1
1 DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS
DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION, STATE OF FLORIDA
2
3 SUGAR CANE GROWERS COOPERATIVE )
OF FLORIDA; ROTH FARMS, INC., and )
4 WEDGWORTH FARMS, INC., )
Petitioners, ) DOAH Case No. 92-3038
5 v. )
SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT )
6 DISTRICT, an agency of the State )
of Florida; et al., )
7 Respondents. )
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x
8 FLORIDA SUGAR CANE LEAGUE, INC.; )
UNITED STATES SUGAR CORPORATION; )
9 and NEW HOPE SOUTH, INC., )
Petitioners, )
10 v. ) DOAH Case No. 92-3039
SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT )
11 DISTRICT, an agency of the State )
of Florida; et al., )
12 Respondents. )
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x
13 FLORIDA FRUIT AND VEGETABLE )
ASSOCIATION; LEWIS POPE FARMS; )
14 W.E. SCHLECHTER & SONS, INC., )
and HUNDLEY FARMS, INC., )
15 Petitioners, )
v. ) DOAH Case No. 92-3040
16 SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT )
DISTRICT, an agency of the State )
17 of Florida; et al., )
Respondents. )
18 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - x
100 S.E. 2nd Street
19 Miami, Florida
March 28, 1994
20 9:10 p.m. - 5:05 p.m.
21 DEPOSITION OF THOMAS E. LODGE, Ph.D., C.E.P.
22 Taken before THOMAS R. NEUMANN, Registered
Professional Reporter and Notary Public in and for
23 the State of Florida at Large, pursuant to Notice of
Taking Deposition filed in the above cause.
24 - - - - - - -
2
1 APPEARANCES
2
ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONERS SUGAR CANE GROWERS
3 COOPERATIVE OF FLORIDA, ROTH FARMS, INC., AND
WEDGWORTH FARMS, INC.
4
HOPPING, BOYD, GREEN & SAMS
5 123 South Calhoun Street
P.O. Box 6526,
6 Tallahassee, Florida 32314
BY: CAROLYN S. RAEPPLE, ESQ.
7
SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT
8
POPHAM, HAIK, SCHNOBRICH & KAUFMAN, LTD.
9 4000 International Place
100 S.E. 2nd Street
10 Miami, Florida
BY: GREGORY CESARANO, ESQ.
11
ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENT-INTERVENOR
12 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
13 TOM WATTS-FITZGERALD, ESQ.
ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY
14 99 N.E. 4th Street
Miami, Florida 33132
15
16
INDEX
17 Witness Direct Cross Redirect Recross
THOMAS E. LODGE
18 By Mr. Cesarano: 3
By Mr. Watts-Fitzgerald: 131
19
20 EXHIBITS
21 NUMBER BATES NO. PAGE
22 Exhibit 1 Curriculum Vita 6
Exhibit 2 DTL00000059-72 64
23 Exhibit 3 Classifications for Everglades Study 99
Exhibit 4 Classifications for Everglades Study 99
24
25
3
1 Thereupon --
2 THOMAS E. LODGE
3 was called as a witness and, having been first duly
4 sworn, was examined and testified as follows:
5 DIRECT EXAMINATION
6 BY MR. CESARANO:
7 Q. Could you give us your name and address,
8 please?
9 A. Thomas E. Lodge. xxxxxxx.
11 Q. Would you tell me what your profession or
12 occupation is, please?
13 A. I'm a consulting environmental scientist.
14 More specifically, an ecologist. My title is
15 principal environmental scientist. I work for the
16 firm Law Environmental office located in
17 Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
18 Q. How long have you worked for that company?
19 A. Four and a half years.
20 Q. Tell me what you do as the principal
21 environmental scientist there.
22 A. The title principal in the company is for
23 people who are allowed to sign contracts and pass
24 final judgment on reports that go out. The area of
25 expertise that I'm involved with is a wide spectrum
4
1 of environmental problems.
2 I get to the borderline of contamination
3 assessments, but my main line of work is in what is
4 in the vernacular called dredge and fill permitting.
5 Wetland resource permitting is the more modern term.
6 Q. You are mainly involved in wetland resource
7 permitting?
8 A. Right.
9 Q. Would you tell me what that involves,
10 please, a little more specifically? What do you do
11 in that area?
12 A. The laws that govern wetlands require that
13 applicants intending to impact the wetland have
14 permits. There are laws at several levels. I would
15 be involved in the studies, the wetland values and
16 functions that would pertain to assessing the impacts
17 in a wetland and would pertain to judging what would
18 be appropriate mitigation for that impact.
19 Q. Have you ever had your deposition taken
20 before?
21 A. Yes, I have.
22 Q. About how many times?
23 A. Three.
24 Q. I want to reiterate and emphasize if you
25 don't understand my question, you should tell me you
5
1 don't understand it and I'll try to rephrase it in
2 such a way that you do understand it. All right?
3 A. All right.
4 Q. If you don't know or don't recall
5 something, that should be your answer rather than
6 guessing or speculating what the answer might or
7 should be. All right?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. And you have to remember to answer out loud
10 so the court reporter can take down your answers
11 rather than facial gestures or body movements, you
12 have to answer out loud, okay?
13 A. Okay.
14 Q. And if you want to take a break at any
15 time, just let me know.
16 A. Understand.
17 Q. Would you tell me about your education,
18 please, what degrees do you hold and where did you
19 get them?
20 A. I attended Ohio Wesleyan University where I
21 graduated in 1966 with a major in zoology. From
22 there I came to the University of Miami in Coral
23 Gables and started graduate school and ended up on a
24 track for a Ph.D., and took the Ph.D. degree in 1974,
25 degree in biology.
6
1 Q. Do you have a particular focus or emphasis
2 in biology?
3 A. My initial emphasis that carried through a
4 considerable amount of my graduate school work dealt
5 with fishes. I think that the area that would best
6 describe it would be physiological ecology of fishes,
7 that is, how fish body chemistry and body systems
8 relate to the ecological setting the fish is in.
9 Since that time I have, in fact, beginning
10 in -- much earlier in my education I have had a
11 considerable interest in general ecology. That
12 includes vegetation, vegetation mapping, plant
13 communities. And a particular interest of mine is
14 how plant communities relate to fish populations.
15 MR. CESARANO: Mark this, please, as
16 Exhibit 1.
17 (The document referred to was thereupon
18 marked Exhibit 1 for Identification.)
19 BY MR. CESARANO:
20 Q. We have had marked as Exhibit 1 what
21 counsel has provided to me earlier today as your
22 curriculum vitae. Is that what that is?
23 A. Yes, it is.
24 Q. Is this the latest version of it?
25 A. We update these constantly. I'm aware that
7
1 the latest update contains the new title for my book
2 that is now called "The Everglades Handbook." This
3 one still says, "Everglades, Understanding the
4 Ecosystem" that was changed very recently, that may
5 be the only change that is in there.
6 Q. This indicates that you were with Edward
7 E. Clark Engineers-Scientists, Inc., as vice
8 president for 14 years?
9 A. Right.
10 Q. What sort of company is that?
11 A. That's a similar environmental consulting
12 company. It's small. At one point there were two
13 people, Ed Clark and myself. The range of work there
14 from my standpoint was similar to what I'm involved
15 with now.
16 Dredge and fill permitting was the mainstay
17 of my employment. I was involved in the development,
18 however, of a water quality laboratory while I was
19 there. And quite often you are called upon in
20 wetland permitting work to know something about water
21 qualities. That fit in with what I did.
22 Q. Where is that company located?
23 A. That company was originally located in
24 South Miami. Then moved further south in I guess
25 what must be Kendall, and was -- since I left,
8
1 relocated as a result of hurricane Andrew.
2 Q. Your curriculum also indicates that you are
3 a Certified Environmental Professional by the
4 National Association of Environmental Professionals.
5 What is the National Association of Environmental
6 Professionals?
7 A. It's a group of environmental people
8 involved in environmental work of a broad spectrum.
9 The number of disciplines, for example, that relate
10 to environmental audits would describe the breadth of
11 expertise involved in that particular association as
12 people on the one hand involved in threatening
13 endangered species, as I am. On the other hand,
14 contamination assessment, asbestos.
15 Q. What is the purpose of that association?
16 A. That association thrust was to bring those
17 people together who had no cohesive network of
18 communication, had closed disciplines from, say,
19 biology, chemistry, physics, land use assessment,
20 things of that sort. Brings those people into one
21 arena since they are called upon to relate in
22 work-product. That's the intent.
23 And there was no certification for people
24 in that multi-disciplinary area. So another intent
25 of the organization was to provide certification.
9
1 Q. How long has it been in existence?
2 A. I would have to guess. My guess is it came
3 into existence in the 1970s.
4 Q. What is the location of its headquarters?
5 A. Washington, D.C.
6 Q. What are the membership requirements?
7 A. There are two types of membership. There
8 is just plain membership which requires paying an
9 annual fee. I believe that's it. It's as if you are
10 subscribing to a journal. The certification
11 requirements require a minimum of nine years in
12 responsible charge of environmental work.
13 That requirement of nine years, I think,
14 has decreased by a Master's or Ph.D. degree, and it
15 requires passage of an examination, a written
16 examination that is essentially a take home exam.
17 That exam covers the areas from education, work
18 history and professional judgment in specific areas
19 that can be chosen by the applicants. Several
20 questions can, -- I believe a total of 14 questions
21 can be selected. More than 14 questions. I don't
22 know the exact number.
23 Q. When did you receive your certification?
24 A. I believe it was in mid 1991.
25 Q. Other than providing certification to
10
1 certain of its members, what else does the
2 association do?
3 A. It produces a journal called the
4 Environmental Professional. It has annual meetings,
5 and it provides other communication in the form of
6 occasional letters about issues.
7 Q. Approximately what percentage of the
8 association's membership is certified?
9 A. I don't know.
10 Q. Do you know how many certified
11 environmental professionals there are in the state of
12 Florida certified by the National Association of
13 Environmental Professionals?
14 A. I have seen the number and I don't recall.
15 Q. Was it more than a hundred?
16 A. I would guess it was more than a hundred,
17 yes.
18 Q. Do you know how large the organization
19 itself is?
20 A. No.
21 Q. Is there any requirement of an educational
22 degree in order to become certified?
23 A. Yes, there is. I can't state the exact
24 requirements, but there is a degree requirement.
25 Q. You have listed here and you mentioned
11
1 earlier a book that you have offered. Has that book
2 been published yet?
3 A. No. It is in the final stages of being
4 formatted by the publisher. The publisher is the
5 St. Lucie Press. I have been informed that they have
6 proceeded up to the final chapter in putting it into
7 book format. I haven't seen that product yet. I
8 have not turned in the final chapter.
9 Q. How long have you been working on that
10 book?
11 A. I somewhat planned the project in the early
12 1980s with a friend but didn't start working on it in
13 earnest until the summer of '87. I finished the
14 first draft, I believe, in the fall of '88. There
15 were partial drafts prior to that time.
16 Q. Describe for me what the book covers. It's
17 titled "The Everglades Handbook." It has gone
18 through apparently one other title change. But what
19 is the book about?
20 A. The book is a description of the Everglades
21 ecosystem; that is, my judgment of what someone would
22 need to know about the system in order to have an
23 appreciation of the issues of saving and maintaining
24 the Everglades and now what we are calling Everglades
25 restoration.
12
1 I also guided it around basically what I
2 would like to have had available to me when I was a
3 beginning graduate student at the University of Miami
4 in a new part of the country that I wasn't terribly
5 familiar with, and I thought that the literature was
6 woefully inadequate to understand what the Everglades
7 was all about. That's been a driving principal of
8 how I organized the book.
9 Q. Have you published any papers or reports in
10 journals?
11 A. Very few. I have a paper with Jim Kushlan,
12 who was formally a graduate student at the University
13 of Miami, then worked for Everglades National Park,
14 and we have a paper on the fishes of southern
15 Florida.
16 Q. Where was that published?
17 A. That was published in Florida Scientist in
18 the 1970s.
19 Q. Is that the extent of your publishing?
20 A. As far as publishing in a refereed journal,
21 that's the only paper. I have magazine articles,
22 flight magazine articles on the Everglades, and I
23 have given a number of talks.
24 I failed to mention that I also wrote the
25 script for and directed the filming of an educational
13
1 film on the Everglades in the early 1970s. That was
2 for John Wiley and Sons, publishers.
3 Q. How do you spell the name of your co-author
4 on that paper?
5 A. Kushlan. K-U-S-H-L-A-N. First name,
6 James.
7 Q. And the name of the paper?
8 A. It's called "Ecological and Distributional
9 Notes on the Fresh Water of Southern Florida."
10 MR. WATTS-FITZGERALD: Freshwater?
11 THE WITNESS: Freshwater. Hopefully,
12 freshwater is one word.
13 BY MR. CESARANO:
14 Q. Does the National Association of
15 Environmental Professionals certify its members in
16 particular areas or disciplines?
17 A. Yes. There is -- I think there are four
18 areas; environmental documentation, environmental
19 education, environmental assessment. Mine is in
20 environmental assessment. And I believe there is one
21 other area that I may have missed.
22 Q. When were you first retained or asked to do
23 anything in connection with this matter, this
24 litigation?
25 A. Well, I don't recall the beginning date.
14
1 It may have been as early as August or September of
2 '93.
3 Q. What was that first contact?
4 A. That first contact actually was through my
5 company for assistance on vegetation interpretation
6 and particularly on whether or not I could judge the
7 difference between cattail and sawgrass in aerial
8 images. And also they were seeking my opinion as to
9 what time of the year would be the optimal for being
10 able to differentiate those two species.
11 Q. Who was it that first contacted you?
12 A. The first person was Melvin Brown of the
13 Kennesaw, Georgia office.
14 Q. Was that a verbal or written contact?
15 A. Initially it was verbal. I don't recall
16 any written contact.
17 Q. And what did you tell him when he asked you
18 if you could do these things?
19 A. I told him that it was relatively easy to
20 differentiate cattail and sawgrass, but that it was
21 made much easier if you could select the time of year
22 when cattails started to die, because there is a
23 yellow orange color that cattail leaves start to take
24 on which is quite distinct from what sawgrass looks
25 like as it dies.
15
1 I also said that would generally be the
2 winter season and that I was unsure as to when the
3 onset of that change would occur, but that it
4 probably would correlate with the advent of cold
5 weather.
6 Q. After that first contact, what was your
7 next involvement in this matter, in this project?
8 A. Well, I don't recall what sequence of minor
9 events may have occurred, but the next request of me
10 was to attend a helicopter over flight to assess
11 vegetation in a number of sites throughout the
12 Everglades but concentrating on water conservation
13 areas 2A and the Loxahatchee National Wildlife
14 Refuge.
15 Q. Approximately when was that over flight?
16 A. I think the first one was in October. I'm
17 not sure. It should be part of the record, easily
18 obtainable, however.
19 Q. Your position with Law Environmental, is
20 that a salaried position?
21 A. Yes, it is.
22 Q. Do you know what financial arrangements you
23 or your company has with respect to you in this
24 project?
25 A. Yes.
16
1 Q. Would you describe that for me, please?
2 A. I'm involved in two contracts. One is to
3 assist in the production of an aerial image that
4 depicts vegetation community types. And that is
5 completely through the company process of a proposal
6 that went from another group in the company to
7 Hopping, Boyd, Green.
8 The second responsibility that I have is
9 much more directly with Hopping, Boyd, Green & Sams
10 to provide expertise in assisting that firm in this
11 procedure to whatever extent they would like to ask.
12 Q. Are you personally being paid anything out
13 of this project over and above your normal salary?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Do you know the cost of these two contracts
16 to the law firm?
17 A. I don't know the exact figure for producing
18 the aerial map. It is in excess of 100,000.
19 Q. That's for the aerial map?
20 A. That is for the entire mapping exercise and
21 product. The contract that I'm involved with as an
22 expert to Hopping, Boyd had an initial cap of
23 $10,000, but was extendible by requirements of the
24 deposition and related things.
25 Q. Do you know how much has been incurred for
17
1 your services in the second contract?
2 A. On the second contract, no, I don't.
3 Excuse me now. By second contract --
4 Q. The one that initially was capped at
5 $10,000.
6 A. Of the initial cap, the way that was
7 described, I think that we have used somewhere
8 between -- it's approximately $7000. I don't know
9 how far I'm into preparing for this.
10 Q. Let me ask you, with respect to the second
11 area to provide expertise in assisting the law firm
12 in this project, what expertise -- or let me ask you,
13 what specifically have you been asked to assist in,
14 what areas?
15 A. Well, in an initial meeting I was asked to
16 provide guidance on the overall problems of the
17 Everglades, why was the Everglades not functioning as
18 well as ecologists would like it to function.
19 I guided that question towards why aren't
20 wading birds doing as well in the Everglades today as
21 they did historically.
22 Q. Has that remained the area in which you
23 have been primarily involved or has it changed in any
24 fashion?
25 A. I should have added to that there were
18
1 questions about the relative values of cattail and
2 sawgrass through that general scope. But there were
3 other issues.
4 Where they asked my expertise, is your
5 question?
6 Q. Yes.
7 A. I believe that covers it.
8 Q. What type of education or experience do you
9 have in interpretation of remotely sensed data?
10 A. My first official introduction to
11 interpretation of remotely sensed data came in the
12 late 1960s at a course at the University of Miami
13 that was called -- taught by people from the U.S.
14 Geological Survey who were at that time very much
15 interested in advancing the ability to interpret high
16 level photography and multi-band imagery of the
17 Everglades. That, of course, the people from USGS
18 were Milton Kobelinski and Aaron Higer.
19 We spent a fair amount of time looking at
20 aerial photographs and other kind of images, and
21 spent time at the northern part of Everglades
22 National Park, what's called the Shark River
23 Recreational Area, mapping vegetation and comparing
24 those maps to aerial images.
25 That's all as a part of course work,
19
1 though, not technically research.
2 Q. And was that a graduate level course or
3 undergraduate?
4 A. Graduate level.
5 Q. What other education have you received in
6 that field?
7 A. Would you like me to respond with self
8 education or --
9 Q. Let's start with formal education.
10 A. I think that formal education, I don't
11 believe there is additional. I have been around
12 graduate students who were working on specific
13 problems of interpretation.
14 I recall one student who sought my help at
15 the University of Miami, was trying to identify
16 specific trees by looking at shape patterns.
17 Q. Did you read or use any textbooks in that
18 course?
19 A. I don't recall a specific textbook that was
20 the driving force for what we did. There was a great
21 deal of handout material. I can't recall what that
22 was.
23 Q. Have you ever read or relied on the
24 textbook entitled "Introduction to Digital Image
25 Processing," by John Jensen?
20
1 A. No.
2 Q. Have you ever seen it?
3 A. No.
4 Q. Have you ever heard of it?
5 A. I heard of John Jensen.
6 Q. But not his text?
7 A. Right.
8 MR. WATTS-FITZGERALD: Off the record.
9 (Discussion off the record.)
10 BY MR. CESARANO:
11 Q. You told me that your course at the
12 University of Miami involved mapping vegetation and
13 then comparing it to aerial images?
14 A. That is correct.
15 Q. Did that course involve actually
16 interpreting the aerial images?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Have you had any formal education in
19 statistics?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Would you briefly describe for me what
22 other either self education or experience you have in
23 interpreting remotely sensed data?
24 A. I have had a considerable interest in
25 photography to the point that I had studied film
21
1 emulsion, sensitivity of emulsions, looked into
2 differences in color of images based on types of
3 film. I have experimented with that aspect a good
4 bit both in aerial photography and wildlife
5 photography, which is what I have done most of.
6 I have given -- while I was a graduate
7 student I gave some talks about the color films and
8 interpretation of color films. My on-the-job
9 training having to do with aerial photo
10 interpretation I think is by far the greatest volume
11 of work that I have done in wetland resource
12 permitting.
13 You are constantly called upon to look at
14 aerial photos and you drift toward the highest
15 quality for determining the factors you are looking
16 for. That quite often ends up being color infrared.
17 So I looked at a lot of color infrared photography.
18 Q. Have you ever worked with satellite
19 imagery?
20 A. Some.
21 Q. Would you describe your experience in that
22 for me, please?
23 A. I don't recall if it's high altitude or
24 satellite imagery that was used in the course. I
25 will have to say it was high altitude imagery. That
22
1 was not satellite imagery. That was used in the
2 course that I described earlier.
3 As to specific examples where I used
4 satellite imagery other than to appreciate large
5 format maps of the state of Florida and of the
6 Everglades, I'm not sure that I have specifically
7 worked with it until this project.
8 Q. In your mind how does working with
9 satellite imagery differ from working with color
10 infrared aerial photography?
11 A. In the satellite imagery that I'm involved
12 with, we have a known resolution sized pixel that
13 makes it to the point where you blow an image up, you
14 end up with a group of squares. In photography, you
15 end up with the film being the limiting factor. But
16 that's not a uniform phenomenon across the film.
17 Q. That's the primary difference that you
18 found?
19 A. Well, that's the difference that I see in
20 working with it.
21 The satellite data in that, there are
22 various bands evaluated. You can adjust or select
23 various areas of the spectrum that you want to look
24 at. Whereas in a photograph, you have an initial
25 image that can be enhanced, but you still are stuck
23
1 with what is recorded on film.
2 Q. You had mentioned that when you were first
3 contacted that you were asked about the time of year
4 that would be optimal to differentiate cattail and
5 sawgrass. Is that with respect to aerial
6 photography?
7 A. No. That was with respect to my experience
8 at ground level observation.
9 Q. What is the optimal time of year to
10 differentiate between cattail and sawgrass in either
11 aerial photography or satellite imagery?
12 A. To answer the question what is the optimal
13 time of the year, I have to say that I don't know.
14 But I do know a time when I have personally seen that
15 the differentiation is easy to see, and that has been
16 generally in the winter time.
17 Q. Again this is with both aerial photography
18 and satellite imagery?
19 A. No, this is with respect to ground level
20 observations which I have made the assumption would
21 be picked up by images that detect various parts of
22 the spectrum because of the color difference that is
23 visible.
24 MS. RAEPPLE: We have been going for an
25 hour. Can we take a short break?
24
1 MR. CESARANO: Certainly.
2 (Thereupon, a brief recess was taken,
3 after which the following proceedings
4 were had:)
5 BY MR. CESARANO:
6 Q. You told me, Dr. Lodge, that you assumed
7 winter would be the best time to differentiate
8 between cattail and sawgrass because of the color
9 differences that you can observe on the ground?
10 A. Right.
11 Q. Isn't remotely sensed data, doesn't that
12 acquire information in other bands than visible
13 light?
14 A. That's correct.
15 Q. And wouldn't that make a difference?
16 A. It could make a substantial difference to
17 the point that's why I hedged. I didn't know what
18 time was actually the best. I knew from my
19 experience what was the best because of what I could
20 see. But, in fact, in other bands, in infrared bands
21 there may be information that would allow you to
22 differentiate between cattail and sawgrass easily at
23 other times of the year. Since I can't see infrared,
24 I didn't know the answer to that.
25 Q. Have you subsequently learned whether or
25
1 not there is a better time of year for
2 differentiating between cattail and sawgrass in other
3 bands than in the winter time?
4 A. No, because we focused on images that were
5 from the winter season, so I don't know. At this
6 point I'm not able to answer whether or not there are
7 other times of the year that are good.
8 Q. What reports or papers have you read in
9 connection with this project?
10 A. The book that I have spent the most time
11 with is the book entitled "Everglades, The Ecosystem
12 and Its Restoration," by Steven Davis and John Ogden.
13 Q. Have you read Dr. Jensen's paper about
14 change detection in conservation area 2A?
15 A. No, I have not.
16 Q. Have you read Rutchey and Vilcheck's paper
17 on vegetative mapping in 2A?
18 A. No.
19 Q. Have you looked at either of their maps,
20 either Jensen's historical maps or Rutchey's
21 vegetative cover map?
22 A. I have seen some other maps. I don't
23 recall their sources. I don't recall sufficient
24 detail to comment.
25 Q. So your role in this project is not to
26
1 review, analyze and comment on either Jensen's work
2 or Rutchey's work?
3 MS. RAEPPLE: Let me just offer at this
4 point that Mr. Lodge has not yet completed all
5 of the work that we would like him to do due to
6 the time running out.
7 If time permits, we would like him to do
8 some assessment of Ken Rutchey's August '91
9 mapping.
10 In other words, just looking at the photos
11 that we just in the last week or so have
12 obtained from Mr. Rutchey, Gregg, you will
13 recall we received slides but no indication what
14 the slides related to. We got those so late, in
15 fact received them after Mr. Rutchey's
16 deposition, and then didn't get the
17 identification of what the slid related to until
18 just recently.
19 Dr. Lodge has not yet had an opportunity to
20 look at the slides and verify the accuracy with
21 which Mr. Rutchey has interpreted the vegetation
22 evident on those slides. We do intend to have
23 him do that work in the future. It has not been
24 done yet.
25 BY MR. CESARANO:
27
1 Q. You told me that you were contacted and
2 asked some questions which you answered. Then the
3 next major event was a helicopter over flight; is
4 that correct?
5 A. There had been some discussions with Mr. Ed
6 Downing of the Kennesaw, Georgia office to coordinate
7 the work. And there had been discussions about
8 whether or not we should use a helicopter or an air
9 boat.
10 I was in on the judgment that we should use
11 a helicopter with the difficulties encountered
12 getting around in an air boat. There had been some
13 arrangement of that sort prior to the first
14 helicopter over flight.
15 Q. This helicopter over flight, was that in
16 connection with a map or an image that had already
17 been acquired or produced?
18 A. I recall that the very first exercise was
19 to get some preliminary data to produce a map. I
20 think that this one was a result of a first few
21 stations that we did.
22 Q. In that first over flight or series of over
23 flights, what was the intent, what was the purpose of
24 those specifically? Was it to determine vegetative
25 cover, to determine rectification points or what?
28
1 A. The purpose was to find locations where the
2 vegetation was uniform over an area that was at least
3 several hundred feet in diameter, and then to put
4 down in that area and describe what that vegetation
5 was. And that Mr. Downing would be able to use that
6 information to calibrate the output of an image to
7 make a map.
8 We not only looked for areas that were
9 large and uniform, but we specifically looked for
10 areas that were large and uniform, that were either
11 cattail or sawgrass specifically so that an image
12 could be -- the output of an image could be adjusted
13 to differentiate between those species.
14 Q. Did that locating and identifying large
15 uniform areas, did that take up only one helicopter
16 flight or more than one?
17 A. Ultimately there were several. I don't
18 recall how many. There were successive days during
19 some of the field work, but I think that there had
20 been three different times when we went up.
21 Q. Who was with you on those flights?
22 A. I don't recall. The field books can be
23 used to identify who, but Richard Darling of my
24 office, for example, has worked under my direction in
25 some of this identification work. And Ed Downing had
29
1 been on the flights as a technician to operate the
2 satellite location work.
3 There has been a Pamela Green who has been
4 working under Mr. Ed Downing's expertise.
5 Q. Just so that I understand -- and correct me
6 if I'm misunderstanding -- this first group of
7 flights you say may be three, may be more or less,
8 were taken to identify areas to permit Ed Downing
9 to -- you called it calibrate his information on a
10 map that he was to produce, a vegetative cover?
11 A. Right. In terms of what he was to do with
12 the information. I would have to defer to his
13 judgment. He is the expert on the imagery and how
14 the data are handled.
15 Q. Would you describe this -- these trips to
16 gather this information as ground truthing?
17 A. Of course.
18 Q. How would you determine the location of any
19 one of these particular areas in the field?
20 A. From my selection I would look for areas
21 that appeared to have uniform vegetation. Some
22 professional judgment is involved in how large it is.
23 We would always try to overcompensate to make sure
24 that an area was at least several hundred feet across
25 in all axis before selecting it. I think I have
30
1 answered the question.
2 Q. Let me follow up. You would take off and
3 over fly the area. Would you then from the
4 helicopter, from your own personal observation,
5 determine an area that you thought would be
6 appropriate for calibration?
7 A. That's correct. And it was not strictly
8 calibration that we were looking at. We were also
9 looking at related geographic coverage of the areas
10 of concern. We didn't want all of our calibration
11 points to be in one area. We wanted them scattered
12 about.
13 Q. And after you determined a likely spot,
14 would the helicopter land?
15 A. Yes. We directed the helicopter to land in
16 a particular location.
17 Q. Once the helicopter landed, then what would
18 occur?
19 A. Each station took upwards to a half an hour
20 while the satellite location work was being done, and
21 that involved coordination with a base station, a
22 fixed station that was on the ground coordinated with
23 the equipment in the helicopter so that there would
24 be simultaneous data taken from whatever satellites
25 they were using.
31
1 The details of that, I believe is in
2 Downing's area of expertise. But that took much
3 longer.
4 What I would do is step out of the
5 helicopter and look in all directions and make notes
6 on the vegetation, and give an impression of the
7 percent dominance by various species. The work was
8 not quantitative in the strict sense of using a
9 measurement tool. It was quantitative in the
10 judgment sense.
11 Q. Where was the fixed base station located?
12 A. It was at the small Pompano, Florida
13 airport. I don't recall the actual name of the
14 airport.
15 Q. And who was doing the locational work in
16 the helicopter with the instrument?
17 A. Pamela Green ran the equipment. Ed Downing
18 oversaw it.
19 Q. And your role was to identify and estimate
20 the coverage on the ground, the vegetative coverage?
21 A. That is correct.
22 MR. CESARANO: While we are on the subject,
23 I want to take a short break and get the
24 materials that were produced.
25 MS. RAEPPLE: Sure.
32
1 (Thereupon, a brief recess was taken,
2 after which the following proceedings
3 were had:)
4 BY MR. CESARANO:
5 Q. Dr. Lodge, when you were out doing this
6 initial field work, did you take still photographs?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Did you take also videotape?
9 A. On one instance I took videotape. But the
10 video camera was generally run by someone else.
11 Q. You actually took these photographs
12 yourself?
13 A. I took a number of them. But there would
14 have been several people involved in actually taking
15 the pictures.
16 Q. Let me show you what has been produced to
17 me and I ask you if those look like the photographs
18 you took.
19 A. I can't attest to the fact that I took a
20 particular photograph of the particular ones that you
21 grabbed here. I think -- well, I don't recall these.
22 But these are the kind of pictures we took. I
23 obviously didn't take that one. That's about me.
24 But, yes.
25 Q. Those generally are the photographs you
33
1 described?
2 A. Right.
3 Q. Let me take, for example, the envelope with
4 a No. 1 up in the upper left-hand corner. And on the
5 back of the photographs are dates ranging from
6 November 6 to November 9, 1993.
7 Also on the back is a number, underneath
8 the date on this one is R 40. What does that
9 correspond to?
10 A. Station number.
11 Q. How were those stations numbered and where
12 are those numbers located?
13 A. Those numbers were in the field books.
14 Although the prefix letter -- I believe there is H, R
15 and E were assigned I think later to differentiate
16 the groups of stations. So there are sequential
17 numbers within each of those letter prefixes.
18 Q. Tell me what each of the letter prefixes
19 stand for.
20 A. A group of stations. I don't recall which
21 is which.
22 Q. Do you know how they are grouped?
23 A. No, although I can find that out. That
24 could be easily found out.
25 Q. How can we easily find that out?
34
1 A. Mr. Downing is the one who coordinated the
2 label of these pictures. You will see there is a
3 date stamp on almost all of them. That corresponds
4 with the field book entry. There were small field
5 books used. That would have had the time recorded.
6 My camera stamps, day, hour, minute. You have to
7 remember what month it is. That is easily -- it's in
8 military time. I believe Mr. Downing's camera does
9 not have a date stamper.
10 Q. So in this group of photographs out of
11 envelope No. 1, some of these photographs in the
12 corner have 9/11/6. That would seem to me to be the
13 year and month and date?
14 A. I can set my camera two or three different
15 ways. I think that this was subsequent to that. I
16 changed it to be more specific because it was useful
17 to know the actual time in order to see the sequence
18 before the pictures.
19 Q. And this photograph with Law 1 on the back,
20 who is that?
21 A. Pamela Green.
22 Q. What is that in her lap?
23 A. A laptop computer.
24 Q. What is this unit on her left?
25 A. That is a Magellan unit. That is the one
35
1 that receives satellite signals and computes
2 location. But other than that brief description,
3 that's not my area of expertise.
4 Q. Now, the photograph that has Law 18 on the
5 back shows a different series of numbers?
6 A. That's the 9th of some month at 8:53 in the
7 morning.
8 Q. And the time that would be recorded is in
9 military time?
10 A. Correct.
11 Q. Do you know the model number of that
12 Magellan shown in photograph No. 1?
13 A. No, I do not.
14 Q. Can you tell me, in the envelope with the
15 No. 10 in the corner are some photographs that have
16 numbers on the back, dates and numbers on the back,
17 but do not have a letter prefix. Can you explain
18 that?
19 A. No, I can't explain. I don't know why that
20 hasn't been done.
21 Q. Do you know who took those photographs that
22 you have just been looking at, the ones with just a
23 number and not a letter prefix?
24 A. By process of elimination, it appears that
25 I may have taken them, but that doesn't fit with the
36
1 fact that I may have used Ed Downing's camera. I
2 mean, I'm just seeing -- Richard Darling is in the
3 pictures and Ed Downing is in one of the pictures.
4 By process of elimination, I might have taken those.
5 Q. Now, you mentioned that you thought you
6 might have gone out in October. I believe the
7 earliest date these photographs were labeled was
8 November 6th. Do you know whether you, in fact, went
9 out earlier than November 6th?
10 A. No, I don't.
11 Q. The first in time photographs have the
12 letter prefix R. Were those sites labeled at or
13 about the time you went out to them or at some time
14 later?
15 A. We sequentially numbered the sites as we
16 were making ground truth assessments. So either
17 landing on the ground we would generate a number,
18 then that would be the next number in sequence and
19 record time. Somewhere in the notebook would be the
20 date and then make notes. It's those notes that I
21 have gone back to. I haven't used the pictures
22 almost at all. They are backup in case we need them.
23 But what I have referred back to is the field notes
24 in assessing that.
25 Q. Did you make those field notes in your
37
1 notebook, did you write them?
2 A. Several of us made field notes. Any time I
3 was there, of course I made field notes.
4 Q. What did you do with your notebooks?
5 A. They are all turned over to Ed Downing for
6 his use.
7 Q. Did you keep copies?
8 A. I was sent copies of a few of them. But,
9 no, I did not obtain copies.
10 Q. And did you keep a notebook every time you
11 went out?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. After you made the several flights
14 approximately three times to assist in Mr. Downing's
15 calibration of the map, what was the next thing that
16 you did, the next major --
17 A. The next major step was to go to the
18 Kennesaw, Georgia office to do an independent check
19 on the quality of Mr. Downing's work by looking at
20 color infrared transparencies that were approximate
21 scale of 1 to 24,000, which is the same scale as the
22 USGS quadrangle sheets.
23 We would -- we used a grid generated with
24 the same coordinate system that is marked on the USGS
25 quadrangle sheets to locate -- to show where our
38
1 ground truth stations were.
2 We worked on coordinating. Location from
3 satellite data was transcribed to an overlay that
4 could be put on top of a USGS quadrangle sheet. You
5 could then fit the aerial photograph over that
6 sandwich and look at the specific sites with the
7 aerial photographs.
8 Q. So after collecting the ground truth
9 information, you then went to Kennesaw to be able to
10 identify those locations on a color infrared aerial
11 photograph?
12 A. Correct.
13 Q. Let me back up a little bit. What areas
14 did you go to during your first several helicopter
15 trips? Was it confined to a single conservation
16 area?
17 A. No. I believe we had more stations in
18 conservation area 2A than any other one place.
19 We had a number of stations that were just
20 from hovering in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife
21 Refuge.
22 We had a number of stations throughout
23 conservation area 3A. Some in 3B. I'll skip back up
24 and say there were some in 2B, and then there were
25 some stations as a result of hovering in the northern
39
1 part of Everglades National Park.
2 Then on one trip, coordinating with a
3 ranger from Everglades National Park, we actually put
4 down on the ground and added to our stations in
5 Everglades National Park.
6 Q. You actually landed in 2A and in the park
7 when the ranger was with you?
8 A. That is right.
9 Q. You did not land in the refuge?
10 A. No.
11 Q. You did not put down?
12 A. We never did land in the refuge.
13 Q. How about 3A and 3B, did you actually put
14 down or just hover?
15 A. 3A and 3B both, we put down to the ground.
16 Q. Did you find that when you actually set
17 down, that that in any way affected your observations
18 as opposed to hovering?
19 A. There is a slight effect in your
20 observations when you put down because it blows the
21 vegetation away slightly, but it's completely
22 recognizable.
23 Q. When you hovered, what altitude did you
24 hover at?
25 A. I think the hovering was at a thousand
40
1 feet.
2 Q. You brought with you today some
3 transparencies that you mentioned you looked at?
4 A. Yes. Those are the transparencies that we
5 did use in our accuracy assessment.
6 Q. Accuracy assessment, meaning accuracy of
7 what?
8 A. Accuracy of the output image that Ed
9 Downing generated, which is similar to this one but
10 not this one. I'll have to expand on that.
11 The initial use of those aerial photographs
12 was to become familiar with that image since it's a
13 false color infrared image. By looking at our ground
14 truth stations, looking at the notebook to see what
15 the vegetation was, looking at the aerial photograph
16 to see what kind of color signature or texture you
17 could get out of that, and after gaining some comfort
18 that we could differentiate cattail, sawgrass, tree
19 islands and some intermediate stages, that we then
20 started looking at randomly generated points.
21 Would you like me to continue?
22 Q. Yes. As a matter of fact -- well, I just
23 want to make sure that I'm understanding what you are
24 telling me.
25 You took the field notes that you had made
41
1 in the field, took them to Kennesaw where there was
2 the aerial photography, located the points at which
3 you had made the field notes by way of a satellite
4 locating data?
5 A. Right.
6 Q. You identified those points on the aerial
7 photography, and then compared what you saw in the
8 aerial photography to the notes you had made in the
9 field to make certain that you could determine the
10 differences between the various types of vegetation;
11 is that accurate?
12 A. Yes, that is accurate.
13 Q. Now, then what did you do?
14 A. Then Ed Downing generated a number of
15 randomly selected points. I don't know what kind of
16 program was used in the software, but there was a
17 mechanism by which randomly generated points could be
18 done.
19 And then the software that was being used
20 was asked the question at each randomly generated
21 point, are the 3 x 3 pixels at that point, are they
22 all the same?
23 That was useful information because that
24 would mean that there was a large enough point of
25 uniform coverage that would be something on the order
42
1 of 200 feet square that we should be able to see on
2 the aerial photograph if it's that large and uniform.
3 Q. Let me stop you for a minute and we will
4 come back to the discussion about the randomly
5 generated points.
6 A. Okay.
7 Q. Earlier you said that you attempted to
8 locate uniform vegetation in an area several hundred
9 feet in diameter.
10 Was that in order to correlate the 3 x 3
11 pixel that you just described?
12 A. The intent wasn't to correlate with the
13 3 x 3 pixel at that time. The intent was to be sure
14 that the satellite resolution was going to be able to
15 see that as a single point.
16 The size of the pixel, we thought about
17 making it 4 x 4 and 5 x 5, but in our limited time we
18 were worried that there might not be very many points
19 if we made the size selection too large. So we came
20 down 200 feet by 200 feet, which would be 3 x 3
21 pixels as being ones that we were certain would
22 generate a lot of points that would be valid.
23 Q. And these pixels and points were on the
24 aerial photography. I neglected to write down the
25 scale. Was that 1 to 24,000?
43
1 A. Perhaps it's easier to say one inch equals
2 2,000 feet.
3 Q. What was the date of that aerial
4 photography --
5 A. The date is on the side.
6 Q. -- of these transparencies?
7 A. Yes, it is. January or February of '93.
8 Q. Maybe you can find it for me.
9 A. It's in the image itself. This one is
10 February 2, '93.
11 Q. And are they all on the same date,
12 February 2nd, '93?
13 A. I assume they are all of the same date.
14 The flight was done at one time. It's evident the
15 plane went in one direction, came by and did the area
16 all at the same time.
17 Q. Do you know if this aerial photography was
18 ever digitized?
19 A. Mr. Downing is attempting to digitize one
20 of those by use of a scanner today, I believe. That
21 would lead me to believe it had not been digitized
22 before. Of course we got the data.
23 Q. Do you know what his intention is to do
24 with that data if he is successful in digitizing?
25 A. If you could digitize it, then you can
44
1 correct for the slight discrepancy in scale from one
2 side of the photograph to the other. The plane is
3 not always horizontal, so you guess perspective
4 distortion. If you digitize that, then there are
5 programs by which you can rectify it to be perfectly
6 flat at the same scale throughout.
7 You can locate any point that you know
8 about exactly without having to go through the
9 laborious methodology that we did of super imposing
10 them over USGS quad sheets.
11 Q. Have you personally ever worked with
12 digital data in that fashion?
13 A. There was an explanation and demonstration
14 of that process in that course that I took with Higer
15 and Kobelinski.
16 Q. But you personally have never done it,
17 correct?
18 A. I have looked at rectified images many
19 times. I can't cite exactly when, but we have done
20 that. We regularly do that in much similar
21 photographs. Black and white photographs, for
22 example, in highway work. I do a great deal of
23 dredge and fill permitting in highway work where we
24 use rectifying aerial images where we have guaranteed
25 distances and percent accuracy.
45
1 Q. Let's get back to Kennesaw, Georgia. And
2 the computer has generated random points of 3 x 3
3 pixels, and the question has been asked of the
4 computer by the software presumably, do these points,
5 are the 3 x 3 pixels uniform in brightness values?
6 Is that accurate or inaccurate or why don't you tell
7 me?
8 A. My understanding -- I'm here bordering on
9 Ed Downing's area of expertise, I'll tell you what my
10 understanding of that is, that the classification
11 that he has built into the processing of the data is
12 the basis of the uniformity decision.
13 Within the classification there would be
14 intensities and spectral characteristics of a
15 particular location. Those have been assigned to
16 vegetation types by the work that we did. So the
17 computer looks at that final product and says are
18 these three pixels uniform by the criteria that have
19 been fed in for identification.
20 Q. And that criteria was developed by Ed
21 Downing?
22 A. That's correct.
23 Q. What was your role in this process?
24 A. My role was to tell him where the
25 vegetation was on the ground. That is the ground
46
1 truth work. And from that point he used those data
2 as -- in developing the spectral characteristics that
3 would equate to that location.
4 Q. You gave him this information from your
5 field notes?
6 A. That's correct. Of course field notes have
7 to go hand in hand with the satellite location, the
8 data.
9 Q. After the computer generated these random
10 points, approximately how many points?
11 A. We made a judgment of how many hours I had
12 available to work and how long it was taking to
13 actually figure out where a point was and how many we
14 could get done.
15 We initially assigned some 200 some points
16 and had the computer select that many. We realized
17 that we would never be able to get that many done in
18 the amount of time unless we had rectified images.
19 So we made a judgment that it was probably going to
20 be more on the order of 60 or 70 that we would be
21 able to get done.
22 We had to be very careful about the process
23 because you can't -- if you are using randomly
24 generated points to build your case, you can't decide
25 on selecting a particular area of points.
47
1 So we had to go back and make a list of the
2 first 60 points, and it ended up being 71 or 72
3 points that we decided we would go -- took them
4 sequentially. It didn't make any difference where
5 they fell in the area of work. We took them
6 sequentially in order to maintain the random
7 character.
8 Q. And how long did it take you to do that?
9 A. It took almost two days to get comfortable
10 with the aerial photographs and the ability to place
11 them accurately. Once we had developed that, that
12 meant several generations of printing out a grid with
13 additional information to help locate the grid on the
14 USG quad sheets. There were two days of doing that.
15 And finally on Saturday, mid-morning, we started
16 generating the actual interpretation of vegetation at
17 the randomly generated points that continued through
18 yesterday afternoon. At about 2:00 I quit that and
19 started getting ready to leave. It was about a full
20 day and a half consulting time, not an eight hour
21 day.
22 Q. You were able to identify vegetation at
23 approximately 70 --
24 A. 70 locations, yes. I might add in we had a
25 quality control check in that procedure. I had
48
1 another environmental scientist who was skilled with
2 aerial photographs to some extent. He knew how to do
3 that.
4 We independently made judgments. And then
5 after we had done the judgment we compared notes and
6 for an agreement, we decided that was okay. Where we
7 were in disagreement we independently realigned the
8 photographs to come up with another judgment.
9 If that didn't work, then we both started
10 looking at them together to find out had we
11 misaligned the photograph or was there a problem with
12 the interpretation. If it was a problem with the
13 interpretation, we went back to the ground truth and
14 tried to reevaluate it. If it came down to a final
15 dispute in the agreement, my judgment was the
16 judgment used.
17 Q. And the interpretation of these vegetation
18 at these locations, what criteria did you use to
19 interpret the type of vegetation?
20 A. The only thing you have to go on -- the
21 only thing you have to go on in the color infrared
22 photograph is the color itself. Patchiness entered
23 into describing the area about the point. But, in
24 fact, you are just describing patchiness based on
25 color.
49
1 Q. I'm not sure I quite understand what you
2 mean by patchiness and how that relates to the
3 interpretation of the vegetational cover at any
4 particular point.
5 A. According to our method of generating
6 points that we would use, the area three pixels by
7 three pixels should be uniform.
8 As we looked at the aerial photographs they
9 weren't always uniform. There may have been
10 patchiness in that particular location. So to
11 unravel what that meant, it sometimes meant going
12 back to the field notes to see what we would glean
13 out of it.
14 I'll have to add that subsequently we
15 determined that the software did not generate all of
16 the random points correctly. So Ed Downing has had
17 to go back and look at all of those points on the
18 screen manually to throw out the ones where the
19 program did not make a uniform 3 x 3 pixel size.
20 That was actually determined backwards,
21 that we had several bad data points and they didn't
22 agree. So we got into the system and found out what
23 happened. To compensate for that, we went back
24 manually to do all of them back through from the
25 computer and throughout points that weren't 3 x 3
50
1 uniform. That was the only criterion by which they
2 would be thrown out.
3 Q. The software that you just described, who
4 was the manufacturer?
5 A. I'm told ERDAS.
6 Q. Do you know anything more, do you know the
7 name of the program or the version?
8 A. No.
9 Q. So all of this that you have just been
10 describing to me was in connection with color
11 infrared aerial photography and the USGS quad sheets?
12 A. That's correct, with the addition of a grid
13 system overlaid on the USGS quad sheets where our
14 ground truth points were located and our randomly
15 selected accuracy assessment points.
16 Q. Is that what these are, being the grid
17 sheets?
18 A. Yes. Let's take this one.
19 Q. Let's leave all of this other stuff down
20 here so we only have one in front of us.
21 All right. Now we have here -- I don't
22 know there is any identifying mark on here, is there,
23 that we can identify this grid from any other grid?
24 A. This is the southern portion of Water
25 Conservation Area 2A. What's shown are what are
51
1 called UTM coordinate grids. That is also shown on
2 the USGS quadrangle sheets.
3 Q. That's the printed squares with the little
4 numbers in it?
5 A. Yes, the black grid and the numbers.
6 Q. What do the red lines signify?
7 A. The red lines are a digitized
8 representation of canals. And I have to say that we
9 determined whoever digitized the location of those
10 canals was not terribly accurate. So we had to fall
11 back on the UTM coordinates rather than the canals.
12 The canals helped general alignment with the
13 quadrangle sheets but could not be trusted.
14 Q. Where did the digitized canal
15 representations come from, who did that?
16 A. You have to ask Ed Downing. I don't know.
17 Q. I also see some blue straight lines. What
18 do these signify or represent?
19 A. Those lines represent an additional aid to
20 us that located the heads of some tree islands that
21 were particularly easily identified. That helped
22 align -- helped get a general alignment for aerial
23 photographs. The line itself is not as important.
24 It's the intersection of several lines as the head of
25 a tree island.
52
1 Q. What are the green lines?
2 A. Green lines are traces of air boat -- they
3 are tracings of one that we could see on the
4 photographic image and that were on the USGS
5 quadrangle sheets. So after we were happy that we
6 had located the grid on top of a quadrangle sheet, we
7 traced those features that were in common with the
8 aerial photographs. Then we could help get an exact
9 positioning of the aerial photograph.
10 You are going to remember that the aerial
11 photographs are not exactly to scale. You need to
12 have some sort of a point that is as close as you can
13 get to the area you want to check. If you try to
14 locate an aerial photograph too far away, that's why
15 we needed -- there would be too much error. We
16 needed to have as many features identified as
17 possible.
18 Q. I see several squares with numbers in them.
19 What are those?
20 A. The numbers are the computer generated
21 sequential numbers for random locations that met the
22 qualifications criterion.
23 Q. In other words, uniformity in a 3 x 3 pixel
24 area?
25 A. That's correct. The reason they are
53
1 colored yellow, after we made the decision we could
2 not do over 200 as we had initially planned, we got a
3 printout of where the first 60 were, and found those
4 and marked them so we would know where to go.
5 After we had assessed the vegetation at a
6 particular location, after I had assessed the
7 vegetation at a particular location, I checked each
8 location, tried to do it with a red pen every time.
9 A couple of times it's in pencil. The other
10 technician who worked with me just made sure that he
11 had done as many stations as I have done.
12 We may have -- I don't know what number
13 that is.
14 Q. No. 61?
15 A. Yes, that was done. I recall that was one
16 of the last points done yesterday. I didn't check
17 it.
18 Q. Three of these are colored pink. What does
19 that mean?
20 A. I think somebody grabbed the wrong
21 highlighter.
22 Q. Some of the points are circled?
23 A. Circled points are the ground truth
24 locations. They will carry a letter and number
25 designator corresponding to the H, R or E series that
54
1 we discussed previously. The symbol is a triangle.
2 Q. Triangle is the ground truth location?
3 A. That's correct.
4 Q. Some of the squares are also circled. Is
5 there any significance to that?
6 A. Can you show me an example?
7 Q. Yes. (Indicating.)
8 A. I don't recall.
9 Q. I also see some numbers in a few places.
10 15-57?
11 A. Those are approximate locations for the
12 corners of each of the aerial photographs. So this
13 photograph would have been flight line 10. And there
14 is a sequence number on the side of the photographs.
15 That's number 157. It would have been positioned
16 basically here.
17 Q. Over here?
18 A. Yes. We put that in one corner and made
19 the corner an L so you know which photograph it was.
20 That was really for our convenience to be able to go
21 back.
22 Q. There are a few locations with a dot in the
23 middle?
24 A. Circled documents are structures. I think
25 all of them happen to be houses or camps, you might
55
1 call them, that are built on stilts. There are a
2 great number of those, particularly in the
3 northeastern portion of 2A. Those happen to be --
4 those were the best locating features that there
5 were.
6 I wish they were all over the map, but that
7 was -- you were able to get a pinpoint location. The
8 only worry would be whether the structure had been
9 rebuilt in another location and during the time frame
10 that we were there.
11 This happens to be another grid that was
12 used only for indexing aerial photographs. This grid
13 was not printed at the right scale exactly and the
14 technician had used this previously to get the
15 photographs lined up. So other than that, we didn't
16 use this.
17 Q. We know that because it says "Not to Scale"
18 on the side, right?
19 A. Right.
20 Q. Same thing with the next one?
21 A. He kept it because it helped in locating
22 the aerial photographs.
23 Q. This appears to be the top half of 2A?
24 A. That's correct.
25 Q. I see a portion on the left hand side that
56
1 says "No Coverage"?
2 A. That is right. The flight line that came
3 up to this point terminated there and the next flight
4 line didn't quite overlap it at that point. So we
5 are missing a photograph that would have been there.
6 I believe that's the only location where we had no
7 information.
8 It happened that there was not a randomly
9 generated point in that area, so we didn't worry
10 about it.
11 Q. I see on the top northern portion of 2A
12 that the ground truthing sites are not circled. Is
13 there a reason for that, the little triangles with
14 the letter prefix before the number?
15 A. Well, the circle was just for our aid. And
16 I don't know why it didn't get done with this one.
17 It was sometimes helpful to see that.
18 Q. Did you notice or determine whether any of
19 the air boat trails had moved?
20 A. Yes. There was a great deal of trouble
21 with moving air boat trails. But we found that that
22 is traceable, that what you need to do is you need to
23 correlate several features that help locate. And
24 when you find one air boat trail is out of place, you
25 try to use the others to line it up.
57
1 Then you look very completely at the aerial
2 photograph to find out where it should have been. In
3 almost all cases we found a line where vegetation had
4 filled in a previous trail, so we had confirmation
5 that there had been something there.
6 Q. And there were just two grids for
7 conservation area 2A, the northern half and the
8 southern half?
9 A. That's correct. The northern half and the
10 southern half. We went through several iterations
11 until we were sure we got it to scale and we got the
12 amount of information on it.
13 When we started out we didn't have the
14 randomly generated points, we made another one with
15 those points. So there were successive generations
16 to get to the point where we had enough features that
17 they were completely usable.
18 Q. Did you develop grids for any other areas
19 than 2A?
20 A. No.
21 Q. Didn't you tell me that you did ground
22 truthing in the refuge as well as other areas?
23 A. Yes, but it had not gone to the point of
24 doing the accuracy check for those points
25 concentrated on 2A.
58
1 Q. You simply haven't gotten to it yet?
2 A. That's correct.
3 MS. RAEPPLE: Off the record.
4 (Discussion off the record.)
5 BY MR. CESARANO:
6 Q. Doctor, the grids that we have just been
7 talking about, the purpose of those was to -- and
8 correct me if I'm wrong -- to determine the accuracy
9 of the vegetative cover map from imagery acquired
10 December 7, 1992?
11 A. They were an intermediate step in the
12 accuracy determination -- accuracy determination is
13 actually having to do with the interpretation of a
14 point on an aerial photograph.
15 The grid is the means by which you locate
16 that point. The date of the aerial photograph -- of
17 the imagery --
18 Q. Is it to verify the accuracy of this?
19 A. No, not that.
20 Q. Which one this one?
21 A. That's correct.
22 Q. And this imagery was acquired December 10,
23 1993, correct, as stated up here?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Before we mark the next, let me show you a
59
1 few copies of some field notebooks that were produced
2 to us. Let me ask you to pull out from there the
3 ones that you yourself made notes in and are
4 responsible for.
5 A. Responsible for -- Richard Darling's notes
6 I'm responsible for. This is a set of mine. And
7 more of my notes.
8 Q. Let me show you the rest of them here and I
9 would like you to identify again the ones that are
10 yours and the ones that you are responsible for,
11 please.
12 A. That's not mine.
13 Q. Put the ones that are not yours over here.
14 These are yours, and those are the ones you are
15 responsible for.
16 A. Okay.
17 Q. Now we have a stack of your -- copies of
18 your field notes, and then a stack of field notes
19 that you are responsible for.
20 Richard Darling, in what way are you
21 responsible for Mr. Darling's note?
22 A. Mr. Darling works for me, coordinates with
23 me and works at my direction.
24 Prior to his going on this work we
25 discussed procedures so that we would have some sort
60
1 of common judgment of how to interpret vegetation.
2 Q. Tell me generally what procedures you
3 discussed with him so that you could do it in a
4 consistent fashion.
5 A. We discussed the need to judge field
6 locations from the perspective of what you would see
7 looking at it from above and the importance of
8 establishing what would be the overall dominance of a
9 particular area.
10 Q. Tell me what criteria you used.
11 A. Guessing the percent cover represented by
12 various species was the -- what we were trying to get
13 at.
14 Q. To determine which was the dominant species
15 in a particular site, No. 1. And secondly, to
16 determine the percentage of cover in a particular
17 site?
18 A. Sometimes a species dominates a site but is
19 sparse in numbers of plants.
20 Q. How did you determine or define whether a
21 particular species was dominant at a particular site?
22 A. We visited a number of sites together and
23 compared notes. Other than that, it was left to
24 professional judgment.
25 Q. Did you in any way try to quantify -- for
61
1 example, if you had an area where there was mixed
2 cover, did you say in your opinion it's more than 70%
3 one type species, then that is dominant?
4 A. That's correct. We had a break point that
5 was important here. There are some places that are
6 overwhelming. We would say that's 95% or better
7 coverage.
8 In mixtures we used other categories that
9 were ended up being generated from the field notes by
10 Ed Downing as to where the break point would be after
11 we looked at a number of field books for percentages
12 that he could use.
13 But generally 75% was another break point
14 where you would have to call it a mixture with
15 something else.
16 Q. So you had 95% of a particular species was
17 clearly dominated by that species and you call that,
18 for example, predominant cattail?
19 A. That is right.
20 Q. The next lowest break point was 75%?
21 A. My understanding was 75% that he used, but
22 you will have to ask Mr. Darling where he chose that
23 break point.
24 But in discussions, we had decided 75% of
25 one species with a mixture of another would be a
62
1 second category where it would be a predominant mix
2 cattail/sawgrass that would be greater than 75%
3 cattail and, of course, it would have to be 25% or
4 less sawgrass and perhaps some other things.
5 But those actual percentages, Mr. Darling
6 may have some further definition. But in general
7 character, that's what I approved of.
8 Q. Wouldn't you have to know where the break
9 points were in order to label any particular area?
10 A. No. You have to decide on some -- yes.
11 You have to decide on some break points and then
12 interpret the field notes to see where a particular
13 area fits. So you have to decide on some sort of
14 criteria, yes.
15 Q. I see, for example, in your field notes
16 with the first page stamped Law 636 that you have
17 both percentages as well as descriptions.
18 For example, here is one, just as an
19 example, low vegetation dominant Sagittaria. A
20 little farther on there is another notation here,
21 "Predominantly sawgrass patch with scattered changes
22 of cattail," and then 80% sawgrass 20% cattail. It
23 seems you used both numbers as well as descriptions?
24 A. That is correct. You never know how useful
25 other notes are going to be. So when you are in the
63
1 field you try to take as many notes as you can that
2 might be useful later.
3 Q. Just because you might call something
4 dominant or predominant, is it possible that
5 Mr. Downing would disagree and label it something
6 else on his map?
7 A. It's possible that there is some judgmental
8 interaction there because we are not dealing with
9 absolute numbers. And the -- I'm confident that the
10 general outcome of this sort of process gives you a
11 very good result, but there would be distinctions in
12 the actual break points of categories because you
13 don't have absolute numbers that you are following.
14 Q. You think that the next break points below
15 95% was 75%. What about the next lowest break
16 points?
17 A. I don't know when you get down to the equal
18 mix there is judgment that things are about 50/50
19 one's abilities to judge that is rather difficult.
20 Q. Close to 50/50 or thereabouts would be
21 called an equal mix?
22 A. Right.
23 Q. Were there any other break points or
24 classifications?
25 A. Other than using those general guidelines
64
1 that we just discussed, I think you have to ask
2 Mr. Darling what he actually decided on for his
3 categories. You have to remember there is a check
4 point that I get to go back to using the descriptions
5 of his general descriptions.
6 When I go back to the aerial photographs, I
7 get back at him independently.
8 MR. CESARANO: Mark this as Exhibit 2.
9 (The document referred to was thereupon
10 marked Exhibit 2 for Identification.)
11 BY MR. CESARANO:
12 Q. Let me show you what has been marked
13 Exhibit 2 which you have already pulled out of the
14 stack as one of -- a copy of one of your field
15 notebooks?
16 A. Yes.
17 MR. WATTS-FITZGERALD: Can you give me the
18 DTL number?
19 MR. CESARANO: DTL 00000059.
20 BY MR. CESARANO:
21 Q. Is that your field notebook?
22 A. This one starts out with mine, but I recall
23 at one point we switched off within a notebook, that
24 Richard Darling took my notebook and continued. I
25 think that the handwriting changes between stations 8
65
1 and 9. That may have been this particular example.
2 I see his initials are also on the cover.
3 Q. As we look at some of the pages of these
4 notebooks, the first one is labeled station 1 and
5 goes through stations 2, 3, 4, 5. But I see up here
6 it's indicated R 2, R 3?
7 A. Those are written in after the fact to
8 assign the prefix number.
9 Q. Did you prepare this notebook the first
10 time you went up in the helicopter?
11 A. I believe so.
12 Q. Was there a time you went up when you
13 didn't actually take field notes?
14 A. I don't think so. I'm confident that I
15 took a field notebook every time.
16 Q. Do you know when those letter prefixes were
17 written in, how much later, approximately when?
18 A. I don't know.
19 Q. Who wrote them in, do you know?
20 A. They were written in under Mr. Darling's
21 direction. I think the person who did it was Pamela
22 Green. You have to ask her.
23 Q. You don't really know?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Did you visit each of the sites, the
66
1 preliminary sites, to calibrate the information?
2 A. I believe that the preliminary sites were
3 done by Richard Darling. I wasn't available to go
4 that day. That's my recollection.
5 Q. Now, what we marked as Exhibit 2 to your
6 deposition goes up through site No. 25. And the next
7 chronological notebook that has your name on it that
8 you have identified as yours picks up at site 40?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Did you not go to sites 26 through 39?
11 A. That is probable. If you could find a
12 notebook that had those sites. There were times when
13 I had to switch off for other responsibilities.
14 Q. The last site in the previous note book was
15 25; is that correct?
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. On the 8th or 7th the stations start. Then
18 the next day, the next morning. So you have the next
19 sequence that was on the 8th and then the numbers
20 pick up at site 40 on the 9th of November with my
21 handwriting, again with my notebook.
22 Q. So the detail number 00000073 Law 650, this
23 is Mr. Darling's handwriting in his notebook?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And yours picks up at Law 627 after
67
1 Mr. Darling's again, correct?
2 A. Right, that is correct.
3 Q. Tell me about Mr. Darling. Who is he and
4 what is his -- what are his qualifications?
5 A. He is Australian born, Australian citizen.
6 He has a Master's degree in I believe botany from I
7 think the University of Florida. He professionally
8 has worked in wetland resource permitting, as I have,
9 started his professional career with General
10 Development Corporation, was involved in their large
11 mitigation process and permitting.
12 He followed that employment with
13 approximately a year's employment at Edward E. Clark,
14 Engineers-Scientists after I had been there and
15 continued working on projects where wetland work was
16 a prime component of what he was doing.
17 I hired him at Law Environmental I believe
18 in the summer of '91, and his primary focus there has
19 been wetland evaluation for the purpose of wetland
20 permitting. We have jointly worked, for example, on
21 wetland interpretation, impact assessment at a
22 development called Weston for Arvida Corporation,
23 which is historic Everglades, and most of the terrain
24 that we are dealing with is sawgrass, a wet prairie
25 sawgrass community.
68
1 Q. And he has been with Law Environmental
2 since '91?
3 A. I believe that he came to work for us in
4 approximately August of '91, so however long that is.
5 Q. He works primarily for you?
6 A. He works only for me.
7 MR. CESARANO: Why don't we break for lunch
8 at this point.
9 (Thereupon, a lunch recess was taken,
10 after which the following proceedings
11 were had:)
12 BY MR. CESARANO:
13 Q. Dr. Lodge, you described for us going out
14 in the helicopter and doing some ground truthing.
15 Before then, how often were you out in the Everglades
16 on the average per week, per month or per year?
17 A. Well, for my interest in wildlife
18 photography and interest in creating photographs for
19 this book, I averaged probably 15 days a year in the
20 Everglades taking pictures, being an observer.
21 Q. This would have been from about 19 --
22 A. From about 1971 through 1983. It probably
23 would have dropped off on the average six to eight
24 times a year after that.
25 Q. And the trips that you would take out
69
1 there, were they primarily in one particular area in
2 the park?
3 A. Yes. Most of that was spent in Everglades
4 National Park along Tamiami Trail, the south edge of
5 conservation area 3A.
6 Q. Had you ever been in conservation area 2A
7 before this project?
8 A. I can't recall specific incidents where I
9 have been on the ground, on the water in -- I know
10 not in Loxahatchee, but I can't recall being in
11 conservation area 2A or 2B. I spent a lot of time in
12 small planes. Clark Engineers-Scientists had a Cesna
13 that we would fly over the Everglades as often as
14 once a week. So I saw a lot of that from the air for
15 a long number of years.
16 Q. What was the purpose of flying over?
17 A. This was because most of the work that I
18 did was in Charlotte County, so we would fly from
19 Tamiami airport or sometimes from Opa Locka across to
20 the other side.
21 Q. So you wouldn't over fly the areas in
22 connection with any kind of project, just on your way
23 to somewhere else?
24 A. That is right.
25 Q. Would you expect or anticipate that there
70
1 would be some error introduced in your ground
2 truthing effort by using aerial photography some ten
3 months distant from the date of the satellite
4 imagery?
5 A. Yes. We tried to assess that exact
6 feature, and it's apparent that a fire went through
7 2A some time prior to the date of the color infrared
8 photography. The fire line is apparent on the
9 western portion of 2A, burned.
10 So between the time that that picture was
11 taken in, I believe it's February of '93, until the
12 imagery data were taken, that period of time the
13 growth of plants, the rejuvenation that would have
14 occurred in that fire area would change the signature
15 somewhat.
16 Q. Can you point out that area for me on this
17 map?
18 A. Just generally I think that fire went
19 through here.
20 Q. You are indicating from north to south in
21 the central area?
22 A. I can't tell you which direction it burned.
23 I probably could do that. But the fire was moving
24 either north to south or south to north because there
25 is a fire scar edge approximately in that position.
71
1 I could show that to you easily on the color infrared
2 areas.
3 Q. I would like to see if you can locate that
4 for me.
5 MR. WATTS-FITZGERALD: Off the record.
6 (Discussion off the record.)
7 THE WITNESS: You would probably be best
8 off to go to the window here.
9 MR. WATTS-FITZGERALD: Can you identify the
10 photo?
11 THE WITNESS: This is a photo color
12 infrared photo dated February 2, 1993 and the
13 serial number on it is 11-189. This area
14 apparently burned and this area did not. So we
15 found evidence here that we have reason to
16 believe that our accurate assessment we think
17 will be good. We think we may have problems but
18 the accurate assessment will determine that.
19 I don't know the date of that fire. I
20 intend to find out.
21 BY MR. CESARANO:
22 Q. How large of an area did that burn cover?
23 A. It's a large percentage of the entire
24 conservation area. I don't think it's as large as
25 50%, but it's going to be a large number.
72
1 Q. Other than the effect that a burn would
2 have on the vegetation, would you expect there to be
3 some other error or inaccuracies as a result of
4 ground truthing satellite imagery with aerial
5 photography some ten months distant?
6 A. There are a number of factors that can
7 change your interpretation. One is water level. If
8 the water level were significantly different, that
9 makes the photograph look different.
10 Fire, however, is probably the largest
11 contributor to change in the Everglades.
12 Q. Do you have any information on the water
13 levels for the two time periods?
14 A. Not at this time.
15 Q. I have been talking about a satellite image
16 and color infrared photography ten months apart.
17 You started your ground truthing effort in
18 November of '93, and I think we discussed that.
19 What did you do after you went out and did
20 the initial calibration sites and then I think you
21 told me you went to Kennesaw, but what was next if
22 anything, or are we up to the present now?
23 A. Ground truthing. Then I had virtually
24 nothing to do with it while the workings of
25 generating an image and handling satellite data --
73
1 for generating and image. All of that was going on
2 and I had nothing to do with it. I have come back in
3 at the point of the accuracy assessment.
4 Q. Let me make sure I understand. You visited
5 the various sites, took field notes. We have copies
6 of your field notes. After that data was all
7 accumulated, then other individuals went to work on
8 obtaining the satellite imagery and developing an
9 image or a map from the satellite imagery?
10 A. That is right.
11 Q. Once that was concluded or almost
12 concluded, you then got involved once again with
13 identifying the various randomly generated points and
14 the vegetative cover at each of those points?
15 A. That's correct.
16 Q. And you did that up through yesterday?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Did you have any involvement in this
19 project between the field observation and the
20 accuracy assessment?
21 A. We had some telephone calls about the work,
22 and I don't recall the nature of those, but as far as
23 I'm concerned it was not relevant to any major
24 decision about how the work was progressing,
25 informational only.
74
1 Q. For how long a period of time were you not
2 involved? How long did it take them to obtain and
3 generate the satellite imagery before you got back
4 involved, a week, a month?
5 A. Well, I didn't really get back -- from the
6 time we had the last field visit was sometime in
7 January or February date.
8 Q. It appears to be February 19?
9 A. Okay. From that date until Thursday of
10 this past week, I was not involved.
11 Q. In the time that you have been visiting the
12 Everglades from 1971 onward, have you just with your
13 own personal observations noticed any change in the
14 Everglades that you would -- that you believe
15 resulted from run-off of nutrient rich water from the
16 agricultural area?
17 A. No.
18 Q. You do describe in your book the fact that
19 nutrient laden run-off can have an effect on the
20 natural flora in the Everglades, do you not?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Yet you have not personally observed any of
23 that?
24 A. Not personally. That's taken from various
25 news releases and discussions with people. I hate to
75
1 admit it, but newspapers.
2 Q. Do you believe that to be the case?
3 A. That nutrients are -- yes. I believe that
4 nutrients are capable of changing vegetation
5 patterns.
6 Q. Do you believe that, in fact, they have
7 changed the vegetation patterns in any of the
8 conservation areas within the park or the refuge?
9 A. I think they probably have contributed to
10 the change.
11 Q. Have you ever done any kind of a change
12 detection study from remotely sensed data?
13 A. By remotely sensed data, we have -- I have
14 used high level plain black and white photography to,
15 as a matter of fact, assess the encroachment of,
16 cattail to an impoundment on the west coast of
17 Florida. The subdivision is called Project Rotunda.
18 Q. When were you involved in that?
19 A. That was probably in the early 1980s. I'm
20 guessing. Probably '83.
21 Q. Would you describe for me how you went
22 about that, how you did that?
23 A. Edward Clark Engineers-Scientists had a
24 contract as a permitting consultant for the Rotunda
25 development. One feature of that development was a
76
1 large freshwater impoundment on what's called the
2 east branch of Coral Creek.
3 The impoundment all together was about 300
4 acres. We had been interested in developing the --
5 helping the developer get permits to develop the
6 piece of land that was adjacent the impoundment, so
7 the question of using the impoundment for mitigation
8 came up. We looked at the cattail situation there
9 and at the then DER's view of cattails and thought we
10 could probably get credit for converting the cattail,
11 from cattail to more varied plant communities.
12 We looked at successive aerial photographs
13 to determine the rate at which cattail was moving
14 into the impoundment and tried to get an idea of the
15 water depth where cattail would move and we found --
16 my recollection is we found cattail moving into water
17 as deep as three feet. In 300 acres I think we
18 measured it was increasing at about 25 acres a year.
19 Q. Do you have an opinion as to what was
20 causing that encroachment?
21 A. I don't know what started the involvement,
22 what started the encroachment. The involvement had
23 been there since the 1950's and we determined at what
24 date the encroachment of cattails started, but I
25 don't know what started it.
77
1 Q. Do you know what was causing the continuing
2 encroachment, do you have an opinion what was causing
3 that?
4 A. The fact that the impoundment had been
5 flooded and was previously not -- previously had been --
6 had probably some very highly saline soils. In fact,
7 we had looked at older aerial photographs and seen
8 what are called salterns in the area.
9 One factor is probably that with time
10 enough salt had bleached out of highly saline soils
11 that it made tunistic. It made it more inviting for
12 what's basically a brackish to freshwater plant to
13 get in there.
14 But the fact that it had been flooded from
15 a condition that was not like that previously gave a
16 typical cattail condition of a new environment to get
17 into without much competition.
18 Q. And this was a project that was directed at
19 merely tracking or determining the amount of
20 encroachment in successive periods?
21 A. That was a small part of it. We were
22 interested to be able to tell DER at what date the
23 entire impoundment might be a cattail monoculture and
24 we could use that information to show that if we
25 could dredge part of it and make it actually deeper
78
1 that we could get credit in terms of mitigation for
2 that.
3 Q. It was not a project involving
4 differentiating one species of vegetation from
5 another?
6 A. No, it wasn't.
7 Q. And again, this was visual interpretation
8 of black and white aerial photography?
9 A. Yes, with sufficient ground truth to be
10 sure that we were, in fact, only dealing with
11 cattail.
12 Q. Other than that, have you been involved in
13 any other type of change detection studies or
14 projects aside from this one?
15 A. Yes. We have looked at Melaleuca expansion
16 in Southwest Broward County, at least what is called
17 southwest Broward County. It's actually east of the
18 water conservation areas.
19 And we have done that for the purpose of
20 thinking about mitigation strategy for various
21 developments in that area and projecting at what time
22 Melaleuca might completely over take a piece of
23 property.
24 In that work we have also looked very
25 carefully at data generated by the South Florida
79
1 Water Management District on Melaleuca encroachment.
2 But we, in fact, evaluated successive aerial
3 photographs to look at Melaleuca expansion.
4 Q. Color infrared?
5 A. No. Black and white, but I believe that
6 the film used is an infrared film.
7 Q. And over what period of time was the
8 photography taken?
9 A. It exceeded ten years from beginning to
10 end, but I don't remember what the beginning and end
11 days were. If I may add, we did look at color
12 infrared aerial photographs for the Rotunda project.
13 We also had color infrared.
14 Q. You described for me generally the process
15 you used in order to acquire an equal scale on the
16 infrared photography because of the distortions from
17 sensing from the aircraft?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Other than that, have you done any type of
20 normalization of scenes from one image to another?
21 A. I have done a lot of what's called
22 interpolation of scaling distances on aerial
23 photographs and changing those to another scale in
24 order to match an adjoining photograph.
25 For example, a great deal of that work has
80
1 been done on a modern Xerox machine Xeroxing aerial
2 photographs until you get the exact match that you
3 are looking for to see if, in fact, a feature
4 overlaps or has changed. I have done a lot of that.
5 Q. That's so you have the proper scale from
6 one image to the next?
7 A. That's correct.
8 Q. Those would be from two different time
9 periods, the two images?
10 A. Yes. I have missed two major projects in
11 talking about interpretation of color infrared
12 photograph.
13 Q. Please tell me about them.
14 A. One is in the Big Cypress National Preserve
15 where we evaluated the earliest -- I believe in the
16 1950's, which were just black and white, and then
17 through three difference dates to be specific of
18 color infrared. That was from somewhere around 1970
19 up into the mid 1980's. And we were looking at broad
20 scale vegetation changes in the vicinity of what's
21 called Raccoon Point. It's an oil field at Raccoon
22 Point.
23 We divided the territory into a number of
24 plant community types and tried to trace those
25 through time. In fact, digitized the maps that
81
1 resulted from tracing these aerial photographs and
2 then compared the percentages.
3 A second --
4 Q. Let me ask you about this a little bit
5 first, then we will move on to the other one.
6 The purpose of digitizing the information
7 was in order to quantify the acreage?
8 A. That is right.
9 Q. How did you identify the different plant
10 communities?
11 A. We identified them from ground truth to
12 compare against the aerial photographs. And ground
13 truth actually on the ground was supplemented with
14 low level observation and a 35 millimeter aerial
15 photography. So that, for example, if you see pine
16 trees from the side you are sure they are pine trees.
17 Even though there is perspective distortion you can
18 visualize this as to what it would look like on a
19 flat map. So we did a great deal of that.
20 Sometimes in areas where the aerial --
21 where the flat aerial photograph was confusing we
22 would get in a plane and go look at that from the air
23 and do photographs all around it to help straighten
24 it out and in some cases go back to the ground again
25 to look.
82
1 Q. And you were working with some photographs
2 from as early as the 1950's?
3 A. Black and white photography from some time
4 in the 50's for that. That is my recollection.
5 Q. And you were able to apply the ground truth
6 information that you obtained in the '80's to the
7 photography from the '50's?
8 A. Not because of the color signature, of
9 course, because it's completely different but by the
10 shapes of communities that you can correlate areas.
11 Pine trees have a long enough life that an area of
12 large pine trees today must have been at least
13 smaller pines in the 1950's. So it's easy to
14 correlate the plant communities that you are looking
15 at.
16 Q. What plant communities other than pine
17 trees were you looking at?
18 A. We were looking at a couple of versions of
19 wetlands. There were cypress domes, those are
20 concentrations of cypress trees. There is a category
21 that we called cypress prairie or dwarf cypress
22 prairie where it is basically a grassed wetland with
23 scattered stunted cypress trees.
24 Then there were marsh communities that did
25 not have cypress trees. In addition to that, there
83
1 were some hammock communities, upland communities,
2 upland tree communities.
3 Q. So the only specific plant communities that
4 you identified would have been of the tree nature,
5 cypress, pine, dwarf cypress with marsh communities
6 being categorized only as marsh communities rather
7 than the particular plant species contained therein?
8 A. Well, we did generate a list of species
9 that were there. Our category was a broad spectrum
10 marsh.
11 Q. What was the purpose of that study?
12 A. That was to establish a baseline for really
13 for variability through time to understand what
14 future changes might be judged to be impacts of using
15 the area for oil production versus normal change;
16 that is, either establish an amount of change that is
17 typical for the natural community that that level of
18 change at least is expected to continue into the
19 future. You try to look for an abnormal amount of
20 change that might be associated with the oil
21 business.
22 Q. That's a project that would continue into
23 the future?
24 A. Yes. It's going to have to be done more
25 times because we did the project only shortly after
84
1 the Raccoon oil field was in place. There wasn't
2 time to show any impact other than the direct
3 disturbance of having subtracted areas to make oil
4 pads and so on.
5 Q. In that project, the dates of the aerial
6 photography that you used, were they anniversary or
7 close to anniversary dates?
8 A. I don't understand what you mean.
9 Q. Same date from one year to the next or the
10 same month?
11 A. No. But generally they were in the winter,
12 early spring time of the year. That's just a fact of
13 life that cloud free conditions occur at those times
14 of the year. It was more dependable for photography.
15 Q. You mentioned another project?
16 A. Yes. This was a project that was an
17 environmental impact statement for the Okeechobee
18 waterway. It's a contract that Clark
19 Engineers-Scientists had with the Army Corps of
20 Engineers. That was a 100 year after the fact EIS.
21 1882 to approximately 1982 or '81. The photography
22 available, of course, was very limited.
23 What we did, we had the 1940 I believe
24 Department of Agriculture black and white
25 photographs, and then several comparable versions of
85
1 black and white photographs from much later years. I
2 don't recall what the years were. I did that project
3 in conjunction with Taylor Alexander. I hired him to
4 assist in our interpretation. Spent a number of days
5 working on that with me.
6 Q. What were you attempting to determine?
7 A. We were looking for impacts of having put
8 in the Okeechobee waterway which narrowed down to
9 land use changes from particularly focusing our
10 interest on changes from natural communities to
11 various aspects of development, typically agriculture
12 in the form of range lands or groves, and in some
13 cases residential development.
14 Q. So this was to determine -- I again want to
15 make sure I understand what you have told me, -- to
16 determine how and to what extent the Okeechobee
17 waterway changed the use of land in and around the
18 area?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And primarily the changes were from the
21 natural state to a developed state, meaning
22 agriculture, that type of thing?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. But in some areas residential or commercial
25 development?
86
1 A. Yes. So it's photo interpretation but it's
2 understandably very different than what we are doing.
3 Q. You weren't attempting to determine plant
4 species or anything such as that?
5 A. Other than the fact that we had categories
6 that we looked at, cypress hammock, pine land, marsh,
7 I don't recall what got into the final report, but we
8 attempted to differentiate the natural communities as
9 to what they were, yes.
10 Q. Earlier you told me that you had been asked
11 to and that you were providing guidance on the
12 overall problems of the Everglades, and that you had
13 directed the inquiry or the analysis toward the area
14 of why wading birds weren't doing as well as they had
15 done historically. Is that accurate?
16 A. That has been an interest. I would
17 describe it more as an avocation, but I have not
18 directed specific work projects that would be in that
19 direction.
20 Q. Have you considered that aspect in this
21 project, why wading birds aren't doing as well now as
22 they have historically?
23 A. Slightly. But that has not been a focus of
24 my attention.
25 Q. Tell me to what extent you have considered
87
1 and analyzed that aspect in this project.
2 A. Well, consider that if we would find
3 cattail had, in fact, significantly invaded slough
4 communities, that that would be a potential problem
5 that needed to be addressed.
6 That same problem has been mentioned
7 several times in the new Everglades restoration book
8 of the problem of sawgrass encroaching into slough
9 communities and upsetting the high value of the
10 slough and producing fish that end up in the stomachs
11 of wading birds.
12 Q. Did you find areas which in your opinion
13 cattail invaded slough areas to such an extent that
14 it was causing problems for wading birds?
15 A. No. We haven't finished our evaluation in
16 that sense to look at where -- we haven't looked
17 really at the change.
18 We looked at one photograph pretty much for
19 this time period, the difference between the accuracy
20 check date and this date we are considering as pretty
21 much one point in time. So, in fact, we haven't been
22 able to do that.
23 Q. In your opinion, is it possible to develop
24 a change detection map by using historical remotely
25 sensed satellite data?
88
1 A. Yes, it would be possible to do that.
2 Q. Are you familiar with anything like that?
3 Have you seen anything like that done?
4 A. Not done with -- I don't know what the base
5 was. But Taylor Alexander had a contract in the
6 early 1970s to assess vegetation change in the
7 Everglades.
8 Those were done with one mile square
9 quadrates, one square mile using various dates of
10 aerial photography and ground truth checks that he
11 did with Allan Crook.
12 I'm aware there has been considerable work
13 done there in vegetation change. And then there is
14 more recent work where it has been determined, for
15 example, that the percentage of slough communities
16 has decreased to a fairly great extent by sawgrass
17 encroachment into the slough. I don't recall what
18 chapter it is, but that's in the Everglades
19 restoration book. I think it's the landscapes
20 chapter.
21 Q. Have you done any sort of an accuracy
22 assessment, calculated an accuracy assessment for the
23 map that you have been working on?
24 A. Yes. We did a couple of stages of that
25 yesterday. That assessment is still preliminary. I
89
1 don't know -- I would have to speculate. I don't
2 know what the answer is right now because when I left
3 yesterday they had not finished plugging in the data
4 that I had generated on the color infrared.
5 So I don't know, unless that was part of
6 the facts today, I don't know.
7 Q. You haven't heard any preliminary number on
8 that at all?
9 A. An early preliminary number I think was
10 based on the fact that we were looking at points --
11 we started out looking at points on the outside of
12 the fire area that we had something up in the 90%. I
13 was told that dropped when we got into the fire area.
14 I don't know what the level is. I was focused on
15 working on the photographs.
16 MS. RAEPPLE: Would this be a good time to
17 take a short break?
18 MR. CESARANO: Yes.
19 (Thereupon, a brief recess was taken,
20 after which the following proceedings
21 were had:)
22 BY MR. CESARANO:
23 Q. When you were in the field doing your
24 ground truthing for this project, were there ever
25 times when there was difficulty acquiring satellite
90
1 data for location?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. How often did that occur?
4 A. I would say some significant percentage
5 like 25% of the time there was difficulty. The
6 difficulty came -- I'll explain it very briefly.
7 This isn't my area.
8 They needed a certain number of satellites
9 located simultaneously between the two stations. And
10 there were times when it was hard to get enough
11 satellites, and they waited and waited and waited.
12 A particularly perplexing situation
13 occurred the day before we were to have activity in
14 Yugoslavia. The explanation I was given is that the
15 military was further reducing and scanning signals to
16 reduce other people's ability to use that system.
17 So what it meant, it just increased time at
18 a station until you did have sufficient coverage.
19 Q. Were you satisfied with the accuracy and
20 the location from the satellites?
21 A. Totally dependent upon Mr. Darling's
22 judgment, his professional track record in doing that
23 was satisfactory to me, and I had no choice but to
24 depend on that.
25 Q. Did you ever have to abandon a site because
91
1 you were unable to acquire sufficient locational
2 data?
3 A. Yes, and my recollection is that that was
4 what constituted a lunch break one time to see if we
5 couldn't log on, is the term they used, at a later
6 time. So we broke for lunch early.
7 By the time we got back in the early
8 afternoon, we were able to make contact. But it was
9 a considerable problem one morning.
10 Q. Other than difficulty in acquiring
11 positional or location data, did you encounter any
12 difficulties at any of the sites in determining types
13 of vegetation or amount of coverage?
14 A. There are a number of the less important
15 species that I don't happen to know very well. I
16 happen to think that that's not important. That what
17 we were trying to do is assess the major reflectance
18 and I found no difficulty in that, major coverage.
19 Q. Did you always use a helicopter or did you
20 ever have any site visits in an air boat for that
21 project?
22 A. We always used a helicopter.
23 Q. You have listed as a publication "A Wetland
24 Evaluation Method for the Everglades, Impact to
25 Mitigation"?
92
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. What is that publication? What is it
3 about?
4 A. It's listed as a publication. Does it say
5 in preparation?
6 Q. Yes, it does.
7 A. That was given as a paper conference in
8 January. That grew out of a contract that Law
9 Environmental had with Arvida to -- literally to help
10 Broward County develop a wetland evaluation
11 methodology because Broward County was embarking on
12 changing the wetland ordinance.
13 So we looked at various methodologies for
14 assessing wetlands and decided on a matrix of
15 parameters that a professional could judge and come
16 up with a value that was related to Everglades
17 values.
18 And our bottom line there was, how well
19 would a particular area perform in producing food
20 supply for wading birds and how well would wading
21 birds be able to get that food supply. That's the
22 driving principal behind what we did.
23 The matrix I believe it was 17 parameters.
24 Did I contribute a copy of that?
25 Q. Yes, you did. The 17 parameters that you
93
1 have developed include such things as hydroperiod and
2 hydro pattern. What is hydro pattern?
3 A. Hydro pattern is a more complex evaluation
4 of water levels in addition to just whether or not
5 the -- it's above the ground surface.
6 So the depth -- it's a graphical
7 representation of depth through the annual cycle.
8 Depth may be under the ground as well as over the
9 ground.
10 Q. You have given that the highest weighting
11 factor?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Why is that?
14 A. That has been driven really by John Ogden's
15 influence in the various papers that he has done
16 having to do with wood storks and other wading birds,
17 how long an area is flooded and how deep it gets
18 related to how much food is produced. And the
19 pattern, also you will notice we give high credit to
20 a pattern that comes down to very shallow or no water
21 at all for certain times of the year in order to
22 concentrate the food supplies so the birds can get
23 it.
24 Q. You have also listed surrounding land scale
25 condition. How is that a factor?
94
1 A. That's a factor having to do with how
2 comfortable wading birds and other wildlife would be
3 in an area, the surrounding landscape condition.
4 If it's residential, it has dogs and
5 kittens. So we grade it down if the adjacent area is
6 developed in some way and grade it up if it's a wild
7 condition.
8 Q. And you also have listed water quality.
9 What goes into determining water quality?
10 A. We have an appendix -- developed appendices
11 for most of the parameters. We have not developed
12 one for water quality.
13 There are some simple visual indicators of
14 water quality that somebody might be able to look at,
15 like abnormal growth of filamentous algae. But
16 really we have not developed that parameter properly.
17 It's one of the few in there that need a lot more
18 attention. That's why the paper is not published
19 yet.
20 Q. Also in your curriculum you have selected
21 projects of direct involvement. First one, "A
22 wetland evaluation method for the Everglades in
23 Broward County, Florida"?
24 Is that what we have just been discussing?
25 A. Yes.
95
1 Q. You also have listed "Evaluation of three
2 mining operations relative to past, ongoing and
3 projected future wetland permitting liabilities."
4 What's involved in that project?
5 A. That was part of what is called Phase 1, an
6 environmental audit where the purchaser of the
7 potential purchaser of some mining areas wanted to
8 know if -- wanted to know what the wetland situation
9 was and particularly wanted us to dig into the
10 existing permits held by the mining company to see if
11 there were going to be problems of transferring land.
12 We depended on a fairly simple method of
13 USGS quadrangle sheets for indications of wetlands
14 from wetland signature to topography. We looked at
15 national wetland inventory maps. We looked at soil
16 conservation service maps for hydro soil conditions.
17 We did a certain amount of field check.
18 But the biggest amount of effort was to
19 look at the paper trail of whether or not the permits
20 accurately reflected the wetland situation.
21 Q. Have you seen a demonstration of the ERDAS
22 software?
23 A. Yes, I have. At a conference in October, I
24 believe.
25 Q. Where?
96
1 A. At the hotel or the conference center. It
2 was the InterAmerican dialogue, a conference set up
3 by the South Florida Water Management District. It
4 was at the Hyatt Regency.
5 Q. You brought with you today several large
6 maps and charts and so forth. I just want to ask you --
7 here is one that has been marked in a previous
8 deposition on March 15, W-30.
9 Did you have any involvement at all in
10 creating this or working with this exhibit?
11 A. Almost none other than my directing Richard
12 Darling on how he should proceed. I believe it was
13 his data points that were used in that initial map
14 and that was the extent of my involvement.
15 I think that this should be viewed as a
16 marketing tool to see what could be done, what Law
17 Environmental could do with its expertise.
18 Q. Describe for me generally what Richard
19 Darling did.
20 A. He did the ground truth check points just
21 as I did through the project.
22 Q. Do you know when he did this?
23 A. I don't recall the actual date.
24 Q. Did he do it in both conservation areas, do
25 you know?
97
1 A. He couldn't have gone on the ground in
2 Loxahatchee. The ground points would all have been,
3 I think, in 2A. I don't believe they even went to
4 other conservation areas. So whatever you see in
5 Loxahatchee is -- my understanding is only from data
6 points in 2A extrapolating it out.
7 Q. Who did that work, the extrapolation work?
8 A. Well, that's part of image processing, so
9 Ed Downing would have done that.
10 Q. And your involvement was just to supervise
11 Mr. Darling?
12 A. That is right. I also had input as to --
13 that was a discussion as to what time of the year
14 would be the best imaging.
15 Q. Do you know what spectral bands were used
16 to determine these vegetative classifications?
17 A. No.
18 Q. Do you know the level of accuracy of the
19 maps on this exhibit?
20 A. My understanding of the level of accuracy
21 is not good because there isn't enough data. That's
22 the extent of my knowledge.
23 Q. There isn't enough ground truth data?
24 A. That's correct.
25 Q. The next document has been marked
98
1 Exhibit W-31 in the same deposition of 3/15/94.
2 This is labeled, "Assessment of Vegetative
3 Communities in