The Beginning

So, to start the process off, we need to collect imagery of Seattle. Ideally, this imagery will be fairly recent, and have data in 4 bands of the spectrum (Red, Blue, Green, and Infrared). The reason we want all 4 bands, as opposed to just 3, is because the infrared band works exceptionally well in differentiating between objects because in that range of the spectrum, objects tends to reflect energy quite differently. Fortunately, since I am a UW student, I have access to the entire UW map collection, which is quite considerable. They had a 2009 4 band collection of imagery, so I downloaded the tiles for Seattle. And off we go!

False Color Infrared Image of part of Seattle

If you've never seen an infrared image, I put an example of one up. I simply replaced the red colors in the image with infrared, which colors the infrared band so you can see it. I'm doing all this in a program called Spring, developed by the Brazilian government, and is free for all to use!

About My Project

This project seeks to look at how various aspects of the landscape affect bumblebee visits. This is especially important given that bumblebee populations have been in decline, and that our native bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis, is seemingly quite rare. My focus is to see how edge density (the amount of edge between two different land covers per unit area, eg road vs trees) and the types of edges affect bumblebee visits. To do this, I will generate Land use/ land cover maps and pair it with data from the Urban Pollination Project, of which I am part of. This blog will serve to document the process of making my project.