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The Environmental Studies Speaker Series will host a presentation, “High-precision Land-cover-land-use GIS Mapping for Land Potential Assessment Based on High-resolution Aerial, CIR, and LiDAR Data in Agricultural Northern Maine,” by Chunzeng Wang, Ph.D., on Friday, February 27 at 11 a.m. in the Nadeau Hall conference room. The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Wang will speak on a high-precision land-cover-land-use GIS mapping project and its application in land potential assessment in central Aroostook County.

Foresters who attend can earn one continuing forestry education licensing credit.

The project is part of Maine's SSI EPSCoR project conducted at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. It used integrated on-screen digitization and direct interpretation of high-resolution multispectral imagery and LiDAR data, supplemented by a ground-truthing method.

The project not only provides the first-ever high-precision land-use maps for northern Maine, but also yields accurate estimates of different land-use types, in particular grass lands, defined as fallow land, pasture, and hay fields. This enables land potential assessment and land availability and suitability analysis. The analyzing results show that central Aroostook has an ample base of suitable, underutilized land for producing grass biomass or for other sustainable land uses.

Dr. Chunzeng Wang is an associate professor in earth and environmental sciences at the University of Maine at Presque Isle since 2005. He launched UMPI's GIS program from scratch and built a state-of-the-art GIS laboratory with external funds.

Dr. Wang has developed a community GIS partnership with central Aroostook cities, towns, and major non-profit organizations. Each year, he and his students work on community-related GIS mapping projects, such as the non-motorized trail mapping project for www.GoAroostookOutdoors.com [link no longer active]

Dr. Wang is an active research geologist and works on a number of geological research projects supported by U. S. Geological Survey and China's National Natural Science Foundation in Maine and China and has authored/co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed articles.

In 1984, Chunzeng Wang earned a bachelor's degree from Guilin College of Geology in China and a master's degree in 1989 from China University of Geosciences. He continued to pursue his second master's degree in 2000, then a Ph.D. in 2001 Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

The Environmental Studies Speaker Series presentations are open to the public and cover such topics as water quality, waste management, wind power, endangered species, forestry, and marine science. The program is offered in collaboration with the UMFK Environmental Studies degree program. Speakers are only scheduled during the academic year.

For more information on the Environmental Studies Speaker Series, contact Dave Hobbins at (207) 834-7614.