The population of Easter Island grew steadily for some time and then suddenly decreased dramatically; humans almost disappeared from the island. This is not the sort of behavior predicted by the usual logistic differential equation model of an isolated population or by the predator-prey model for a population using resources. We present a mathematical model that predicts this type of behavior when growth rate of the resources, such as food and trees, is less than the rate at which resources are harvested. Our model is expressed mathematically as a system of two first-order differential equations, both of which are generalized logistic equations. Numerical solution of the equations, using realistic parameters, predicts values very close to archeological observations of Easter Island. We analyze the model by using a coordinate transformation to blow up a singularity at the origin. Our analysis reveals surprisingly rich dynamics including a degenerate Hopf bifurcation.

Spectral unmixing is a common task in hyperspectral data analysis. In order to sufficiently spectrally unmix the data, three key steps must be accomplished: Estimate the number of endmembers (EMs), identify the EMs, and then unmix the data. Several different statistical and geometrical approaches have been developed for all steps of the unmixing process. However, many of these methods rely on using the full image to estimate the number and extract the EMs from the background data. In this paper, spectral unmixing is accomplished using a spatially adaptive approach. Linear unmixing is performed per pixel with EMs identified at the local level, but global abundance maps are created by clustering the locally determined EMs into common groups. Results show that the unmixing residual error of each pixel's spectrum from real data, estimated from the spatially adaptive methodology, is reduced when compared to a global scale EM estimation and linear unmixing methodology. The component algorithms of the new spatially adaptive approach, which complete the three key unmixing steps, can be interchanged while maintaining spatial information, making this new methodology modular. A final advantage of the spatially adaptive spectral unmixing methodology is the user-defined spatial scale size.

Spectral image complexity is an ill-defined term that has been addressed previously in terms of dimensionality, multivariate normality, and other approaches. Here, we apply the concept of the linear mixture model to the question of spectral image complexity at spatially local scales. Essentially, the "complexity" of an image region is related to the volume of a convex set enclosing the data in the spectral space. The volume is estimated as a function of increasing dimensionality (through the use of a set of endmembers describing the data cloud) using the Gram Matrix approach. It is hypothesized that more complex regions of the image are composed of multiple, diverse materials and will thus occupy a larger volume in the hyperspace. The ultimate application here is large area image search without a priori information regarding the target signature. Instead, image cues will be provided based on local, relative estimates of the image complexity. The technique used to estimate the spectral image complexity is described and results are shown for representative image chips and a large area flightline of reflective hyperspectral imagery. The extension to the problem of large area search will then be described and results are shown for a 4-band multispectral image.

In this paper we present a new topology-based algorithm for anomaly detection in dimensionally large datasets. The motivating application is hyperspectral imaging where the dataset can be a collection of ∼ 10 6 points in R k , representing the reflected (or radiometric) spectra of electromagnetic radiation. The algorithm begins by building a graph whose edges connect close pairs of points. The background points are the points in the largest components of this graph and all other points are designated as anomalies. The anomalies are ranked according to their distance to the background. The algorithm is termed Topological Anomaly Detection (TAD). The algorithm is tested on hyperspectral imagery collected with the HYDICE sensor which contains targets of known reflectance and spatial location. Anomaly maps are created and compared to results from the common anomaly detection algorithm RX. We show that the TAD algorithm performs better than RX by achieving greater separation of the anomalies from the background for this dataset.

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