SEARCH · USGS Science

Results for “Algorithms”

Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,495 records · Page 83Linked to original sources

USGS1984

TECHNIQUE FOR ENHANCING DIGITAL COLOR IMAGES BY CONTRAST STRETCHING IN MUNSELL COLOR SPACE.

The Munsell color system can be used to further enhance the appearance of high-quality digital color-composite images. A color-balanced 'standard' color-composite image is first produced using any desired contrast stretching algorithm. The stretched digital data are then transformed into the cylindrical Munsell color space. An enhanced version of a color-composite image is produced by stretching the saturation parameter over the full digital range and inverting the modified Munsell coordinates to red-blue-green (tristimulus) data space. The resulting image has greater color-saturation contrast than the original image, without hue change. Contrast stretching in Munsell color space reduces the correlation between individual bands or ratios and is similar to decorrelation processing based on principal-components transforms. However, principal components are based on data variance, with less variance being explained by each higher order component.

Conference Paper↗

USGS1987

GEOMETRIC PROCESSING OF DIGITAL IMAGES OF THE PLANETS.

New procedures and software have been developed for geometric transformations of images to support digital cartography of the planets. The procedures involve the correction of spacecraft camera orientation of each image with the use of ground control and the transformation of each image to a Sinusoidal Equal-Area map projection with an algorithm which allows the number of transformation calculations to vary as the distortion varies within the image. When the distortion is low in an area of an image, few transformation computations are required, and most pixels can be interpolated. When distortion is extreme, the location of each pixel is computed. Mosaics are made of these images and stored as digital databases.

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗

USGS1986

Processing techniques for digital sonar images from GLORIA.

Image processing techniques have been developed to handle data from one of the newest members of the remote sensing family of digital imaging systems. This paper discusses software to process data collected by the GLORIA (Geological Long Range Inclined Asdic) sonar imaging system, designed and built by the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences (IOS) in England, to correct for both geometric and radiometric distortions that exist in the original 'raw' data. Preprocessing algorithms that are GLORIA-specific include corrections for slant-range geometry, water column offset, aspect ratio distortion, changes in the ship's velocity, speckle noise, and shading problems caused by the power drop-off which occurs as a function of range.-from Author

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗

USGS1990

Relative efficiency of four parameter-estimation methods in steady-state and transient ground-water flow models

Parameters in numerical ground-water flow models have been successfully estimated using nonlinear-optimization methods such as the modified Gauss-Newton (GN) method and conjugate-direction methods. This paper investigates the relative efficiency of GN and three conjugate-direction parameter-estimation methods on two-dimensional, steady-state and transient ground-water flow test cases. The steady-state test cases are included to compare the performance of the algorithm with published examples. The three conjugate-direction methods are the Fletcher-Reeves (FR) and quasi-Newton (QN) regression methods, and combination Fletcher-Reeves quasi-Newton (FR-QN). All three are combined with Newton's method of calculating step size. The numerical ground-water flow model is described by McDonald and Harbaugh.

Conference Paper↗

USGS1990

Adaptive box filters for removal of random noise from digital images

We have developed adaptive box-filtering algorithms to (1) remove random bit errors (pixel values with no relation to the image scene) and (2) smooth noisy data (pixels related to the image scene but with an additive or multiplicative component of noise). For both procedures, we use the standard deviation (??) of those pixels within a local box surrounding each pixel, hence they are adaptive filters. This technique effectively reduces speckle in radar images without eliminating fine details. -from Authors

Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing↗

USGS1992

Comparison of three newton-like nonlinear least-squares methods for estimating parameters of ground-water flow models

Three methods of solving nonlinear least-squares problems were compared for robustness and efficiency using a series of hypothetical and field problems. A modified Gauss-Newton/full Newton hybrid method (MGN/FN) and an analogous method for which part of the Hessian matrix was replaced by a quasi-Newton approximation (MGN/QN) solved some of the problems with appreciably fewer iterations than required using only a modified Gauss-Newton (MGN) method. In these problems, model nonlinearity and a large variance for the observed data apparently caused MGN to converge more slowly than MGN/FN or MGN/QN after the sum of squared errors had almost stabilized. Other problems were solved as efficiently with MGN as with MGN/FN or MGN/QN. Because MGN/FN can require significantly more computer time per iteration and more computer storage for transient problems, it is less attractive for a general purpose algorithm than MGN/QN.

Conference Paper↗

USGS1997

Generation of coastal marsh topography with radar and ground-based measurements

A topographic surface of a low lying coastal marsh was created by using three flood extent vectors digitized from ERS-1 SAR images and two elevation contours from U.S. Geological Survey topographic quadrangles. Point measurement of water depth at the times of the SAR collections allowed conversion of the radar measured flood extent vectors to topographic contours. Generation of the topographic surface was accomplished with a surface gridding algorithm. SAR and on-site measures. Errors in the generated topography were mainly associated with the lack of input contours covering narrow to broad plateaus and topographic highs and lows. The misplacement of SAR derived flood extent vectors also caused errors in sparsely vegetated high marsh at convoluted marsh-forest boundaries, and at topographic depressions. Overall, the standard deviation of differences between measured and predicted elevations at 747 points was 19 cm. Excluding the above mentioned abrupt boundaries and topographic highs and lows outside the range of available contours, standard deviation differences averaged about 14 cm, but most often averaged about 8 cm. This suggested a 5 to 9 factor improvement over the 150 cm topographic resolution currently available for this area.

Journal of Coastal Research↗

USGS1998

Generation of coastal marsh topography with radar and ground-based measurements

A topographic surface of a low lying coastal marsh was created by using three flood extent vectors digitized from ERS-1 SAR images and two elevation contours from U.S. Geological Survey topographic quadrangles. Point measurement of water depth at the times of the SAR collections allowed conversion of the radar measured flood extent vectors to topographic contours. Generation of the topographic surface was accomplished with a surface gridding algorithm, SAR and on-site measures. Errors in the generated topography were mainly associated with the lack of input contours covering narrow to broad plateaus and topographic highs and lows. The misplacement of SAR derived flood extent vectors also caused errors in sparsely vegetated high marsh, at convoluted marsh-forest boundaries, and at topographic depressions. Overall, the standard deviation of differences between measured and predicted elevations at 747 points was 19 cm. Excluding the above mentioned abrupt boundaries and topographic highs and lows outside the range of available contours, standard deviation differences averaged about 14 cm, but most often averaged about 8 cm. This suggested a 5 to 9 factor improvement over the 150 cm topographic resolution currently available for this area.

Journal of Coastal Research↗

USGS2002

Measurement of Turbulence with Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers - Sources of Error and Laboratory Results

Acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) provide a promising method for measuring surface-water turbulence because they can provide data from a large spatial range in a relatively short time with relative ease. Some potential sources of errors in turbulence measurements made with ADCPs include inaccuracy of Doppler-shift measurements, poor temporal and spatial measurement resolution, and inaccuracy of multi-dimensional velocities resolved from one-dimensional velocities measured at separate locations. Results from laboratory measurements of mean velocity and turbulence statistics made with two pulse-coherent ADCPs in 0.87 meters of water are used to illustrate several of inherent sources of error in ADCP turbulence measurements. Results show that processing algorithms and beam configurations have important effects on turbulence measurements. ADCPs can provide reasonable estimates of many turbulence parameters; however, the accuracy of turbulence measurements made with commercially available ADCPs is often poor in comparison to standard measurement techniques.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2002

Use of Acoustic Doppler Instruments for Measuring Discharge in Streams with Appreciable Sediment Transport

The use of Acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP) for measuring discharge in streams with sediment transport was discussed. The studies show that the acoustic frequency of an ADCP in combination with the sediment transport characteristics in a river causes the ADCP bottom-tracking algorithms to detect a moving bottom. A moving bottom causes bottom-tracking-referenced water velocities and discharges to be biased low. The results also show that the use of differential global positioning system (DGPS) data allows accurate measurement of water velocities and discharges in such cases.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2003

Extension of EMA to address regional skew and low outliers

The recently developed expected moments algorithm [EMA] (Cohn et al. 1997) does as well as MLEs at estimating LP3 flood quantiles using systematic and historical information. Needed extensions include use of a regional skewness estimator and its precision to be consistent with Bulletin 17B and to make use of such hydrologic information. Another issue addressed by Bulletin 17B is the treatment of low outliers. A Monte Carlo study illustrates the performance of an extended EMA estimator compared to estimators that employ the complete data set with and without use of regional skew, conditional probability adjustment from Bulletin 17B, and an estimator that uses probability plot regression to compute substitute values for low outliers. Estimators that use a regional skew all do better than estimators that fail to use an informative regional skewness estimator. For LP3 data, the low outlier rejection procedure results in no loss of overall accuracy, and the differences between the MSEs of the estimators that used an informative regional skew were generally negligible in the skew range of real interest.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2005

An onboard data analysis method to track the seasonal polar caps on Mars

The Martian seasonal CO2 ice caps advance and retreat each year. They are currently studied using instruments such as the THermal EMission Imaging System (THEMIS), a visible and infra-red camera on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft [1]. However, each image must be downlinked to Earth prior to analysis. In contrast, we have developed the Bimodal Image Temperature (BIT) histogram analysis method for onboard detection of the cap edge, before transmission. In downlink-limited scenarios when the entire image cannot be transmitted, the location of the cap edge can still be identified and sent to Earth. In this paper, we evaluate our method on uncalibrated THEMIS data and find 1) agreement with manual cap edge identifications to within 28.2 km, and 2) high accuracy even with a smaller analysis window, yielding large reductions in memory requirements. This algorithm is currently being considered as a capability enhancement for the Odyssey second extended mission, beginning in fall 2006.

European Space Agency, (Special Publication) ESA S↗

USGS2006

Gaussian-based filters for detecting Martian dust devils

The ability to automatically detect dust devils in the Martian atmosphere from orbital imagery is becoming important both for scientific studies of the planet and for the planning of future robotic and manned missions. This paper describes our approach for the unsupervised detection of dust devils and the preliminary results achieved to date. The algorithm centers upon the use of a filter constructed from Gaussian profiles to match dust devil characteristics over a range of scale and orientation. The classification step is designed to reduce false positive errors caused by static surface features such as craters. A brief discussion of planned future work is included. ?? 2006 IEEE.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2007

Monitoring microearthquakes with the San Andreas fault observatory at depth

In 2005, the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) was drilled through the San Andreas Fault zone at a depth of about 3.1 km. The borehole has subsequently been instrumented with high-frequency geophones in order to better constrain locations and source processes of nearby microearthquakes that will be targeted in the upcoming phase of SAFOD. The microseismic monitoring software MIMO, developed by NORSAR, has been installed at SAFOD to provide near-real time locations and magnitude estimates using the high sampling rate (4000 Hz) waveform data. To improve the detection and location accuracy, we incorporate data from the nearby, shallow borehole (???250 m) seismometers of the High Resolution Seismic Network (HRSN). The event association algorithm of the MIMO software incorporates HRSN detections provided by the USGS real time earthworm software. The concept of the new event association is based on the generalized beam forming, primarily used in array seismology. The method requires the pre-computation of theoretical travel times in a 3D grid of potential microearthquake locations to the seismometers of the current station network. By minimizing the differences between theoretical and observed detection times an event is associated and the location accuracy is significantly improved.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2011

From intuition to statistics in building subsurface structural models

Experts associated with the oil and gas exploration industry suggest that combining forward trishear models with stochastic global optimization algorithms allows a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty associated with a given structural model. The methodology is applied to incompletely imaged structures related to deepwater hydrocarbon reservoirs and results are compared to prior manual palinspastic restorations and borehole data. This methodology is also useful for extending structural interpretations into other areas of limited resolution, such as subsalt in addition to extrapolating existing data into seismic data gaps. This technique can be used for rapid reservoir appraisal and potentially have other applications for seismic processing, well planning, and borehole stability analysis.

World Oil↗

USGS2011

Dynamic resource allocation in conservation planning

Consider the problem of protecting endangered species by selecting patches of land to be used for conservation purposes. Typically, the availability of patches changes over time, and recommendations must be made dynamically. This is a challenging prototypical example of a sequential optimization problem under uncertainty in computational sustainability. Existing techniques do not scale to problems of realistic size. In this paper, we develop an efficient algorithm for adaptively making recommendations for dynamic conservation planning, and prove that it obtains near-optimal performance. We further evaluate our approach on a detailed reserve design case study of conservation planning for three rare species in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2009

Lysimetric evaluation of simplified surface energy balance approach in the Texas high plains

Numerous energy balance (EB) algorithms have been developed to make use of remote sensing data to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) regionally. However, most EB models are complex to use and efforts are being made to simplify procedures mainly through the scaling of reference ET. The Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) is one such method. This approach has never been evaluated using measured ET data. In this study, the SSEB approach was applied to 14 Landsat TM images covering a major portion of the Southern High Plains that were acquired during 2006 and 2007 cropping seasons. Performance of the SSEB was evaluated by comparing estimated ET with measured daily ET from four large monolithic lysimeters at the USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Bushland, Texas. Statistical evaluation of results indicated that the SSEB accounted for 84% of the variability in the measured ET values with a slope and intercept of 0.75 and 1.1 mm d -1 , respectively. Considering the minimal amount of ancillary data required and excellent performance in predicting daily ET, the SSEB approach is a promising tool for mapping ET in the semiarid Texas High Plains and in other parts of the world with similar hydro-climatic conditions.

Applied Engineering in Agriculture↗

USGS2009

Lysimetric Evaluation of Simplified Surface Energy Balance Approach in the Texas High Plains

Numerous energy balance (EB) algorithms have been developed to make use of remote sensing data to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) regionally. However, most EB models are complex to use and efforts are being made to simplify procedures mainly through the scaling of reference ET. The Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) is one such method. This approach has never been evaluated using measured ET data. In this study, the SSEB approach was applied to fourteen Landsat TM images covering a major portion of the Southern High Plains that were acquired during 2006 and 2007 cropping seasons. Performance of the SSEB was evaluated by comparing estimated ET with measured daily ET from four large monolithic lysimeters at the USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Bushland, Texas. Statistical evaluation of results indicated that the SSEB accounted for 84% of the variability in the measured ET values with a slope and intercept of 0.75 and 1.1 mm d-1, respectively. Considering the minimal amount of ancillary data required and excellent performance in predicting daily ET, the SSEB approach is a promising tool for mapping ET in the semiarid Texas High Plains and in other parts of the world with similar hydro-climatic conditions.

Applied Engineering in Agriculture↗