High-resolution digital elevation data acquired by airborne laser scanning (ALS) for the Denton Hills, along the coastal foothills of the Royal Society Range, Transantarctic Mountains, are examined for applications to bedrock and glacial geomorphic mapping. Digital elevation models (DEMs), displayed as shaded-relief images and slope maps, portray geomorphic landscape features in unprecedented d...

Intelligent, automated analysis of data is a critical task in modern data-intensive sciences. The work presented in this thesis is a contribution to this body of research, focusing on automatic geomorphic characterization of planetary surfaces (particularly Mars). We present a framework for automated generation of geomorphic maps from topographic data. Our approach first segments the topographi...

The tropical forests of the Amazon Basin occur on a wide variety of different soil types reflecting a rich diversity of geologic origins and geomorphic processes. We here review the existing literature about the main soil groups of Amazonia, describing their genesis, geographical patterns and principal chemical, physical and morphologic characteristics. Original data is also presented, with pro...

Geomorphic models have a wide range of capabilities in terms of prediction, and this range is part of the reason for this volume. Haff [1996] pointed out that landscape-scale geomorphic models are fundamentally ill-suited to precise prediction and that reductionism is ill-suited to landscapescale problems. Geomorphic models run the gamut of spatial and temporal scales and modeling approaches, f...

Badlands and gullied areas are among those geomorphic environments with the highest erosion rates worldwide. Nevertheless, records of their evolution and their relations with anthropogenic land transformation are scarcer. Here we combine historical data with aerial photographs and tree-ring records to reconstruct the evolution of a badland in a Mediterranean environment of Central Spain. Histor...

Estimates of carbon store and carbon accumulation rate in mangrove and saltmarsh are beset by issues of scale and provenance. Estimates at a site do not allow scaling to regional estimates if the drivers of variability are not known. Also, carbon accumulation within soils provides a net offset only if carbon is derived in-situ, or would not otherwise be sequestered. We use a network of observat...

In this paper, a Bayesian framework is used to infer HiRISE-equivalent rock density from CTX image features without needing to explicitly identify rocks. The statistical relationship between HiRISE rock density and CTX image features is modeled using Bayesian Networks. The model is enriched by including geological features—specifically, geomorphic units. The geomorphic units are identified by g...

Aquatic ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle and represent substantial source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying how aquatic community respiration (CR), a major source of CO2, will respond to warming temperatures expected under climate change, and whether landscape features affect temperature modulation of CR...

As inferred from orbital spectroscopic data, Northeast Syrtis Major bears considerable mineral diversity that spans the Noachian-Hesperian boundary despite its small geographic area. In this study we use observations from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, supplemented with Context Camera imagery, to characterize and map the lateral extent of geomorphic units in Northeast Syrtis Ma...