Ralph W. Kiefer Professor Emeritus Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Education Fields of Interest Awards & Honors Summary

Contact Information

1210 Engineering Hall 1415 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706

Tel: 608/262-1604 E-mail: rkiefer@macc.wisc.edu

Departments

• Civil and Environmental Engineering

Program Affiliations

• Geological Engineering Program

Education

• B.C.E., Cornell University
• M.S., Cornell University
• Ph.D. Cornell University

Fields of Interest

• photographic interpretation
• remote sensing
• land use suitability evaluation
• image interpretation

Selected Awards, Honors and Societies

• The Alan Gordon Memorial Award from American Society of Photogrammetry for significant achievements in remote sensing and photographic interpretation Honor Award
• The American Society of Landscape Architects Presidential Citation for Meritorious Service, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
• Earle J. Fennell Award, American Congress on Surveying and Mapping
• American Society of Civil Engineers
• American Society for Engineering Education American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Association of American Geographers Canadian Remote Sensing Society
• The Remote Sensing Society [England]

Summary

Most of my research has been conducted in cooperation with the Environmental Remote Sensing Center of the UW-Madison Institute for Environmental Studies. My research interests have centered around the interpretation of remotely sensed data for a variety of land-related activities. Initially this involved working with aerial photographs, but more recently has involved using multispectral scanner and radar images acquired both from aircraft and earth-orbiting satellites. Interpretations initially were accomplished by means of "mylar overlays" to photographs, but now are being made by using microcomputers to process remotely sensed data.

My students' recent thesis work has dealt with topics such as applications of remote sensing to natural resources management in Indonesia, application of Landsat satellite data in the detection of structural (geological) lineaments, wilderness appraisal using computer-assisted interpretation of high-altitude color infrared photography, the utility of color infrared photography and synthetic aperture radar for vegetation type discrimination in the tropics, digital and visual classification of land use/land cover using Landsat satellite data and high altitude photographic data, the classification of forest species types using gradient analysis and spectral data and the use of SPOT satellite data for soil mapping in Wisconsin.