Nate Herold
About Nate Herold
I am with the Coastal Remote Sensing Program at the NOAA Coastal Services Center in Charleston, South Carolina, where I lead the Center’s land cover mapping activities, managing the Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP). C-CAP is a nationally standardized database of land cover and change information developed for the nation’s coastal regions. C-CAP products are developed from remotely sensed imagery and can be used to track changes in the landscape through time.
I came to NOAA after several years working in the private sector, where I was involved in the production of land cover products worldwide. I have a bachelor’s in soil science from Penn State University and a master’s in geography from George Mason University.
Recent Posts by Nate Herold
Change is Ninety Percent Based on the Data...and the Other Half is Based on Your Interpretation
One thing I see/hear a lot is people getting confused by percentages of change that are quoted to them or people incorrectly stating the percentages of change relating to features in the data they are using.
The Twelve Days of (Geospatial) Christmas
On the twelfth day of Christmas my geospatial techy gave to me...
A Fairly Accurate Explanation of Map Accuracies
We’ve gotten a number of questions in the past related to map accuracy, and specifically the two types of accuracy associated with the assessment of individual categories. So, I’ll attempt to explain (as accurately as I can):
Lies, Damned Lies, and Accuracy Assessment
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain popularized this saying, describing the persuasive power of numbers (particularly to bolster a weak argument). Accuracy Assessments can often be thought of in the same light. All too often these numbers are accepted at face value, without question.
Spatial Detail VS. Map Accuracy (and the concept of spatial rounding)
I wrote a few weeks ago about resolution and stressed the equally important (and often under appreciated) concept of Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU). And, that if you have a significantly large MMU, it almost doesn’t matter what the input resolution of the imagery was. I’m going to build on that previous discussion a bit and make a slightly finer distinction between level of spatial detail (represented by those two previously covered concepts) and mapping accuracy.
Resolution Vs. Minimum Mapping Unit: Size Does Matter
As a producer of moderate resolution land cover data, I am often asked questions about the spatial resolution of our data. I have gotten used to the fact that 30 meter pixels of our C-CAP data are not always seen as ultra-sexy and the reaction that they “are not good enough.” And they aren’t in some instances, but then again, sometimes they are (and sometimes it doesn’t matter, as they are the only/best thing available). What I tell people, though, is that the resolution itself isn’t enough to determine whether these p