Brian D. Wardlow
Hi, I'm Brian Wardlow, and I'm an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources with the National Drought Mitigation Center.
My main interests are: 1) remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) applications for agricultural, environmental, and natural resource management and monitoring; 2) land use/land cover mapping and change detection; 3) vegetation geography and biogeography; 4) climatology; 5) climate-vegetation and human-environment interactions.
I will be working on the development of national drought monitoring tools, which incorporate in remotely sensed, climatological, and biophysical information within a computerized geospatial analysis framework. These tools then assist decision makers, agricultural producers, and other stakeholders.
Specific tools that will be created and enhanced include a Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI) map. This represents a bi-weekly snapshot of vegetation drought severity across the United States. I will also help create a Vegetation Outlook (VegOUT) map, which provides a outlook of vegetation conditions several weeks in advance. These readings are based on satellite, oceanic, climatological, and biophysical information.
In addition, I will be organizing and participating in workshops throughout the nation to inform local, state, and federal decision makers and agricultural producers about VegDRI and VegOUT. I'll also provide training on how to effectively use the information from these tools for planning and decision making purposes.
The regional-scale crop mapping and monitoring tools developed from my Ph.D. work can be used to provide geospatial datasets that can characterize large-area crop rotations and management practices. It can also assess and map spatial and temporal patterns of general crop conditions.
The mapping information can be integrated into various environmental models to better understand the role and response of large-scale agriculture-environment interactions to environmental-societal issues such as climate change, land use/land cover change, carbon sequestration, water quality (sediment, fertilizers and pesticides in runoff), groundwater depletion, crop-production estimation, and long-term agricultural sustainability. Information from the monitoring component also can be used to assess the spatial and temporal patterns of regional crop condition changes due to drought, pests, and/or weather events (that is, hail, flooding, high winds).
The drought-related information produced from my work at the UNL National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) can be used for decision support by policy makers, agricultural producers, government agencies, and the general public to help plan for and mitigate the effects of drought. The NDMC drought products will provide a current snapshot of drought severity on vegetation for the United States and project general vegetation conditions several weeks in advance to allow for better natural resource and agricultural management.
I began work at UNL in March 2006 as an assistant professor with the National Drought Mitigation Center.
Prior to coming to UNL, I was a NASA Earth System Science (ESS) Doctoral Research Fellow at the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) Program at the University of Kansas. My doctoral research focused on developing remote sensing-based regional-scale crop mapping and monitoring tools for the central Great Plains.
I also worked as remote sensing scientist at the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Earth Resources and Observation Science (EROS) Data Center on the development of a national-level digital land use/land cover (National Land Cover Dataset - NLCD) for the United States.
During my master’s program at Kansas State University, I was involved in numerous research projects that included remote sensing of surface-water quality parameters (inorganic suspended sediments), GIS analysis of diurnal and seasonal grazing patterns of bison on the Konza Tallgrass Prairie Biological Station (Manhattan, Kansas), and close-range remote sensing of rangeland vegetation.
Degrees:
- Ph.D. in Geography, University of Kansas
- M.A. in Geography, Kansas State University
- B.S. in Geography and Geology, Northwest Missouri State University
Personnel Information
| Name | Brian D. Wardlow |
| University Title | Assistant Professor |
| Additional Title | Remote Sensing Scientist |
| Address | 811 Hardin Hall, Lincoln NE 68583-0988 |
| Affiliation (index) | NDMC |
| Phone | 402-472-6729 |
| Fax | 402-472-2946 |
| bwardlow2@unl.edu | |
| Related Websites | http://drought.unl.edu |
Go to Brian's Full Profile
Key Publications
- Wardlow, B.D. and S.L. Egbert, In Review. Exploratory analysis of time-series MODIS 250-meter vegetation index data for crop discrimination in the U.S. Central Great Plains. Remote Sensing of Environment.
- Wardlow, B.D., J.H. Kastens, and S.L. Egbert. In Press. Using USDA crop progress data for the evaluation of greenup onset date calculated from MODIS 250-meter data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing.
- Wardlow, B.D. and S.L. Egbert, 2005. State-level crop mapping in the U.S. Central Great Plains agroecosystem using MODIS 250-meter NDVI data. Proceedings, Pecora 16. Sioux Falls, SD, October 23-27.
- Wardlow, B.D. and S.L. Egbert, 2003. A state-level comparative analysis of the GAP and NLCD and cover data sets. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 69(12):1387-1397.
- Wardlow, B.D. and S.L. Egbert. 2002. Discriminating cropping patterns in the U.S. Central Great Plains region using time-series MODIS 250-meter NDVI data - Preliminary Results. Proceedings, Pecora 15 and Land Satellite Information IV Conference. Denver, CO, November 10-15.
