Research student profile: Marcelo Stabile
Project title
Modelling land use dynamics in respect to climate change in the Lower Hunter Valley, NSW
Project overview
My project aims to understand how land-use has changed in the recent past (from the 70s) and to predict what may occur due to changes in climate. I also want to model these changes and understand how changes in climatic patterns may affect the soil and possibly its carbon dynamics.
Research has shown that climate change will affect most of the world’s population; however most of the studies are done at a global scale without the level of detail necessary for local planning. A regional land-use model will utilise input data from different locations to optimise adaptation and mitigation measures at a local scale.
To tackle this project my research involves the use of GIS, remote sensing, statistics and modelling. I use image fusion techniques to integrate data from different sensors, and object-based image classification to determine land-use patterns for different years. I extract trends from my land-use maps utilizing logistic regression and transition probabilities. These trends are then projected in the future with regional climatic projections and scenarios evaluated. I’ve also found out that leaning programming is a fundamental skill.
From this work we expect a few things: to automate the process of making land-use maps from different sources, while utilising object-based classification to differentiate land-use types; then to use this land-use data to extract trends and parameters for the model; and finally we expect to be able to determine the changes that may occur from different climatic scenarios and how these may affect carbon dynamics, and all of this while having fun!
Background
I am an international student from São Paulo, Brazil. I completed my B.Sc. at ESALQ/USP (University of São Paulo) and then did my M.Sc. in Agronomy at Texas A & M University. Following my M.Sc. I worked full time for about a year and a half managing an organic pecan farm in south Texas. I stated my PhD in July of 2007 and I have been granted a USydIS scholarship.
During my undergraduate degree I was awarded an undergraduate scholarship provided by CAPES/Fulbright to do one year of my degree in the USA (Texas A & M) and during that period I was on the Dean’s Honour Roll.
During my M.Sc. I made four oral presentations at different conferences. In the second year of my PhD I attended a workshop on object-based image analysis in the Gold Coast, and later that year I presented a paper on “Object and knowledge-based approaches for creating multi-temporal land-use maps” at the 14th ARSPC.
Publications and papers
- M.C.C. Stabile, I.O.A. Odeh, A.B. McBratney. 2009. Improving land-use classification through the use of image fusion and the object based approach. (In preparation)
- M.C.C. Stabile, I.O.A. Odeh, A.B. McBratney. 2009. Object-oriented and knowledge-based land-use classification of multi-temporal satellite imagery in the Hunter Valley, NSW Australia. (In preparation)
- M.C.C. Stabile, S.W Searcy. 2009. Validation of the soil line transformation technique. Transactions of the ASABE 52 (2) (In Press)
- M.C.C. Stabile, I.O.A. Odeh, A.B. McBratney. 2008. Application of object-oriented and knowledge-based approach to multi-temporal land use classification using Landsat images. In proceedings of 14th ARSPC, Spatial Sciences Institute, Darwin, NT, 29 Sept. to 3 Oct. 2008.
- M.C.C. Stabile, L.A. Balastreire. 2006. Comparação de três receptores GPS para uso em agricultura de precisão. Revista Engenharia Agricola 26 (1): 215-223.
- M.C.C. Stabile, L.A. Balastreire. 2002. Avaliação do desempenho de sitemas de posicionamento global (GPS) de baixo custo para utilização em Agricultura de Precisão. Research Report submitted to FAPESP in December 2002.