Department of Geography

Senior Lecturer in Geographic Information

Telephone:
0116 223 1320 Fax:
0116 252 3854 Email:
njt9@le.ac.uk
Room:
Bennett Building F42
Personal Homepage

I arrived at Leicester in January 1999, prior to which I was a lecturer in the School of Geography, Queen's University, Belfast (1994-1998), a NERC-funded PhD student at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (1991-1994; PhD defended 1995) and a undergraduate student in the Department of Geography, Durham University (1983-1986; First Class Honours awarded 1986; Robin Mills Prize, 1986).

My research is in the area of GIS and spatial statistics. My primary research interest is in the statistical modelling of topographic surfaces with emphasis on spatial scaling. Recent research in this context has been concerned with the application of wavelet methods, error modelling as well as the use of airborne and terrestrial LiDAR for surface generation (the latter supported by a grant from the Ordnance Survey). Secondary interests have focused on a variety of application areas including the modelling of census population surfaces, the application of GIS to palaeoenvironments, philosophic and pedagogic research related to GIS. A selection of recent representative publications is listed below. In addition I have also co-edited two research books: Advances in Remote Sensing and GIS Analysis (1999), and Modelling Scale in Geographical Information Science (2001) both with Peter Atkinson, and written a research methods textbook Conducting Research in Human Geography (2000) with Rob Kitchin.

In 2004, I led the successful £3.9million bid to HEFCE to form a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) named SPLINT (Spatial Literacy IN Teaching) and the follow-up £245,000 bid (SPLINT:er) in the context of GIS and geospatial technologies, for which I am currently Director. From 2002-2005 I was Director of the MSc in GIS (and co-Director of 3 other MSc programmes) and during this period I also secured recognition and funding by NERC and the RICS for the MSc in GIS.

External Activities

Editorial Positions

• Editor (GIS section) Geography Compass
• Member of Editorial board of Transactions in GIS
• Member of Editorial board of Journal of Applied Geography

International/national working groups and steering committees

• ISPRS - Commission V - Working Group V / 6
• GISRUK
• AGI Education Working Group
• MAT-SIG RSPSoc

Other

• External Examiner, MSc Defence Geographic Information, Royal School of Military Survey, Cranfield University 2008-
• Chair,  Accuracy 2010 international conference

PhD Supervision

Selected Publications

Tansey, K, Selmes, N., Anstee, A., Tate, N.J. and Denniss, A. (2009) Estimating tree and stand variables in a Corsican Pine woodland from terrestrial laser scanner data, International Journal of Remote Sensing 30(19): 5195 – 5209.

Tate, N.J. and Unwin, D. J. (2009) Teaching GIS&T, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Volume 33 Supplement 1: S1-S6

Gosling, W.G, Mayle, F.E, Tate, N.J. and Killeen, T.J. (2009) Differentiation between neotropical rainforest, dry forest, and savannah ecosystem by their modern pollen spectra and implications for the fossil pollen record, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 153:70–85

Darnell, A., Tate, N.J., Brunsdon, C. (2008)  Improving user assessment of error implications in digital elevation models, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 32(4): 268-277

Danson, F.M., Armitage, R.P.,  Bandugula, V., Ramirez, F.A.,  Tate, N. J.,  Tansey, K. and Tegzes, T. (2008) Terrestrial laser scanners to measure forest canopy gap fraction. Proceedings SILVILASER 2008, September 17-19, Edinburgh Scotland.

Alexander, C., Tansey, K., Tate, N.J., Smith-Voysey, S. & Kaduk, J. (2008)  Extraction of Vegetation for Topographic Mapping from Full-Waveform Airborne Laser Scanning Data. Proceedings SILVILASER 2008, September 17-19, Edinburgh Scotland.

Tate, N.J. (2008) Elevation, in: Karen Kemp (ed) Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science, London: Sage.

Unwin, D.J and Tate, N.J. (2008)  Collaborating in GIScience education: past trends, future possibilities. Proceedings EUGISES2008, September 11-14, Cirencester, UK

Arrell, K.E., Fisher, P.F., Tate, N. and Bastin, L. (2007) A fuzzy c-means classification of elevation derivatives to extract the morphometric classification of landforms in Snowdonia, Wales, Computers and Geosciences 33(10):1366-1381  

Tate, N.J., Fisher, P.F. and Martin, D. (2007) GIS and Surfaces, in: Wilson, J. and Fotheringham, S. (eds), Handbook to GIS, Blackwell Companions to Geography.

Fisher, P.F. and Tate, N.J. (2006) Causes and consequences of error in digital elevation models, Progress in Physical Geography, 30, 467-489.

Alexander, C., Smith, S., Jarvis, C.H., Tate, N.J., and Tansey, K. (2006): 3-D visualization of OS MasterMap®  using height data from Lidar. In Priestnall, G. and Aplin, P. (eds), Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 14th Annual Conference, Nottingham, April 5-7 2006, pp. 306-312.

Tate, N.J., Brunsdon, C. Charlton, M. Fotheringham, A.S. and Jarvis, C.H. (2005): Smoothing and Generalising Lidar Digital Surface Models: Experiments with Loess Regression and Discrete Wavelets, Journal of Geographical Systems 7, 273-290.

Tate, N.J. & Fisher, P.F. (2005): Les erreurs dans les modèles numériques d'élévation, In Qualité de l'information géographique (Devillers, R. and Jeansoulin, R. eds.), Hermès, France. pp. 95-111.

Gosling, W.G, Mayle, F.E, Tate, N.J. and Killeen, T.J. (2005): Modern pollen rain characteristics of tall terra firme moist evergreen forest, southern Amazonia, Quaternary Research, 64, 284-297.

A full list of publications is available in PDF format by clicking here.