Robert J Hickey
Robert J Hickey
Retired from academe. Looking for a position with a nonprofit.
About
44
Publications
33,664
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Introduction
I recently retired from my position as Professor of Environmental Science at Central Washington University. My research revolved around GIS and remote sensing applications in environmental science and resource management. Prior to working at Central, I worked at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and the University of West GA.
More info at http://www.onlinegeographer.com
Additional affiliations
November 2024 - present
Position
- Honorary doctor and professor
Description
- This position is entirely honorary, and it gives me the opportunity to stay connected with a department, university, and city in which I have worked and thoroughly enjoy.
September 2000 - December 2024
August 1994 - December 1996
Education
January 1991 - August 1994
August 1988 - December 1990
August 1983 - May 1987
Publications
Publications (44)
This article describes a map I made based on a trip to Western Australia I took with my wife in 2014. The map is sculptural, constructed using a combination of wood, metal, and semi-precious gemstones. For the base of the map, I used a 44.5 × 40.5 in (113 × 103 cm) piece of quarter-sawn white oak veneer plywood. Guided by a 1-inch (2.54 cm) grid sy...
Geographers are often asked “what is geography?”, and the number of answers to this question nearly equals the number of geographers. We (and others) argue that it is the spatial dimension that makes geography different, and that to do geography, one must communicate spatial information. Cartography is one of the key forms of spatial communication....
A short essay for the "Working Life" section of Science Magazine. It talks about my experiences working with students of color.
https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/05/what-i-learned-branching-out-mentor
This article addresses a method for calculating slope along a flow direction grid.
The article can be found online at https://www.directionsmag.com/article/8937
A short article in the GIS trade journal "Directions Magazine". https://www.directionsmag.com/article/8795
Published on 5/15/2019
When conducting ecological research on tidal mudflats, understanding how long any given area is underwater is vitally important. This paper describes a method for calculating the percent inundation time for a single tidal cycle (neap to spring tide) within a GIS environment. The primary variable is elevation, thus, having an accurate digital elevat...
As forests continue to experience uncharacteristically severe fires and insect outbreaks, forest restoration activities are critical to maintaining ecosystem services such as fish and wildlife habitats while restoring natural processes such as fire return interval. Large-scale forest restoration projects help land managers meet restoration goals fo...
This is a report on repeat surveys on the state of the benthic invertebrates at two internationally important areas of intertidal mudflats in northwest Australia (Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach) during October 2016. In the period 6-19 October 2016, we mapped the invertebrate macrobenthic animals (those retained by a 1 mm sieve) at the main inter...
In this pilot study, we apply satellite image analysis to archaeological site prospection in Alaska's Brooks Range. Our goal was to test whether satellite remote sensing, which has been successful in locating large archaeological features associated with sedentary peoples, could be applied to arctic interior sites associated with mobile hunter–gath...
Between September 5, 2008 and September 5, 2009, near-surface soil moisture time series were collected in the northern part of a 1.7 km2 watershed in SWHungary at 14 monitoring locations using a portable TDR-300 soil moisture sensor. The objectives of this study are to increase the accuracy of soil moisture measurement at watershed scale, to improv...
Excavation data from an ancestral Nez Perce dwelling in Hells Canyon, Oregon (1600-500 B.P.) are used to integrate 3-D GIS and spatio-temporal problem-solving for university-level archaeology instruction. By working through three sequential projects, students learn visualization skills as well as archaeological methods, spatial thinking, and proble...
The shores of Roebuck Bay and Eighty Mile Beach in northwestern Australia are amongst the richest known intertidal mudflats worldwide. They are both listed as Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention, primarily because of the high numbers of shorebirds that migrate to and from these sites every year. There are only a dozen o...
We tested the reliability and utility of students, Grades 1–8, to count mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and elk (Cervus elephus) along rural school bus routes in Kittitas County, Washington, from 2003 to 2004 as part of an investigation on wildlife response to rural development. Student and supervisor counts of deer and elk were similar (α = .05)....
Much has been written regarding the effectiveness of different teaching styles; however, considerably less has been written about the physical design of computer classrooms and their implications on education. To date, nothing has been written regarding building an informal learning community within a computer classroom, particularly outside of for...
WADE, S. and HICKEY, R., 2008. Mapping migratory wading bird feeding habitats using satellite imagery and field data, Eighty-Mile Beach, Western Australia. Journal of Coastal Research, 24(3), 759–770. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Eighty-Mile Beach is one of the 10 most populous sites for migratory birds in the Asian–Australasian Flywa...
1. This is a report on a survey of the benthic ecology of the intertidal flats along the northern shores of Roebuck Bay in June 2006. In the period 11-20 June we mapped both the invertebrate macrobenthic animals (those retained by a 1 mm sieve) over the whole of the northern intertidal area of Roebuck Bay and the shorebirds that depend on this food...
A more complete understanding of the spectral response patterns of bauxite‐rich rocks (and the vegetation associated with these rocks) aided the development of small‐scale bauxite exploration models in Western Australia. In all cases, Landsat TM data were used to map the regolith and vegetation characteristics. All band combinations were tested for...
http://www.siue.edu/GEOGRAPHY/ONLINE
Roebuck Bay project, which surveyed long-distance migratory birds near Broome, in the north of Western Australia is described. The project brought together students of geographic information system (GIS), surveying and cartography which resulted in a great multidisciplinary learning and some informative ecological maps. The project revealed the stu...
This research investigates the potential of a dedicated Geographic Information System (GIS) to provide spatiotemporal data visualisation and analysis to aid multiple‐use forest management in the Kingston State Forest, near Manjimup, Western Australia. The goals of this research are to develop and use sophisticated data evaluation techniques to assi...
EXPECTOR is a method of combining data and ‘expert’ knowledge within a Geographic Information System to provide information on the occurrence of spatially distributed attributes. It was developed to predict soil property values from spatially variable input data. Although initially developed to provide soil surveyors with a quantitative soil mappin...
The Central Pilbara Railway (CPR) was constructed in 1992 by Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd to provide a transport link between Marandoo and the proposed Yandicoogina Mine in the Central Pilbara, Western Australia. The 400 km line connects to the port of Dampier to the huge iron ore resources in the central Pilbara and a section of nearly 100 km of the rai...
A limitation of using the USLE and RUSLE soil erosion models at regional landscape scales has been the difficulty in obtaining an LS-factor grid suitable for use in GIS applications. Previous work resulted in an Arclnfo GRID AML program that allows the creation of a USLE-based LS factor grid using a DEM elevation dataset. This paper describes the a...
The Universal Soil Loss Equation has been used for a number of years to estimate soil erosion. One of its parameters is slope length, however, slope length has traditionally been estimated for large areas rather than calculated. Using data from regular grid DEMs, a method is described in this paper for calculating the cumulative downhill slope leng...
A method for deriving mean inundation times for a large expanse of intertidal mudflats is presented. Image processing techniques are used to extract waterlines from two Landsat Thematic Mapper scenes at approximately high and low tides, respectively. Along with data based on standard tidal predictions, the waterlines are utilised to derive an initi...
Many researchers have applied geographic information systems (CIS) to water-related problems, planning, mapping, and modeling, Application of GIS technology to hazard assessment and risk mapping along coastal areas, particularly barrier islands, will benefit the communities by providing a basis for zoning, land use planning, and allocation of resou...
Geographical Information Systems (GISs) are typically limited to the representation of two dimensional data and most have difficulty showing the volumetric (30) nature of many environmental phenomena. In a truly dynamic environmental model, time must also be handled. Time slices can be used to model environmental objects and can be used for the fou...
The Mabo (No 2) decision was handed down on 3 June 1992. Consequently, the Government of that time recognised native title and that the indigenous people of Australia had been dispossessed of land. The Native Title Act was established to recognise and protect native title and became effective on 1 January 1994. The Wik decision was handed down 23 D...
Digital elevation models (DEMs) form an important part of many geographic information system (GIS) datasets; equally important are the parameters calculated from these DEMs. This paper addresses the currently available methods of calculating slope angle from a digital elevation model and introduces a new method which circumvents a number of the sho...
Abandoned mines and mining-related activities typically cause environmental problems related to erosion and pollutant transport. Traditional methods of smelter reclamation plan design are hampered by the lack of data integration and by time-consuming analysis. The proposed spatial decision-support system will minimize these problems as data integra...
The Universal Soil Loss Equation has been used for a number of years to predict soil erosion rates. One of the required inputs to this model is the cumulative downhill slope length. Calculation of this factor has been the largest problem in using the USLE. The only necessary data for this calculation is a digital elevation model (DEM). DEMs have be...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Idaho, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-158).
The gold skarn system at Buckhorn Mountain is related to the Cretaceous (?) Buckhorn Mountain pluton (diorite to granodiorite) and its associated dikes and sills. The host rocks are Pennsylvanian to Triassic (?) clastic and carbonate sedimentary rocks and andesitic flows. These have been altered to proximal garnet-magnetite-sulfide, intermediate ga...
Questions
Questions (2)
So... my Advanced GIS class is pretty much the capstone class for our GIS program. I'm redoing the final exam from the traditional academic exam to a series of what could well be interview questions. They need to be fairly generic (ie. I have geographers, geologists, economists, biologists, and anthropologists in the class).
Anyone have any good ideas for questions? Assume these students have had 3-4 GIS classes and a remote sensing class or two. Most also took at least one stats class.
Thanks mucho!
Cheers, Bob
Next year I go back to teaching an introductory satellite image processing class and, unfortunately, we need to get some new software - ERDAS Imagine has become too expensive for our department. Any suggestions, links, reviews, etc?
Thanks,
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First, thanks for all the answers. I checked around the freeware and have talked to the commercial mobs. Here's some of what I've learned so far. ENVI - far too expensive. PCI Geomatics (Decided to work with me, will probably get their software!). Most of the freeware listed is 2-4 years old - a long time between updates. And looks a bit clunky. Best bets so far for freeware seem to be either GRASS or SAGA (note, I only need the software for a single quarter remote sensing class, so powerhouse software isn't really needed). GRASS scares me, mostly because of experiences almost 20 years ago..... :) And I've had good luck with SAGA on one project.
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