Disturbance is a critical ecological process in forested systems, and disturbance maps are important for understanding forest dynamics. Landsat data are a key remote sensing dataset for monitoring forest disturbance and there recently has been major growth in the development of disturbance mapping algorithms. Many of these algorithms take advantage of the high temporal data volume to mine subtle signals in Landsat time series, but as those signals become subtler, they are more likely to be mixed with noise in Landsat data. This study examines the similarity among seven different algorithms in their ability to map the full range of magnitudes of forest disturbance over six different Landsat scenes distributed across the conterminous US. The maps agreed very well in terms of the amount of undisturbed forest over time; however, for the ~30% of forest mapped as disturbed in a given year by at least one algorithm, there was little agreement about which pixels were affected. Algorithms that targeted higher-magnitude disturbances exhibited higher omission errors but lower commission errors than those targeting a broader range of disturbance magnitudes. These results suggest that a user of any given forest disturbance map should understand the map’s strengths and weaknesses (in terms of omission and commission error rates), with respect to the disturbance targets of interest.

Purpose: Little is known of Motion-Controlled Video Games (MCVGs) as an intervention for people with chronic pain. The aim of this study was to explore the experience women with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) had, using commercially available MCVGs; and to investigate indicators of symptom severity and performance of activities of daily living (ADL). Method: Of 15 female participants diagnosed with FMS, 7 completed a program of five sessions with Nintendo Wii (Wii), five sessions with PlayStation 3 Move (PS3 Move) and five sessions with Microsoft Xbox Kinect (Xbox Kinect). Interviews were conducted at baseline and post-intervention and were supported by data from observation and self-reported assessment. Results: Participants experienced play with MCVGs as a way to get distraction from pain symptoms while doing fun and manageable exercise. They enjoyed the slow pace and familiarity of Wii, while some considered PS3 Move to be too fast paced. Xbox Kinect was reported as the best console for exercise. There were no indication of general improvement in symptom severity or performance of ADL. Conclusion: This study demonstrated MCVG as an effective healthcare intervention for the women with FMS who completed the program, with regards to temporary pain relief and enjoyable low impact exercise.

Remote detection of forest disturbance remains a key area of interest for scientists and land managers. Subtle disturbances such as drought, disease, insect activity, and thinning harvests have a significant impact on carbon budgeting and forest productivity, but current change detection algorithms struggle to accurately identify them, especially over decadal timeframes. We introduce an algorithm called Edyn, which inputs a time series of residuals from harmonic regression into a control chart to signal low-magnitude, consistent deviations from the curve as disturbances. After signaling, Edyn retrains a new baseline curve. We compared Edyn with its parent algorithm (EWMACD—Exponentially Weighted Moving Average Change Detection) on over 3500 visually interpreted Landsat pixels from across the contiguous USA, with reference data for timing and type of disturbance. For disturbed forested pixels, Edyn had a mean per-pixel commission error of 31.1% and omission error of 70.0%, while commission and omission errors for EWMACD were 39.9% and 65.2%, respectively. Edyn had significantly less overall error than EWMACD (F₁ = 0.19 versus F₁ = 0.13). These patterns generally held for all of the reference data, including a direct comparison to other contemporary change detection algorithms, wherein Edyn and EWMACD were found to have lower omission error rates for a category of subtle changes over long periods.

The continued development of algorithms using multitemporal Landsat data creates opportunities to develop and adapt imputation algorithms to improve the quality of that data as part of preprocessing. One example is de-striping Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+, Landsat 7) images acquired after the Scan Line Corrector failure in 2003. In this study, we apply window regression, an algorithm that was originally designed to impute low-quality Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, to Landsat Analysis Ready Data from 2014–2016. We mask Operational Land Imager (OLI; Landsat 8) image stacks from five study areas with corresponding ETM+ missing data layers, using these modified OLI stacks as inputs. We explored the algorithm’s parameter space, particularly window size in the spatial and temporal dimensions. Window regression yielded the best accuracy (and moderately long computation time) with a large spatial radius (a 7 × 7 pixel window) and a moderate temporal radius (here, five layers). In this case, root mean square error for deviations from the observed reflectance ranged from 3.7–7.6% over all study areas, depending on the band. Second-order response surface analysis suggested that a 15 × 15 pixel window, in conjunction with a 9-layer temporal window, may produce the best accuracy. Compared to the neighborhood similar pixel interpolator gap-filling algorithm, window regression yielded slightly better accuracy on average. Because it relies on no ancillary data, window regression may be used to conveniently preprocess stacks for other data-intensive algorithms.