. We have tested and
demonstrated this methodology in Albania,
Peru, Belize, Nicaragua,
Trinidad and Tobago and Bolivia.
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Recent
Projects:
Maintenance and Sustainability of
Property Formalization and Land Administration Systems.
Partial funding through Land Tenure
Center (St. Lucia) (2003-
)………..[Barnes, Griffith-Charles]
Modeling
Feasibility and Impacts of Water Transfer in Florida using Linear Programming and
GIS.
Funded by SNRE
(2003-2004)…………………..[Barnes, Hildebrand, Jones, Fraisse,
Tripathi]
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