Classifying Wildfires in Southwestern United States

Learning Unit Description:

The Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training Project (iGETT) presents a series of Learning Units (LU) designed to incorporate federal land remote sensing data into Geographic Information System (GIS) instruction. The Classifying Wildfires in Southwestern United States LU, created by Karen Blevins of Mesa Community College, has students develop skills related to selecting and obtaining Landsat imagery from the GLOVIS website and learn about geospatial tools and resources available for working with remotely sensed images. The context is classification of an area burned by wildfire in the southwestern United States. The emphasis of this lesson is placed on the decision-making process leading up to the development of a final product, as well as on specific software applications needed for completion.

The iGETT Learning Units amount to about two weeks of instruction and are designed for use both as “skills-based case studies and building blocks for new courses.” All LUs are intended for students with a basic understanding of GIS. Each LU includes three core documents, an instructor’s guide, a student guide, and a curriculum support document, as well as the remote sensing data needed to complete the unit.

Upon completion of the lesson, students should be able to know how to select parametric and non-parametric training samples; to perform a supervised classification of a Landsat image; how to export .img to GRID format; and how to reclassify a GRID image within ArcGIS.

For orientation purposes, viewers should begin with Blevins_Thumbnail.pdf, which offers a description of the LU as well as an overview of topics covered, required software, and the intended audience.

Lesson Contents:

The attached files associated with this LU exist in a variety of formats and a variety of geospatial data file types.

Below is a list of the files contained within the .zip attachment. The size of each file is included in parenthesis.

LU_Blevins.zip

• Documents
  • Blevins_P2_SH_Final-2 (1).pdf (5.7 MB)
  • Blevins_P2_SH_Final-2.pdf (5.7 MB)
  • Blevins_P2_IG_Final.pdf (3.4 MB)
  • Blevins_Thumbnail.pdf (160 KB)
  • Blevins_CG.pdf (5 KB)