A Comparison of Methods for Determining Forest Composition from High-Spatial-Resolution Remotely Sensed Imagery

Remotely sensed imagery has been used to support forest ecology and management for decades. In modern times, the propagation of high-spatial-resolution image analysis techniques and automated workflows have further strengthened this synergy, leading to the inquiry into more complex, local-scale, ecosystem characteristics. To appropriately inform decisions in forestry ecology and management, the most reliable and efficient methods should be adopted. For this reason, our research compares visual interpretation to digital (automated) processing for forest plot composition and individual tree identification. During this investigation, we qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated the process of classifying species groups within complex, mixed-species forests in New England. This analysis included a comparison of three high-resolution remotely sensed imagery sources: Google Earth, National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery, and unmanned aerial system (UAS) imagery. We discovered that, although the level of detail afforded by the UAS imagery spatial resolution (3.02 cm average pixel size) improved the visual interpretation results (7.87–9.59%), the highest thematic accuracy was still only 54.44% for the generalized composition groups. Our qualitative analysis of the uncertainty for visually interpreting different composition classes revealed the persistence of mislabeled hardwood compositions (including an early successional class) and an inability to consistently differentiate between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ stands. The results of digitally classifying the same forest compositions produced a higher level of accuracy for both detecting individual trees (93.9%) and labeling them (59.62–70.48%) using machine learning algorithms including classification and regression trees, random forest, and support vector machines. These results indicate that digital, automated, classification produced an increase in overall accuracy of 16.04% over visual interpretation for generalized forest composition classes. Other studies, which incorporate multitemporal, multispectral, or data fusion approaches provide evidence for further widening this gap. Further refinement of the methods for individual tree detection, delineation, and classification should be developed for structurally and compositionally complex forests to supplement the critical deficiency in local-scale forest information around the world.

Teaching Argumentative Writing to ESOL Students.

Teaching argumentative writing to English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners is one of the skills required for successful academic writing. Theoretically-grounded in the Toulmin argumentation model, this paper seeks to explicate the tenets of teaching adult ESOL learners' argumentative composition skills. It also accounts for the assessment strategies that support learners' transfer from their internalized linguistic systems to writing neat, well-supported arguments in the target language. In pursuit of this endeavor, model lesson plans are provided for teachers to test. Though this research is based on personal experience in the Algerian ESOL context, the unit plan can be generalized in other contexts to ESOL learners. Multilingual learners are becoming an inevitable part of mainstream American composition classes, which justifies the suitability of this unit design in the American context.

Prompting second language writers for productive reflection using narrative questioning prompt

This paper aims to introduce a novel form of reflective tool ‘narrative questioning’ to facilitate students’ elaborate and graded reflection in two ESL composition classes in a university in the US. Little has been written about a reflective tool where students need to produce a graded and elaborate reflection and this paper will seek to narrow that gap. Narrative questioning is developed primarily from Barkhuizen and Wette’s (2008) narrative frames. Narrative frames employ “a series of incomplete sentences and blank spaces of varying lengths” (Barkhuizen, 2014, p. 13). Narrative questioning utilizes a series of questions through which students reflected on their perceived learning gain throughout the semester. This paper will first discuss research in narrative reflective tools. Then, it will describe the classroom pedagogical lesson that I conducted to introduce and guide students to write their reflection using narrative questioning. Thirdly, the data gathered through students' reflection and individual interviews of 10 students will be presented and discussed. The data illustrates the different ways of narrative questioning facilitate reflection. Limitations of the narrative questioning elicited from students' interviews will also be presented here along with the pedagogical implication of the study.

Boys Don’t Cry

In literature and in composition classes, this film, based on the true story of the murder of transgender young man, initiates important discussions of the construction of gender.

Impuls Festival, Graz. Collaboratory with Stefan Prins

Impuls, the International Ensemble and Composition Academy for Contemporary Music, has in the past offered a workshop that deviates from the main activities of instrumental classes and ensemble work, composition classes, lectures, and call-for-score reading sessions, taking the form of an intensive course which plays with the grey areas between composer and performer, performance and installation, cochlear and non-cochlear music. In 2017, with the Academy now in its tenth edition, the focus of this workshop moved from ‘Composition Beyond Music’, led in recent years by Peter Ablinger (2013) and by Georg Nussbaumer (2015), to ‘Collaboratory’, a new workshop led by Belgian composer/performer Stefan Prins, imagined in collaboration with Ute Pinter, the festival's secretary general.

A Rhetorical Approach to the Literary Essay: Pedagogical Implications

The teaching of the literary essay is usually ignored in many universities due to its probing and inconclusive form which has not favoured the existence of models of analysis. However, the argumentative nature of this discourse can be examined through a reading that allows the recognition of some rhetorical operations like the invention of arguments (inuentio), their arrangement (dispositio) and expressive manifestation (elocutio). This article proposes a model of analysis following this rhetorical approach. In particular, I apply this analysis to a short essay by Virginia Woolf, ‘Royalty’. Woolf has been considered a major writer of the twentieth century. Although the style of her novels has been extensively researched from diverse perspectives, the style of her essays has not received much critical attention. Throughout my study, I indicate how the recognition and interpretation of arguments and rhetorical figures can help to define the style of this essay. Furthermore, I provide some guidelines for the identification and further interpretation of these rhetorical elements. Both the analysis and the guidelines can be useful in the literature and composition classes.