scholarly journals Assessment and inventory of forest parameters using medium-high resolution satellite data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ειρήνη Χρυσάφη

Τα μεσογειακά δάση χαρακτηρίζονται από υψηλή χωροχρονική ετερογένεια και αποτελούν ένα από σημαντικότερα σημεία της βιοποικιλότητας στον πλανήτη. Η σημαντική αξία τους και το ευρύ φάσμα των οικοσυστημικών υπηρεσιών που παρέχουν, αναγνωρίζεται ευρέως από επιστήμονες, διεθνείς συμβάσεις και οργανισμούς. Ωστόσο, η ευπάθεια τους σε ανθρώπινες και φυσικές απειλές έχει ως αποτέλεσμα την διατάραξη τους. Συνεπώς, σχέδια βιώσιμης διαχείρισης και αειφορικής ανάπτυξης καθίστανται ως επιτακτική ανάγκη. Οι πρακτικές παρακολούθησης και απογραφής δασών απαιτούν την αξιόπιστη εκτίμηση δασικών παραμέτρων, όπως η κυκλική επιφάνεια, ο αριθμός δέντρων ανά μονάδα επιφάνειας και ξυλώδες όγκου. Η ετερογένεια των μεσογειακών δασών και η δύσκολη πρόσβασής τους, καθιστά την επιστήμη της τηλεπισκόπησης ως εξαιρετικά χρήσιμο μέσο για την αξιολόγηση των δασικών πόρων. Η τεχνολογία της τηλεπισκόπησης και τα ανοιχτά δεδομένα τηλεπισκόπησης παρέχουν μεγάλες δυνατότητες στον τομέα της δασολογίας και στην δασική απογραφή. Επιπλέον, η ταχεία πρόοδος στους αλγόριθμους τεχνητής νοημοσύνης διευκολύνει την ανάλυση ευρέος φάσματος δεδομένων. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, ο συνδυασμός αυτών των ισχυρών εργαλείων (δεδομένα τηλεπισκόπησης και προσεγγίσεις μηχανικής μάθησης) συνιστά μια πολλά υποσχόμενη, αλλά και ερευνητική πρόκληση, για την εκτίμηση δασικών παραμέτρων. Στη παρούσα διατριβή, εξετάζονται διάφορες προσεγγίσεις για την βελτιστοποίηση της εκτίμησης δασικών παραμέτρων με την χρήση δορυφορικών εικόνων και τεχνικών μηχανικής μάθησης.Η δομή της παρούσας διατριβής αποτελείται από τρία μέρη. Το πρώτο μέρος αποτελείται από τέσσερα κεφάλαια. Αρχικά, στο Κεφάλαιο 1, γίνεται μια εισαγωγή στην αξία των μεσογειακών δασών, στις υπηρεσίες που παρέχουν και στις απειλές που αντιμετωπίζουν. Το Κεφάλαιο 2 τονίζει την ανάγκη αειφορικής διαχείρισης των δασών και κατ 'επέκταση της απογραφής και αξιόπιστης εκτίμησης δασικών παραμέτρων. Στο Κεφάλαιο 3, παρουσιάζονται εν συντομία πηγές δεδομένων τηλεπισκόπησης και η συμβολή τους σε δασικές εφαρμογές και ιδιαίτερα στην εκτίμηση δασικών παραμέτρων, σε περιοχές της Μεσογείου. Το κεφάλαιο 4, αποτελεί μια εισαγωγή στους αλγόριθμους τεχνητής νοημοσύνης και μηχανικής μάθησης και πώς αυτές οι προσεγγίσεις εφαρμόζονται στον τομέα της τηλεπισκόπησης και της δασολογίας. Τέλος παρουσιάζονται τα ερευνητικά ερωτήματα και τα αντικείμενα της παρούσας διατριβής. Το δεύτερο μέρος αποτελείται από τέσσερα άρθρα, εκ των οποίων, το πρώτο (Κεφάλαιο 7) έχει δημοσιευτεί στο περιοδικό Remote Sensing of Environment (2017) και αφορά την εκτίμηση δασικών παραμέτρων χρησιμοποιώντας δια-εποχιακές εικόνες Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager. Το δεύτερο άρθρο (Κεφάλαιο 8) έχει δημοσιευτεί στο Remote Sensing Letters (2017) και αφορά τις σχέσεις μεταξύ ξυλώδες όγκου και εικόνων Sentinel-2 Multi Spectral Instrument. Το τρίτο άρθρο (Κεφάλαιο 9) έχει δημοσιευτεί στο περιοδικό International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (2019) και αφορά την αξιολόγηση των δορυφορικών δεδομένων Sentinel-2 Multi Spectral Instrument για την εκτίμηση του ξυλώδες όγκου. Το τελευταίο άρθρο (Κεφάλαιο 10) που προορίζεται προς δημοσίευση, αποτελεί μια προκαταρκτική μελέτη για την εκτίμηση του ξυλώδες όγκου σε ένα μεσογειακό δασικό οικοσύστημα, με μία μετά-μαθησιακή προσέγγιση και την ανάπτυξη ενός μοντέλου συσσωρευμένης γενίκευσης (stacked generalization). Τέλος, στο τρίτο μέρος της παρούσας διατριβής παρουσιάζονται συνοπτικά οι απαντήσεις των ερωτημάτων που τέθηκαν στην παρούσα διατριβή και τα προβλήματα - περιορισμοί που αντιμετωπίστηκαν. Επίσης, προτείνονται δυνατότητες και προοπτικές εξέλιξης της παρούσας έρευνας, που θα μπορούσε να αποτελέσουν αντικείμενο για μελλοντική έρευνα.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Iglseder ◽  
Markus Immitzer ◽  
Christoph Bauerhansl ◽  
Hannes Hoffert-Hösl ◽  
Klaus Kramer ◽  
...  

<p><span><span>At the end of the 1980s the Municipal Department for Environmental Protection of Vienna - MA 22 initiated a detailed biotope mapping on the basis of the Viennese nature conservation law. Approximately 40 % of Vienna’s city area were covered, however only 2 % of the densely populated areas. This biotope mapping was the basis for the biotope types mapping (2005-2011) and of </span></span><span><span>the</span></span><span><span> green areas monitoring (2005). An update of these surveys has been planned in order to meet the various requirements of urban nature conservation and the national and international, respectively, legal monitoring and reporting obligations.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Since the 1970s the municipality of Vienna has built up a comprehensive database and uses state-of-the-art methods for collecting geodata carrying out services for surveying, airborne imaging and laser-scanning. Currently systems for mobile mapping, oblique aerial photos and a surveying flight with a single photon LiDAR system are being implemented or prepared. Because of the numerous high-resolution data available within the municipality and limitations mainly in spatial resolution of satellite data, the City of Vienna saw no need or benefit in integrating satellite images until now.</span></span></p><p><span><span>However, satellite data are now available within the European Copernicus program, which have considerable potential for monitoring green spaces and biotope types due to their high temporal resolution and the large number of spectral channels and SAR data. For the first time, the Sentinel-1 mission offers a combination of high spatial resolution in Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) recording mode and high temporal coverage of up to four shots every 12 days in cross-polarization in the C-band. The Sentinel-2 satellites deliver multispectral data in 10 channels every 5 days with spatial resolutions of 10 or 20 m.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Within the SeMoNa22 project, various indicators are derived for the Vienna urban area (2015-2020) and used for object-oriented mapping and classification of biotope types and characterization of the green space:</span></span></p><ul><li> <p><span><span>Sentinel-1 data (→ time series on the annual cycles in the backscattering properties of the vegetation, phenology),</span></span></p> </li> <li> <p><span><span>Sentinel-2 data (→ multispectral time series via parameters for habitat classification / vegetation indices),</span></span></p> </li> <li> <p><span><span>High-resolution earth observation data (airborne laser scanning (ALS), image matching, orthophoto → various parameter describing the horizontal and vertical vegetation structure).</span></span></p> </li> </ul><p><span><span>The main goals of SeMoNa22 is to explore efficient and effective ways of knowing if, how and to what extent the data collected can form the basis and become an integrative part of urban conservation monitoring. For this purpose, combinations of different earth observation data (satellite- and aircraft- supported or terrestrial sensors) and existing structured fieldwork data collections (species mapping, soil parameters, meteorology) are examined by means of pixel- and object-oriented methods of remote sensing and image processing. The study is done for several test sites in Vienna covering different ecosystems. In this contribution the ongoing SeMoNa22 project will be presented and first results will be shown and discussed.</span></span></p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingyu Liu ◽  
Chuan Xiong ◽  
Jinmei Pan ◽  
Tianxing Wang ◽  
Jiancheng Shi ◽  
...  

Currently, the accurate estimation of the maximum snow water equivalent (SWE) in mountainous areas is an important topic. In this study, in order to improve the accuracy and spatial resolution of SWE reconstruction in alpine regions, the Sentinel-2(MSI) and Landsat 8(OLI) satellite data with the spatial resolution of tens of meters are used instead of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data so that the pixel mixing problem is avoided. Meanwhile, geostationary satellite-based and topographic-corrected incoming shortwave radiation is used in the restricted degree-day model to improve the accuracy of radiation inputs. The seasonal maximum SWE accumulation of a river basin in the winter season of 2017–2018 is estimated. The spatial and temporal characteristics of SWE at a fine spatial and temporal resolution are then analyzed. And the results of reconstruction model with different input parameters are compared. The results showed that the average maximum SWE of the study area in 2017–2018 was 377.83 mm and the accuracy of snow cover, air temperature and the radiation parameters all affects the maximum SWE distribution on magnitude, elevation and aspect. Although the accuracy of other forcing parameters still needs to be improved, the estimation of the local maximum snow water equivalent in mountainous areas benefits from the application of high-resolution Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 data. The joint usage of high-resolution remote sensing data from different satellites can greatly improve the temporal and spatial resolution of snow cover and the spatial resolution of SWE estimation. This method can provide more accurate and detailed SWE for hydrological models, which is of great significance to hydrology and water resources research.


Author(s):  
S. Meti ◽  
P. D. Lakshmi ◽  
M. S. Nagaraja ◽  
V. Shreepad ◽  

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Soil salinization is most common land degradation process occurring in deep vertisol of northern dry zone of Karnataka, India. Accurate and high resolution spatial information on salinization can assist policy makers to better target areas for interventions to avoid aggravation of soil degradation process. Digital soil mapping using satellite data has been identified as a potential means of obtaining soil information. This paper focuses on exploring possibility of using new generation medium resolution Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellite data to map alkaline soils of Ramthal irrigation project area in north Karnataka. Surface soil salinity parameters of zone 20 were correlated with reflectance values of different band and band combination and traditional salinity indices and result has indicated that SWIR bands of both satellite showed significant negative correlation with soil pH, EC (r&amp;thinsp;=&amp;thinsp;&amp;minus;0.39 to &amp;minus;0.45) whereas visible and NIR bands did not show significant relation. However rationing of SWIR bands with visible blue band has significantly improved the correlation with soil pH and EC (r&amp;thinsp;=&amp;thinsp;+0.60 to +0.70). Traditional salinity index based on visible bands failed to show significant correlation with soil parameters. It is interesting to note that SWIR bands alone did not show significant correlation with soil sodicity parameters like exchangeable Na, SAR, RSC but band rationing with blue bands has significantly improved the correlation (r&amp;thinsp;=&amp;thinsp;0.45). High resolution soil salinity map was prepared using simple linear regression model and using this map will serve as base map for the policy makers.</p>


Author(s):  
A. H. Ngandam Mfondoum ◽  
P. G. Gbetkom ◽  
R. Cooper ◽  
S. Hakdaoui ◽  
M. B. Mansour Badamassi

Abstract. This paper addresses the remote sensing challenging field of urban mixed pixels on a medium spatial resolution satellite data. The tentatively named Normalized Difference Built-up and Surroundings Unmixing Index (NDBSUI) is proposed by using Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) bands. It uses the Shortwave Infrared 2 (SWIR2) as the main wavelength, the SWIR1 with the red wavelengths, for the built-up extraction. A ratio is computed based on the normalization process and the application is made on six cities with different urban and environmental characteristics. The built-up of the experimental site of Yaoundé is extracted with an overall accuracy of 95.51% and a kappa coefficient of 0.90. The NDBSUI is validated over five other sites, chosen according to Cameroon’s bioclimatic zoning. The results are satisfactory for the cities of Yokadouma and Kumba in the bimodal and monomodal rainfall zones, where overall accuracies are up to 98.9% and 97.5%, with kappa coefficients of 0.88 and 0.94 respectively, although these values are close to those of three other indices. However, in the cities of Foumban, Ngaoundéré and Garoua, representing the western highlands, the high Guinea savannah and the Sudano-sahelian zones where built-up is more confused with soil features, overall accuracies of 97.06%, 95.29% and 74.86%, corresponding to 0.918, 0.89 and 0.42 kappa coefficients were recorded. Difference of accuracy with EBBI, NDBI and UI are up to 31.66%, confirming the NDBSUI efficiency to automate built-up extraction and unmixing from surrounding noises with less biases.


Author(s):  
Gordana Kaplan ◽  
Ugur Avdan

Wetlands benefits can be summarized but are not limited to their ability to store floodwaters and improve water quality, providing habitats for wildlife and supporting biodiversity, as well as aesthetic values. Over the past few decades, remote sensing and geographical information technologies has proven to be a useful and frequent applications in monitoring and mapping wetlands. Combining both optical and microwave satellite data can give significant information about the biophysical characteristics of wetlands and wetlands` vegetation. Also, fusing data from different sensors, such as radar and optical remote sensing data, can increase the wetland classification accuracy. In this paper we investigate the ability of fusion two fine spatial resolution satellite data, Sentinel-2 and the Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite, Sentinel-1, for mapping wetlands. As a study area in this paper, Balikdami wetland located in the Anatolian part of Turkey has been selected. Both Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images require pre-processing before their use. After the pre-processing, several vegetation indices calculated from the Sentinel-2 bands were included in the data set. Furthermore, an object-based classification was performed. For the accuracy assessment of the obtained results, number of random points were added over the study area. In addition, the results were compared with data from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle collected on the same data of the overpass of the Sentinel-2, and three days before the overpass of Sentinel-1 satellite. The accuracy assessment showed that the results significant and satisfying in the wetland classification using both multispectral and microwave data. The statistical results of the fusion of the optical and radar data showed high wetland mapping accuracy, with an overall classification accuracy of approximately 90% in the object-based classification. Compared with the high resolution UAV data, the classification results give promising results for mapping and monitoring not just wetlands, but also the sub-classes of the study area. For future research, multi-temporal image use and terrain data collection are recommended.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4674
Author(s):  
Yuqing Qin ◽  
Jie Su ◽  
Mingfeng Wang

The formation and distribution of melt ponds have an important influence on the Arctic climate. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain more accurate information on melt ponds on Arctic sea ice by remote sensing. The present large-scale melt pond products, especially the melt pond fraction (MPF), still require verification, and using very high resolution optical satellite remote sensing data is a good way to verify the large-scale retrieval of MPF products. Unlike most MPF algorithms using very high resolution data, the LinearPolar algorithm using Sentinel-2 data considers the albedo of melt ponds unfixed. In this paper, by selecting the best band combination, we applied this algorithm to Landsat 8 (L8) data. Moreover, Sentinel-2 data, as well as support vector machine (SVM) and iterative self-organizing data analysis technique (ISODATA) algorithms, are used as the comparison and verification data. The results show that the recognition accuracy of the LinearPolar algorithm for melt ponds is higher than that of previous algorithms. The overall accuracy and kappa coefficient results achieved by using the LinearPolar algorithm with L8 and Sentinel-2A (S2), the SVM algorithm, and the ISODATA algorithm are 95.38% and 0.88, 94.73% and 0.86, and 92.40%and 0.80, respectively, which are much higher than those of principal component analysis (PCA) and Markus algorithms. The mean MPF (10.0%) obtained from 80 cases from L8 data based on the LinearPolar algorithm is much closer to Sentinel-2 (10.9%) than the Markus (5.0%) and PCA algorithms (4.2%), with a mean MPF difference of only 0.9%, and the correlation coefficients of the two MPFs are as high as 0.95. The overall relative error of the LinearPolar algorithm is 53.5% and 46.4% lower than that of the Markus and PCA algorithms, respectively, and the root mean square error (RMSE) is 30.9% and 27.4% lower than that of the Markus and PCA algorithms, respectively. In the cases without obvious melt ponds, the relative error is reduced more than that of those with obvious melt ponds because the LinearPolar algorithm can identify 100% of dark melt ponds and relatively small melt ponds, and the latter contributes more to the reduction in the relative error of MPF retrieval. With a wider range and longer time series, the MPF from Landsat data are more efficient than those from Sentinel-2 for verifying large-scale MPF products or obtaining long-term monitoring of a fixed area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 1744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Maciel ◽  
Evlyn Novo ◽  
Lino Sander de Carvalho ◽  
Cláudio Barbosa ◽  
Rogério Flores Júnior ◽  
...  

Remote sensing imagery are fundamental to increasing the knowledge about sediment dynamics in the middle-lower Amazon floodplains. Moreover, they can help to understand both how climate change and how land use and land cover changes impact the sediment exchange between the Amazon River and floodplain lakes in this important and complex ecosystem. This study investigates the suitability of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 spectral characteristics in retrieving total (TSS) and inorganic (TSI) suspended sediments on a set of Amazon floodplain lakes in the middle-lower Amazon basin using in situ Remote Sensing Reflectance (Rrs) measurements to simulate Landsat 8/OLI (Operational Land Imager) and Sentinel 2/MSI (Multispectral Instrument) bands and to calibrate/validate several TSS and TSI empirical algorithms. The calibration was based on the Monte Carlo Simulation carried out for the following datasets: (1) All-Dataset, consisting of all the data acquired during four field campaigns at five lakes spread over the lower Amazon floodplain (n = 94); (2) Campaign-Dataset including samples acquired in a specific hydrograph phase (season) in all lakes. As sample size varied from one season to the other, n varied from 18 to 31; (3) Lake-Dataset including samples acquired in all seasons at a given lake with n also varying from 17 to 67 for each lake. The calibrated models were, then, applied to OLI and MSI scenes acquired in August 2017. The performance of three atmospheric correction algorithms was also assessed for both OLI (6S, ACOLITE, and L8SR) and MSI (6S, ACOLITE, and Sen2Cor) images. The impact of glint correction on atmosphere-corrected image performance was assessed against in situ glint-corrected Rrs measurements. After glint correction, the L8SR and 6S atmospheric correction performed better with the OLI and MSI sensors, respectively (Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) = 16.68% and 14.38%) considering the entire set of bands. However, for a given single band, different methods have different performances. The validated TSI and TSS satellite estimates showed that both in situ TSI and TSS algorithms provided reliable estimates, having the best results for the green OLI band (561 nm) and MSI red-edge band (705 nm) (MAPE < 21%). Moreover, the findings indicate that the OLI and MSI models provided similar errors, which support the use of both sensors as a virtual constellation for the TSS and TSI estimate over an Amazon floodplain. These results demonstrate the applicability of the calibration/validation techniques developed for the empirical modeling of suspended sediments in lower Amazon floodplain lakes using medium-resolution sensors.


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