Adjunct Faculty: Charles Walthall

Charles L. Walthall is a Research Physical Scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, MD. He completed his Masters in Forest Science from Texas A&M University with a specialization in remote sensing and a PhD in Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology/Agronomy with a remote sensing emphasis from the University of Nebraska. Prior to joining the USDA, he was an Associate Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Global Remote Sensing Studies at the UMD Department of Geography, and a Research Associate with the Biospheric Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He has worked in remote sensing since 1976 and conducts research on the development of remote sensing technologies for agriculture and natural resource applications. He has extensive experience with laboratory, field and airborne measurements and analysis, satellite imagery analysis, modeling, and system calibration and integration. His research interests include remote sensing science to explore the information content of earth observations, remote sensing of plant and soil parameters, applications of geospatial technologies for precision farming and airborne remote sensing.

Web site on airborne remote sensing: http://hydrolab.arsusda.gov/rsbasics/

Example Publications:

Walthall, C.L., Pachepsky, L., Daughtry, C.S. 2005. Texture analysis for classification and segmentation of airborne images of plant cover. Proceedings of 2005 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Annual Conference, March 7-11, 2005, Baltimore, MD. I:180-191.

Walthall, C., Dulaney, W., Anderson, M., Norman, J., Fang, H., Liang, S. 2004. A comparison of empirical and neural network approaches for estimating corn and soybean leaf area index from Landsat ETM+ imagery. Remote Sensing of Environment. 92: 465-474.

Walthall, C. L., R. N. Halthore, S. E. Loechel, G. C. Elman and B. L. Markham. Measuring aerosol optical thickness with a helicopter-based sunphotometer. IEEE Transactions On Geoscience and Remote Sensing 38(3): 1410-1416. 2000.