Paul McKenzie

Email: mckenzie-s@ulster.ac.uk

Room G167, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, Cromore Road, Coleraine, BT52 1SA Tel: 028 7032 4086

Academic Career:

2004 – present:
Ph.D. Assessing land cover pattern and change in agricultural landscapes using remotely sensed data, GIS techniques and landscape metrics.

Supervisors: Dr. Alan Cooper and Dr. Sally Cook

Funded by: Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for Northern Ireland.

2003:
M.Sc. in Geographical Information Systems University of Ulster, Coleraine. Thesis: Urban neighbourhood patterns: asymmetric links between IKONOS imagery and new point based GIS data.

2002:
Postgraduate Certificate in Education University of Ulster, Coleraine.

2001:
B.Sc. (Hons) in Geography University of Ulster, Coleraine. Thesis: The crisis in the beef and pig sector of Northern Ireland agriculture and agri-environmental policies as a possible solution.

Outline of Current Research:

This research investigates landscape metrics and RS-GIS, calibrated against field survey data to map and predict changes in the land cover of County Down in Northern Ireland. Early approaches in environmental remote sensing concentrated on low-resolution satellites that cannot satisfactorily detect fine-level variations inherent in cultural landscapes (Lausch and Herzog, 2002). Furthermore, research has focussed significantly upon spectral responses rather than considering the role of spatial characteristics (Fuller and Parsell, 1990; Belward et al., 1990). Work by Frohn (1998), Chust et al. (2004), Herold and Menz (2002) investigated integrating spectral and spatial signatures to interpret function from form. Their work showed that the application of landscape metrics can significantly aid the interpretation of satellite imagery. Calibration between satellite image models and land cover has largely been in the form of sparse ground truth samples. Lu (2005) investigated the integration of vegetation inventory data and Landsat TM imagery for vegetation classification in Brazil with encouraging results. This research integrates high-resolution satellite imagery (SPOT 5) with landscape metrics and sample grid square field survey data of the NI Countryside Survey.

Research Interests:
Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, Landscape Metrics, Landscape Ecology, Internet Mapping.

Teaching Experience:
February 2005: Lecturing in Geographical Information Systems (B.Sc.) October 2004: Lecturing in Decision Making in GIS (M.Sc.)

Publications:
Urban morphology reconstruction: links between satellite imagery and address information. In S Wise and M Craglia (editors) GIS and Evidence-based Policy Making, London: Taylor & Francis (V Mesev and P McKenzie) (forthcoming).

Integrating Landscape Metrics with Satellite Imagery.
(download presentation below - 8 Mb PowerPoint file)

(PowerPoint presentation)