scholarly journals Geostatistical integration to improve representativeness of satellite precipitation estimates and field measurements

10.29007/glj1 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe-Omar Tapia-Silva

Since the network of rainfall gauges and ground radars is generally not dense enough, satellite data have been used to estimate Precipitation (P). These data have the ability to capture the spatial variability pattern of the parameter, but are often inaccurate in relation to the value of the field measured parameter. Therefore, geostatistical methods were evaluated to improve the spatial representativeness of field measurements (FM) and satellite estimates. The work has been made for a hydrological sub region in the Mexican tropic. The geostatistical methods used to interpolate P-FM were ordinary kriging (KO), universal kriging (KU) and regression kriging (RK) as well as the Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) mechanical interpolator for comparison purposes. Furthermore, the values at the pixel centers of the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM) images were interpolated using OK and evaluated using leave-one-out cross validation (LOO-CV). The best LOO-CV evaluated method consisted of the RK interpolation of the point FM taking as auxiliary variable the OK interpolation of the TRMM cell centers. It is concluded that the geostatistical integration between rainfall estimates from satellite data and FM data is promising because satellite information has the ability to capture spatial variability and the point FM add accuracy to the results. These characteristics combined can produce a P product useful for modeling activities and environmental management.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafei Luo ◽  
David Doxaran ◽  
Quinten Vanhellemont

This study investigated the use of frequent metre-scale resolution Pléiades satellite imagery to monitor water quality parameters in the highly turbid Gironde Estuary (GE, SW France). Pléiades satellite data were processed and analyzed in two representative test sites of the GE: 1) the maximum turbidity zone and 2) the mouth of the estuary. The main objectives of this study were to: (i) validate the Dark Spectrum Fitting (DSF) atmospheric correction developed by Vanhellemont and Ruddick (2018) applied to Pléiades satellite data recorded over the GE; (ii) highlight the benefits of frequent metre-scale Pléiades observations in highly turbid estuaries by comparing them to previously validated satellite observations made at medium (250/300 m for MODIS, MERIS, OLCI data) and high (20/30 m for SPOT, OLI and MSI data) spatial resolutions. The results show that the DSF allows for an accurate retrieval of water turbidity by inversion of the water reflectance in the near-infrared (NIR) and red wavebands. The difference between Pléiades-derived turbidity and field measurements was proven to be in the order of 10%. To evaluate the spatial variability of water turbidity at metre scale, Pléiades data at 2 m resolution were resampled to 20 m and 250 m to simulate typical coarser resolution sensors. On average, the derived spatial variability in the GE is lower than or equal to 10% and 26%, respectively, in 20-m and 250-m aggregated pixels. Pléiades products not only show, in great detail, the turbidity features in the estuary and river plume, they also allow to map the turbidity inside ports and capture the complex spatial variations of turbidity along the shores of the estuary. Furthermore, the daily acquisition capabilities may provide additional advantages over other satellite constellations when monitoring highly dynamic estuarine systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diogo Neia Eberhardt ◽  
Robélio Leandro Marchão ◽  
Pedro Rodolfo Siqueira Vendrame ◽  
Marc Corbeels ◽  
Osvaldo Guedes Filho ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Tropical Savannas cover an area of approximately 1.9 billion hectares around the word and are subject to regular fires every 1 to 4 years. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of burning windrow wood from Cerrado (Brazilian Savanna) deforestation on the spatial variability of soil chemical properties, in the field. The data were analysed by using geostatistical methods. The semivariograms for pH(H2O), pH(CaCl2), Ca, Mg and K were calculated according to spherical models, whereas the phosphorus showed a nugget effect. The cross semi-variograms showed correlations between pH(H2O) and pH(CaCl2) with other variables with spatial dependence (exchangeable Ca and Mg and available K). The spatial variability maps for the pH(H2O), pH(CaCl2), Ca, Mg and K concentrations also showed similar patterns of spatial variability, indicating that burning the vegetation after deforestation caused a well-defined spatial arrangement. Even after 20 years of use with agriculture, the spatial distribution of pH(H2O), pH(CaCl2), Ca, Mg and available K was affected by the wood windrow burning that took place during the initial deforestation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (8) ◽  
pp. 1169-1183 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.K. Lo ◽  
Y.F. Leung

This paper introduces an approach that utilizes field measurements to update the parameters characterizing spatial variability of soil properties and model bias, leading to refined predictions for subsequent construction stages. It incorporates random field simulations and a surrogate modeling technique into the Bayesian updating framework, while the spatial and stage-dependent correlations of model bias can also be considered. The approach is illustrated using two cases of multi-stage braced excavations, one being a hypothetical scenario and the other from a case study in Hong Kong. Making use of all the deflection measurements along an inclinometer, the principal components of the random field and model bias factors can be updated efficiently as the instrumentation data become available. These various sources of uncertainty do not only cause discrepancies between prior predictions and actual performance, but can also lead to response mechanisms that cannot be captured by deterministic approaches, such as distortion of the wall along the longitudinal direction of the excavation. The proposed approach addresses these issues in an efficient manner, producing prediction intervals that reasonably encapsulate the response uncertainty as shown in the two cases. The capability to continuously refine the response estimates and prediction intervals can help support the decision-making process as the construction progresses.


2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1507-1514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Rosa Vieira ◽  
Osvaldo Guedes Filho ◽  
Márcio Koiti Chiba ◽  
Heitor Cantarella

Assessing the spatial variability of soil chemical properties has become an important aspect of soil management strategies with a view to higher crop yields with minimal environmental degradation. This study was carried out at the Centro Experimental of the Instituto Agronomico, in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. The aim was to characterize the spatial variability of chemical properties of a Rhodic Hapludox on a recently bulldozer-cleaned area after over 30 years of coffee cultivation. Soil samples were collected in a 20 x 20 m grid with 36 sampling points across a 1 ha area in the layers 0.0-0.2 and 0.2-0.4 m to measure the following chemical properties: pH, organic matter, K+, P, Ca2+, Mg2+, potential acidity, NH4-N, and NO3-N. Descriptive statistics were applied to assess the central tendency and dispersion moments. Geostatistical methods were applied to evaluate and to model the spatial variability of variables by calculating semivariograms and kriging interpolation. Spatial dependence patterns defined by spherical model adjusted semivariograms were made for all cited soil properties. Moderate to strong degrees of spatial dependence were found between 31 and 60 m. It was still possible to map soil spatial variability properties in the layers 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm after plant removal with bulldozers.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6827-6840 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Réjou-Méchain ◽  
H. C. Muller-Landau ◽  
M. Detto ◽  
S. C. Thomas ◽  
T. Le Toan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Advances in forest carbon mapping have the potential to greatly reduce uncertainties in the global carbon budget and to facilitate effective emissions mitigation strategies such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Though broad-scale mapping is based primarily on remote sensing data, the accuracy of resulting forest carbon stock estimates depends critically on the quality of field measurements and calibration procedures. The mismatch in spatial scales between field inventory plots and larger pixels of current and planned remote sensing products for forest biomass mapping is of particular concern, as it has the potential to introduce errors, especially if forest biomass shows strong local spatial variation. Here, we used 30 large (8–50 ha) globally distributed permanent forest plots to quantify the spatial variability in aboveground biomass density (AGBD in Mg ha–1) at spatial scales ranging from 5 to 250 m (0.025–6.25 ha), and to evaluate the implications of this variability for calibrating remote sensing products using simulated remote sensing footprints. We found that local spatial variability in AGBD is large for standard plot sizes, averaging 46.3% for replicate 0.1 ha subplots within a single large plot, and 16.6% for 1 ha subplots. AGBD showed weak spatial autocorrelation at distances of 20–400 m, with autocorrelation higher in sites with higher topographic variability and statistically significant in half of the sites. We further show that when field calibration plots are smaller than the remote sensing pixels, the high local spatial variability in AGBD leads to a substantial "dilution" bias in calibration parameters, a bias that cannot be removed with standard statistical methods. Our results suggest that topography should be explicitly accounted for in future sampling strategies and that much care must be taken in designing calibration schemes if remote sensing of forest carbon is to achieve its promise.


2018 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. 01098
Author(s):  
Guangdong Wu ◽  
Xiao Zhang ◽  
Jijun Xu

The streambed flux is variable in space; the spatial variability results in part from bedforms, but few works on streambed fluxes in channels with strongly abrupt varying bedforms are carried out. Heat as a tracer to delineate the streambed flux pattern has been widely adopted in numerous fields. In this paper, a braided channel with complicated topography was selected as study site, where the temperature was monitored. One-dimensional (1-D) analytical method based on the amplitude attenuation (Ar) and 1-D numerical method were used to interpret the temperature. As a result, streambed fluxes of a total of 50 sites in the braided channel are obtained. From the results we can know the magnitude and direction of streamed flow velocity are spatially variable, even within a 1-m distance. Then, this study summarizes five bedform-driven flux patterns: ① downward flow driven by the head difference between groundwater and stream, ② downward flow related to a meter-scale pool, ③ a transition from upward to downward flow associated with a centimeter-scale riffle, ④ horizontal flow in braided bars and ⑤ upward flow driven by vegetation roots. Overall, multiple physical mechanisms together contributed to the complex streambed flow system, which reflected great challenges for the scaling up of point-in-space seepage flux.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 925-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo H. Virtanen ◽  
Pekka Kolmonen ◽  
Larisa Sogacheva ◽  
Edith Rodríguez ◽  
Giulia Saponaro ◽  
...  

Abstract. Satellite-based aerosol products are routinely validated against ground-based reference data, usually obtained from sun photometer networks such as AERONET (AEROsol RObotic NETwork). In a typical validation exercise a spatial sample of the instantaneous satellite data is compared against a temporal sample of the point-like ground-based data. The observations do not correspond to exactly the same column of the atmosphere at the same time, and the representativeness of the reference data depends on the spatiotemporal variability of the aerosol properties in the samples. The associated uncertainty is known as the collocation mismatch uncertainty (CMU). The validation results depend on the sampling parameters. While small samples involve less variability, they are more sensitive to the inevitable noise in the measurement data. In this paper we study systematically the effect of the sampling parameters in the validation of AATSR (Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer) aerosol optical depth (AOD) product against AERONET data and the associated collocation mismatch uncertainty. To this end, we study the spatial AOD variability in the satellite data, compare it against the corresponding values obtained from densely located AERONET sites, and assess the possible reasons for observed differences. We find that the spatial AOD variability in the satellite data is approximately 2 times larger than in the ground-based data, and the spatial variability correlates only weakly with that of AERONET for short distances. We interpreted that only half of the variability in the satellite data is due to the natural variability in the AOD, and the rest is noise due to retrieval errors. However, for larger distances (∼ 0.5∘) the correlation is improved as the noise is averaged out, and the day-to-day changes in regional AOD variability are well captured. Furthermore, we assess the usefulness of the spatial variability of the satellite AOD data as an estimate of CMU by comparing the retrieval errors to the total uncertainty estimates including the CMU in the validation. We find that accounting for CMU increases the fraction of consistent observations.


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