Lab Member Dr. Mollie Gaines’ 3rd PhD Chapter has been published

Dr. Gaines’ final PhD chapter, “Impact of Spatial Scale on Optical Earth Observation-Derived Seasonal Surface Water Extents” was published in Geophysical Research Letters in February.

The authors—including Dr. Mirela G. Tulbure, current GAEC Lab members Darcy Boast, Rebecca Composto, and Júlio Caineta, and GAEC Lab alumni Vini Perin and Varun Tiwari— used high resolution, commercial, Planet Labs’ Basemap imagery (now called “Planet Mosaics”) and Landsat-derived moderate resolution, publicly available, Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) data to map seasonal dynamics of surface water in Northern Georgia. They compared these different resolution classifications and found that Planet Basemaps classified more seasonal water than DSWE, particularly when limiting DSWE to its higher confidence classes. They also found that the combination of DSWE top 3 confidence classes detected more narrow streams than Planet Basemaps in forest-dominated areas in the summers.

Dr. Gaines is continuing her work with the GAEC Lab in a Postdoctoral position.

This work was funded by the NASA FINESST program, the NASA Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, and NC State University. Read the full article here.

Social Media Buzz:

Our latest contribution in Geophysical Research Letters examines spatial-scale effects on surface #water detection with important implications for multi-sensor water monitoring.

doi.org/10.1029/2025…

Thank you, NASA FINESST & Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition program for funding.

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— Mirela G. Tulbure, PhD (@mirelagtulbure.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 4:59 PM