USGS Spectroscopy Lab

Arches and Canyonlands National Parks

http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/national.parks/national.parks.html

• Surficial mineralogy,
• Vegetation communities/species,
• Cryptobiotic soils,
• Research on vegetation health,
• Research on specific ecosystems and
• Search for abandoned mine lands and assessment of mine drainage on National Park lands.

The image at left is Delicate Arch in Arches national Park. by Roger N. Clark

The current study and status: (the processing time has stretched out because higher priority tasks has diverted our efforts--please be patient for project completion.)

• AVIRIS data acquired June 19, 1995
• Coverage:
  • All of Arches National Park
  • Canyonlands: One line north of Upheaval Dome south through Virginia Park
• AVIRIS data have been calibrated to surface reflectance (Dec 1996).
• Initial Tricorder mapping has been completed (Dec 1996), and is undergoing field checks.
• Preliminary maps delivered to Park Service (April 1997) for comment.
• Registered mineral maps delivered to Park Service (Fall 1997) for comment.
• Field checking will continue in the winter/spring of 2000.
• Revised Tricorder mapping and final products expected summer, 2000.
• ER-2 high altitude IR photography acquired, and digital scanning completed (3.7-meter/pixel spatial resolution) for all AVIRIS flight lines (December, 1999) and are being processed. Full resolution images will be ~45 MBytes each.

  Example view of Devil's Garden (611 kb gif)

  Full resolution view of Landscape Arch (203 kb gif)

  Example over Upheaval Dome in canyonlands (about 1/3 of full resolution - 303 kb gif)
  Full resolution Upheaval Dome area, 3 MByte gif, black and white.

• Publication expected to go into review summer 2000.

Project/Task Leader: Roger N. Clark rclark@speclab.cr.usgs.gov

Project team:

• Roger N. Clark (Initial surficial mineralogy lead)
• Raymond F. Kokaly (Vegetation and cryptobiotics studies lead)
• Gregg A. Swayze
• Eric Livo

Papers

• Arches National Park
  • Geometric Corrections to AVIRIS data (Arches N. P. used as an example). 1998 AVIRIS Workshop Proceedings.

Older studies

• Arches National Park
  • Mapping the Mineralogy and Lithology of Canyonlands, Utah with Imaging Spectrometer Data and the Multiple Spectral Feature Mapping Algorithm
  • Vegetation and Cryptobiotic Soils Mapping in Arid Regions
• Canyonlands National Park
  • Mapping the Mineralogy and Lithology of Canyonlands, Utah with Imaging Spectrometer Data and the Multiple Spectral Feature Mapping Algorithm

National Park Service: Visit the Parks Home Page

Arches National Park Home Page

Canyonlands NP Home Page

Phone, email and regular mail addresses of spectroscopy lab personnel for further information.

U.S. Geological Survey, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Interior
This page URL= http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/national.parks/Arches.Canyonlands/arches.canyon.html
This page is maintained by: Dr. Roger N. Clark rclark@speclab.cr.usgs.gov
Last modified January 8, 2000.