McGill University
Ph.D. candidate
Supervisor: Jeffrey Cardille
Start: 2017-09-01
End: 2022-01-01
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Project

Advancing wildfire monitoring using multi-scale Earth observations
As wildfire seasons become more extreme and less predictable across Canada and the world, satellite imagery and other Earth observations provide vital data for monitoring individual wildfires and supporting fire management decision-making. In this thesis, I explore multi-scale approaches and data sources used in landscape ecology and remote sensing research, apply data fusion methods to map wildfire progressions, and identify future opportunities for using Earth observations for wildfire monitoring. In the first research chapter of my thesis, I review and thematically analyze over 150 recently published manuscripts from the fields of remote sensing and landscape ecology to identify recent and future advances in the realm of multi-scale, multi-source ecological analyses. In the second chapter of my thesis, I create a prototype for mapping the fire progression of a single wildfire, Elephant Hill Fire, from the 2017 fire season in British Columbia. This prototype uses a Bayesian synthesis algorithm to fuse multi-sensor, multi-scale Earth observations on Google Earth Engine, a high-capacity and cloud-based processing platform. The third thesis chapter generates fire progression metrics from fused multi-source, multi-scale observations for all large fires from the 2017 fire season in British Columbia. This whole-fire-season study advances upon the previous chapter’s fire progression mapping technique by integrating an object-based classification approach into the classification protocol. In the final chapter of my thesis, Chapter 4, I present a whole-systems conceptual framework to identify the data and information needs for all fire monitoring stages and analyze historical wildfire case studies. The ultimate target of this dissertation is to advance multi-source, multi-sensor, and multi-stage fire monitoring research by presenting novel data fusion methods, fire progression metric analyses, and conceptual framework development. The findings of this thesis can be used to support wildland fire monitoring to improve our understanding of fires and fire seasons over space and time

Keywords

remote sensing, wildfires, forest fires, Earth observations, fire monitoring

Publications

1- Implications of Panarchy for ecosystem service research: the role of system dynamics in service delivery
Winkler, Klara J., Karina Benessaiah, Julie Botzas-Coluni, Erin T. H. Crockett, Morgan A. Crowley, Marie Dade, Dalal E. L. Hanna, Juno Garrah, Jesse T. Rieb, Elena M. Bennett
2022 Ecology and Society

2- Multi-sensor change detection for within-year capture and labelling of forest disturbance
Cardille, Jeffrey A., Elijah Perez, Morgan A. Crowley, Michael A. Wulder, Joanne C. White, Txomin Hermosilla
2022 Remote Sensing of Environment

3- Detection and impacts of tiling artifacts in MODIS burned area classification
Liu, Tianjia, Morgan A Crowley
2021 IOP SciNotes

4- Building capacity through interdisciplinary graduate collaboration
del Giorgio, Olivia, Morgan A Crowley, Luci X Lu, Kerstin Schreiber
2020 Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

5- Remote Sensing’s Recent and Future Contributions to Landscape Ecology
Crowley, Morgan A., Jeffrey A. Cardille
2020 Current Landscape Ecology Reports

6- Mapping three decades of annual irrigation across the US High Plains Aquifer using Landsat and Google Earth Engine
Deines, Jillian M., Anthony D. Kendall, Morgan A. Crowley, Jeremy Rapp, Jeffrey A. Cardille, David W. Hyndman
2019 Remote Sensing of Environment

7- Generating intra-year metrics of wildfire progression using multiple open-access satellite data streams
Crowley, Morgan A., Jeffrey A. Cardille, Joanne C. White, Michael A. Wulder
2019 Remote Sensing of Environment

8- Multi-sensor, multi-scale, Bayesian data synthesis for mapping within-year wildfire progression
Crowley, Morgan A., Jeffrey A. Cardille, Joanne C. White, Michael A. Wulder
2018 Remote Sensing Letters

9- Characterizing Non-Industrial Private Forest Landowners' Forest Management Engagement and Advice Sources
Crowley, Morgan A., Joel Hartter, Russell G. Congalton, Lawrence C. Hamilton, Nils D. Christoffersen
2018 Society & Natural Resources

10- Sustainable beef production in New England: policy and value-chain challenges and opportunities
Crowley, Morgan A., Kara E. Shannon, Isaac Sohn Leslie, Andrea Jilling, Cameron D. McIntire, Emily Kyker-Snowman
2018 Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems