Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2012
Poster Presentation
Land Cover’s Effect on Satellite Visibility of Tornado Tracks
Joy Cripe
Faculty Mentors: Fuyuan Liang and Redina Herman
Geography
This study will investigate how the type of land cover effects how well a satellite image
can detect a tornado’s track by analyzing satellite images along with aerial photographs,
and ground observations of three different EF5 tornadoes in different areas of the
country such as the Greensburg, Kansas; Joplin, Missouri; and Smithville, Mississippi
tornadoes. Destructive tornadoes effect the world every year, impacting people, terrain,
and the economy. The use of satellite imagery paired with ground observations and
aerial photographs can give us a better understanding of this natural disaster and with
this understanding, lives could be saved. This project hopes to find that if a EF5 tornado
occurs in an area of dense trees then the tornado track will appear more prominent in
satellite imagery than a EF5 tornado that occurs in farmland. It also hopes to find that if
a EF5 tornado occurs in an urban area then the tornado track will appear more
prominent in satellite imagery than a EF5 tornado that occurs in a rural area. In order to
prove this, satellite images were obtained and manipulated using ERDAS Imagine to
create false color composite, infrared, and normalized difference vegetation index
(NDVI) images so the tornado tracks could be analyzed.