Synergism Of Satellite Observations Of Microwave Emission And Visible Reflectance To Study Land Surface Change

Author(s):  
B.J. Choudhury
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1501-1516 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Boisier ◽  
N. de Noblet-Ducoudré ◽  
P. Ciais

Abstract. Regional cooling resulting from increases in surface albedo has been identified in several studies as the main biogeophysical effect of past land use-induced land cover changes (LCC) on climate. However, the amplitude of this effect remains quite uncertain due to, among other factors, (a) uncertainties in the extent of historical LCC and, (b) differences in the way various models simulate surface albedo and more specifically its dependency on vegetation type and snow cover. We derived monthly albedo climatologies for croplands and four other land cover types from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observations. We then reconstructed the changes in surface albedo between preindustrial times and present-day by combining these climatologies with the land cover maps of 1870 and 1992 used by seven land surface models (LSMs) in the context of the LUCID ("Land Use and Climate: identification of robust Impacts") intercomparison project. These reconstructions show surface albedo increases larger than 10% (absolute) in winter, and larger than 2% in summer between 1870 and 1992 over areas that experienced intense deforestation in the northern temperate regions. The historical surface albedo changes estimated with MODIS data were then compared to those simulated by the various climate models participating in LUCID. The inter-model mean albedo response to LCC shows a similar spatial and seasonal pattern to the one resulting from the MODIS-based reconstructions, that is, larger albedo increases in winter than in summer, driven by the presence of snow. However, individual models show significant differences between the simulated albedo changes and the corresponding reconstructions, despite the fact that land cover change maps are the same. Our analyses suggest that the primary reason for those discrepancies is how LSMs parameterize albedo. Another reason, of secondary importance, results from differences in their simulated snow extent. Our methodology is a useful tool not only to infer observations-based historical changes in land surface variables impacted by LCC, but also to point out deficiencies of the models. We therefore suggest that it could be more widely developed and used in conjunction with other tools in order to evaluate LSMs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 13019-13067
Author(s):  
A. Barella-Ortiz ◽  
J. Polcher ◽  
P. de Rosnay ◽  
M. Piles ◽  
E. Gelati

Abstract. L-Band radiometry is considered to be one of the most suitable techniques to estimate surface soil moisture by means of remote sensing. Brightness temperatures are key in this process, as they are the main input in the retrieval algorithm. The work exposed compares brightness temperatures measured by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission to two different sets of modelled ones, over the Iberian Peninsula from 2010 to 2012. The latter were estimated using a radiative transfer model and state variables from two land surface models: (i) ORganising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic EcosystEms (ORCHIDEE) and (ii) Hydrology – Tiled ECMWF Scheme for Surface Exchanges over Land (H-TESSEL). The radiative transfer model used is the Community Microwave Emission Model (CMEM). A good agreement in the temporal evolution of measured and modelled brightness temperatures is observed. However, their spatial structures are not consistent between them. An Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis of the brightness temperature's error identifies a dominant structure over the South-West of the Iberian Peninsula which evolves during the year and is maximum in Fall and Winter. Hypotheses concerning forcing induced biases and assumptions made in the radiative transfer model are analysed to explain this inconsistency, but no candidate is found to be responsible for it at the moment. Further hypotheses are proposed at the end of the paper.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 2573
Author(s):  
Si-Bo Duan ◽  
Xiao-Jing Han ◽  
Cheng Huang ◽  
Zhao-Liang Li ◽  
Hua Wu ◽  
...  

Land surface temperature (LST) is an important variable in the physics of land–surface processes controlling the heat and water fluxes over the interface between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. Space-borne remote sensing provides the only feasible way for acquiring high-precision LST at temporal and spatial domain over the entire globe. Passive microwave (PMW) satellite observations have the capability to penetrate through clouds and can provide data under both clear and cloud conditions. Nonetheless, compared with thermal infrared data, PMW data suffer from lower spatial resolution and LST retrieval accuracy. Various methods for estimating LST from PMW satellite observations were proposed in the past few decades. This paper provides an extensive overview of these methods. We first present the theoretical basis for retrieving LST from PMW observations and then review the existing LST retrieval methods. These methods are mainly categorized into four types, i.e., empirical methods, semi-empirical methods, physically-based methods, and neural network methods. Advantages, limitations, and assumptions associated with each method are discussed. Prospects for future development to improve the performance of LST retrieval methods from PMW satellite observations are also recommended.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Zhou ◽  
Heather Tollerud ◽  
Christopher Barber ◽  
Kelcy Smith ◽  
Daniel Zelenak

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) initiative involves detecting changes in land cover, use, and condition with the goal of producing land change information to improve the understanding of the Earth system and provide insights on the impacts of land surface change on society. The change detection method ingests all available high-quality data from the Landsat archive in a time series approach to identify the timing and location of land surface change. Annual thematic land cover maps are then produced by classifying time series models. In this paper, we describe the optimization of the classification method used to derive the thematic land cover product. We investigated the influences of auxiliary data, sample size, and training from different sources such as the U.S. Geological Survey’s Land Cover Trends project and National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2001 and NLCD 2011). The results were evaluated and validated based on independent data from the training dataset. We found that refining the auxiliary data effectively reduced artifacts in the thematic land cover map that are related to data availability. We improved the classification accuracy and stability considerably by using a total of 20 million training pixels with a minimum of 600,000 and a maximum of 8 million training pixels per class within geographic windows consisting of nine Analysis Ready Data tiles (450 by 450 km2). Comparisons revealed that the NLCD 2001 training data delivered the best classification accuracy. Compared to the original LCMAP classification strategy used for early evaluation (e.g., Trends training data, 20,000 samples), the optimized classification strategy improved the annual land cover map accuracy by an average of 10%.


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