Donald E. Sabol, Jr.

Assistant Research Professor

Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences

Email: Don.Sabol@dri.edu

Education

Professional Experience

2007 - present	Assistant Research Professor, Division of Earth & Ecosystem Science, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada	Temperature change at Soda Playa over a 50 minute interval
1994 - 2006	Research Scientist, Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Washington.; Part-time Lecturer
1991 - 1994	Post Doc., Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Washington
1983 -1985	Field Technician (GS 5), Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey, Iowa City, Iowa
Summer 1983	Field Technician (GS 5), Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey, Portland Oregon
Summer 1982	Field Assistant, Variegated Glacier research project in Alaska working for Dr. Barkley Kamb, California Institute of Technology
1976 - 1981	Senior Director (Captain - Regular Air Force), radar ground control for interceptor operations. Assignments include: Tyndall, AFB, Florida; Hall Beach, NWT, Canada (DEW Line); McCord AFB, Washington

Research Interests

Dr. Sabol is a geologist with over 20 years of experience in applying remote sensing to a wide range of issues; including geology, archaeology, landscape change, and vegetation studies. His research uses hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, and LIDAR data from spaceborne, airborne, and ground-based platforms; often integrating data from various sensors. His general research interest is how surfaces/landscapes evolve over time and remote detection, mapping, and monitoring of surface processes causing those changes.

Areas of Interest and Expertise Geology - geomorphology Remote Sensing & GIS Surface characterization Vegetation and landscape dynamics Desert Soils Landscape evolution Vegetation Mapping Climate change Remote detection, mapping, monitoring of surface processes Scaling issues of remote sensing of natural surfaces Spectral detection of subpixel targets
	Measuring changes in emissivity of cooling lava in Hawaii

Current and Past Research

• Desert soil characterization for detection of buried landmines and unexploded ordinance.
• Integrated Forecasting of Desert Terrain for Military Operations.
• A range of studies looking at the use of the Thermal Infrared (TIR). These include: thermal imaging for unmanned robotic navigation over a range of terrains, remote detection of archaeological artifacts, mapping different ages of basalt flows in Hawaii (with JPL), day/night thermal inertia for mapping near-surface soil moisture, mapping surface composition of desert terrains.
• Part of the University of Washington team for evaluation of the TES (temperature/emissivity separation algorithm) for converting ASTER thermal data to level 2 products. Don’s focus has been on validation of the image data over validation sites located in Hawaii, California, Nevada, and in Spain. Much of this work involved extensive field work (characterizing validation sites) and processing/evaluation of ASTER/MASTER image data of those (and other) sites. This has been a large-scale, multi-year project involving working with researchers from JPL, Japan, Los Alamos, several US universities and others.
• Mapping and monitoring forest regrowth of Pacific Northwest Forests using remote sensing.
• Heavily involved in the early work on using “spectral mixture analysis” for subpixel mapping of surface components at the University of Washington in Seattle.
• With Dr. John Adams, developed a new approach using remote sensing for mapping/monitoring land-use change in Brazilian forests.
• Developed an analytical approach to determining subpixel detection thresholds as part of the research using spectral mixture analysis. This approach was applied in many of the studies listed below as well as a few lunar/Martian surface studies.

Selected Publications

Sabol, D.E., Adams, J.B., and Smith, M.O., 1992.

Quantitative sub-pixel spectral detection of targets in multispectral images, Jour. Geophys. Res., 97, E2, 2659-2672.

Sabol, D.E., Bell, J.F., Adams, J.B., 1993.

Detectability of crystalline ferric and ferrous minerals on Mars, abstract accepted for Proc. Lunar and Planetary Science Conf. XXIV , Houston, TX, 15-19 March, 1229-1230.

Sabol, D.E., Adams, J.B., and Smith, M.O., 1994

Detectability of lunar tephra deposits: Examples from the Apollo 17 landing site, abstracted submitted for Proc. Lunar and Planetary Science Conf. XXV, Houston, TX, 14-18 March, 1181-1182.

Smith, M.O., Adams, J.B., and Sabol, D.E., 1994.

Mapping sparse vegetation canopies, in J.Hill and J. Megier (eds.), Imaging Spectrometry - a Tool for Environmental Observations, ECSC, EEC, EAEC, Brussels and Luxembourg, 221-235.

Adams, J.B., Sabol, D.E., Kapos, V., Almeida, R. Filho, Roberts, D.A., Smith, M.O., Gillespie, A.R., 1995.

Classification of multispectral images based on fractions of endmembers: Applications to land-use change in the Brazilian Amazon, Rem. Sens. Envir., 52, 137-154.

Sabol, D.E., Smith, M.O., Adams, J.B., Zukin, J.H., Tucker, C.J., Roberts, D.A., and Gillespie, A.R., 1995.

AVIRIS spectral trajectories for forested areas of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, (abstr.) submitted for Fifth Annual JPL Airborne Earth Science Workshop, January 23-26, 1995, 133-136.

Sabol, DE., Smith, M.O., and Adams, J.B., 1995.

Tephra depositis at the Apollo 17 landing site using telescopic CCD images, abstracted submitted for Proc. Lunar and Planetary Science Conf. XXVI, Houston, TX, 13-17 March, 1211-1212.

Sabol, D.E., 1995.

Monitoring land-use over time using spectral mixture analysis, in Elements of Change 1995, Aspen Global Change Institute, 79-81.

Sabol, D.E., Buck, P., and Gillespie, A.R., 2000.

Direct detection of archaeological sites using remote sensing, SERDP Project CS-1142 final report, 35 pp.

Sabol, D.E., Gillespie, A.R., Adams, J.B., Smith, M.O., and Tucker, C.T., 2002.

Structural stage in pacific northwest forests estimated using simple mixing models of multispectral images, Rem. Sens. Envir. 80/1, 1-16.

Buck, P., Sabol, D.E., and Gillespie, A.R., 2003.

Subpixel artifact detection using remote sensing, submitted to Jour. Arch. Sci., vol 10, Issue 8, pp 973-989.

Jiménez-Muñoz, J. C., J. A. Sobrino, A. Gillespie and D. Sabol, 2003.

Separación emisividad/temperatura a partir de datos DAIS y aplicación del contraste espectral para discriminar distintos tipos de vegetación. Revista de Teledeteccción, 19:51-58.

Gillespie, A.R., and Sabol, D.E., 2004.

Astronomical dating of a solstice sun-dagger petroglyph at Swansea, Inyo County, California, Epigraphic Soc. Occ. Publ. v.24, 131-149.

Jimenez-Munoz, J.C., Sobrino, J.A., Gillespie, A.R., Sabol, D.E., and Gustafson, W.T., 2006

Improved land surface emissivities over agricultural areas using ASTER NDVI, Rem. Sens. Envir. 103, 474-487.

Sabol, D.E., Gillespie, A.R., McDonald, E., and Danillina, I., 2006.

Differential thermal inertia of geological surfaces, submitted 2nd Annual International Symposium of Recent Advances in Quantitative Remote Sensing, Torrent, Spain, 6pp, 25-29 July 2006.

Sobrino, J.A., Jimenez-Munoz, J.C., Balick, L., Gillespie, A.R., Sabol, D.E., Gustafson, W.T., 2007

Accuracy of ASTER Level-2 thermal-infrared Standard Products of an agricultural area in Spain, Rem. Sens. Envir. 106(2), 146-153.

Sabol, D.E., 2007.

Desert soil characterization for detection of buried landmines and unexploded ordinance, Proc. NGA Academic Research Symposium, Washington, DC. 12-14 September, 69-704.