scholarly journals Comparison of LAI Estimates from High Resolution Satellite Observations Using Different Biophysical Processors

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Federico Filipponi

Earth observation provides timely and spatially explicit information about crop phenology and vegetation dynamics that can support decision making and sustainable agricultural land management. Vegetation spectral indices calculated from optical multispectral satellite sensors have been largely used to monitor vegetation status. In addition, techniques to retrieve biophysical parameters from satellite acquisitions, such as the Leaf Area Index (LAI), have allowed to assimilate Earth observation time series in numerical modeling for the analysis of several land surface processes related to agroecosystem dynamics. More recently, biophysical processors used to estimate biophysical parameters from satellite acquisitions have been calibrated for retrieval from sensors with different high spatial resolution and spectral characteristics. Virtual constellations of satellite sensors allow the generation of denser LAI time series, contributing to improve vegetation phenology estimation accuracy and, consequently, enhancing agroecosystems monitoring capacity. This research study compares LAI estimates over croplands using different biophysical processors from Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat-8 OLI satellite sensors. The results are used to demonstrate the capacity of virtual satellite constellation to strengthen LAI time series to derive important cropland use information over large areas.

Author(s):  
A. Htitiou ◽  
A. Boudhar ◽  
Y. Lebrini ◽  
T. Benabdelouahab

Abstract. Remote sensing offers spatially explicit and temporally continuous observational data of various land surface parameters such as vegetation index, land surface temperature, soil moisture, leaf area index, and evapotranspiration, which can be widely leveraged for various applications at different scales and contexts. One of the main applications is agricultural monitoring, where a smart system based on precision agriculture requires a set of satellite images with a high resolution, both in time and space to capture the phenological stages and fine spatial details, especially in landscapes with various spatial heterogeneity and temporal variation. These requirements sometimes cannot be provided by a single sensor due to the trade-off required between spatial and temporal resolutions and/or the influence of cloud cover. The data availability of new generation multispectral sensors of Landsat-8 (L8) and Sentinel-2 (S2) satellites offers unprecedented options for such applications. Given this, the current study aims to display how the synergistic use of these optical sensors can efficiently support such an application. Herein, this study proposes a deep learning spatiotemporal data fusion method to fill the need for predicting a dense time series of vegetation index with fine spatial resolution. The results show that the developed method creates more accurate fused NDVI time-series data that were able to derive phenological stages and characteristics in single-crop fields, while keeps more spatial details in such a heterogeneous landscape.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulla Al Kafy ◽  
Abdullah Al-Faisal ◽  
Mohammad Mahmudul Hasan ◽  
Md. Soumik Sikdar ◽  
Mohammad Hasib Hasan Khan ◽  
...  

Urbanization has been contributing more in global climate warming, with more than 50% of the population living in cities. Rapid population growth and change in land use / land cover (LULC) are closely linked. The transformation of LULC due to rapid urban expansion significantly affects the functions of biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as local and regional climates. Improper planning and uncontrolled management of LULC changes profoundly contribute to the rise of urban land surface temperature (LST). This study evaluates the impact of LULC changes on LST for 1997, 2007 and 2017 in the Rajshahi district (Bangladesh) using multi-temporal and multi-spectral Landsat 8 OLI and Landsat 5 TM satellite data sets. The analysis of LULC changes exposed a remarkable increase in the built-up areas and a significant decrease in the vegetation and agricultural land. The built-up area was increased almost double in last 20 years in the study area. The distribution of changes in LST shows that built-up areas recorded the highest temperature followed by bare land, vegetation and agricultural land and water bodies. The LULC-LST profiles also revealed the highest temperature in built-up areas and the lowest temperature in water bodies. In the last 20 years, LST was increased about 13ºC. The study demonstrates decrease in vegetation cover and increase in non-evaporating surfaces with significantly increases the surface temperature in the study area. Remote-sensing techniques were found one of the suitable techniques for rapid analysis of urban expansions and to identify the impact of urbanization on LST.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2730
Author(s):  
Animesh Chandra Das ◽  
Ryozo Noguchi ◽  
Tofael Ahamed

Drought is one of the detrimental climatic factors that affects the productivity and quality of tea by limiting the growth and development of the plants. The aim of this research was to determine drought stress in tea estates using a remote sensing technique with the standardized precipitation index (SPI). Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS images were processed to measure the land surface temperature (LST) and soil moisture index (SMI). Maps for the normalized difference moisture index (NDMI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and leaf area index (LAI), as well as yield maps, were developed from Sentinel-2 satellite images. The drought frequency was calculated from the classification of droughts utilizing the SPI. The results of this study show that the drought frequency for the Sylhet station was 38.46% for near-normal, 35.90% for normal, and 25.64% for moderately dry months. In contrast, the Sreemangal station demonstrated frequencies of 28.21%, 41.02%, and 30.77% for near-normal, normal, and moderately dry months, respectively. The correlation coefficients between the SMI and NDMI were 0.84, 0.77, and 0.79 for the drought periods of 2018–2019, 2019–2020 and 2020–2021, respectively, indicating a strong relationship between soil and plant canopy moisture. The results of yield prediction with respect to drought stress in tea estates demonstrate that 61%, 60%, and 60% of estates in the study area had lower yields than the actual yield during the drought period, which accounted for 7.72%, 11.92%, and 12.52% yield losses in 2018, 2019, and 2020, respectively. This research suggests that satellite remote sensing with the SPI could be a valuable tool for land use planners, policy makers, and scientists to measure drought stress in tea estates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2060
Author(s):  
Trylee Nyasha Matongera ◽  
Onisimo Mutanga ◽  
Mbulisi Sibanda ◽  
John Odindi

Land surface phenology (LSP) has been extensively explored from global archives of satellite observations to track and monitor the seasonality of rangeland ecosystems in response to climate change. Long term monitoring of LSP provides large potential for the evaluation of interactions and feedbacks between climate and vegetation. With a special focus on the rangeland ecosystems, the paper reviews the progress, challenges and emerging opportunities in LSP while identifying possible gaps that could be explored in future. Specifically, the paper traces the evolution of satellite sensors and interrogates their properties as well as the associated indices and algorithms in estimating and monitoring LSP in productive rangelands. Findings from the literature revealed that the spectral characteristics of the early satellite sensors such as Landsat, AVHRR and MODIS played a critical role in the development of spectral vegetation indices that have been widely used in LSP applications. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) pioneered LSP investigations, and most other spectral vegetation indices were primarily developed to address the weaknesses and shortcomings of the NDVI. New indices continue to be developed based on recent sensors such as Sentinel-2 that are characterized by unique spectral signatures and fine spatial resolutions, and their successful usage is catalyzed with the development of cutting-edge algorithms for modeling the LSP profiles. In this regard, the paper has documented several LSP algorithms that are designed to provide data smoothing, gap filling and LSP metrics retrieval methods in a single environment. In the future, the development of machine learning algorithms that can effectively model and characterize the phenological cycles of vegetation would help to unlock the value of LSP information in the rangeland monitoring and management process. Precisely, deep learning presents an opportunity to further develop robust software packages such as the decomposition and analysis of time series (DATimeS) with the abundance of data processing tools and techniques that can be used to better characterize the phenological cycles of vegetation in rangeland ecosystems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 4465
Author(s):  
Yu Shen ◽  
Xiaoyang Zhang ◽  
Weile Wang ◽  
Ramakrishna Nemani ◽  
Yongchang Ye ◽  
...  

Accurate and timely land surface phenology (LSP) provides essential information for investigating the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate changes and quantifying carbon and surface energy cycles on the Earth. LSP has been widely investigated using daily Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations, but the resultant phenometrics are frequently influenced by surface heterogeneity and persistent cloud contamination in the time series observations. Recently, LSP has been derived from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 time series providing detailed spatial pattern, but the results are of high uncertainties because of poor temporal resolution. With the availability of data from Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard a new generation of geostationary satellites that observe the earth every 10–15 min, daily cloud-free time series could be obtained with high opportunities. Therefore, this study investigates the generation of synthetic high spatiotemporal resolution time series by fusing the harmonized Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 (HLS) time series with the temporal shape of ABI data for monitoring field-scale (30 m) LSP. The algorithm is verified by detecting the timings of greenup and senescence onsets around north Wisconsin/Michigan states, United States, where cloud cover is frequent during spring rainy season. The LSP detections from HLS-ABI are compared with those from HLS or ABI alone and are further evaluated using PhenoCam observations. The result indicates that (1) ABI could provide ~3 times more high-quality observations than HLS around spring greenup onset; (2) the greenup and senescence onsets derived from ABI and HLS-ABI are spatially consistent and statistically comparable with a median difference less than 1 and 10-days, respectively; (3) greenup and senescence onsets derived from HLS data show sharp boundaries around the orbit-overlapped areas and shifts of ~13 days delay and ~15 days ahead, respectively, relative to HLS-ABI detections; and (4) HLS-ABI greenup and senescence onsets align closely to PhenoCam observations with an absolute average difference of less than 2 days and 5 days, respectively, which are much better than phenology detections from ABI or HLS alone. The result suggests that the proposed approach could be implemented the monitor of 30 m LSP over regions with persistent cloud cover.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 23995-24041 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Holm ◽  
K. Jardine ◽  
A. B. Guenther ◽  
J. Q. Chambers ◽  
E. Tribuzy

Abstract. Tropical trees are known to be large emitters of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC), accounting for up to 75% of the global isoprene budget. Once in the atmosphere, these compounds influence multiple processes associated with air quality and climate. However, uncertainty in biogenic emissions is two-fold, (1) the environmental controls over isoprene emissions from tropical forests remain highly uncertain; and (2) our ability to accurately represent these environmental controls within models is lacking. This study evaluated the biophysical parameters that drive the global Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) embedded in a biogeochemistry land surface model, the Community Land Model (CLM), with a focus on isoprene emissions from an Amazonian forest. Upon evaluating the sensitivity of 19 parameters in CLM that currently influence isoprene emissions by using a Monte Carlo analysis, up to 61% of the uncertainty in mean isoprene emissions was caused by the uncertainty in the parameters related to leaf temperature. The eight parameters associated with photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) contributed in total to only 15% of the uncertainty in mean isoprene emissions. Leaf temperature was strongly correlated with isoprene emission activity (R2 = 0.89). However, when compared to field measurements in the Central Amazon, CLM failed to capture the upper 10–14 °C of leaf temperatures throughout the year (i.e., failed to represent ~32 to 46 °C), and the spread observed in field measurements was not representative in CLM. This is an important parameter to accurately simulate due to the non-linear response of emissions to temperature. MEGAN-CLM 4.0 overestimated isoprene emissions by 60% for a Central Amazon forest (5.7 mg m−2 h−1 vs. 3.6 mg m−2 h−1), but due to reductions in leaf area index (LAI) by 28% in MEGAN-CLM 4.5 isoprene emissions were within 7% of observed data (3.8 mg m−2 h−1). When a slight adjustment to leaf temperature was made to match observations, isoprene emissions increased 24%, up to 4.8 mg m−2 h−1. Air temperatures are very likely to increase in tropical regions as a result of human induced climate change. Reducing the uncertainty of leaf temperature in BVOC algorithms, as well as improving the accuracy of replicating leaf temperature output in land surface models is warranted in order to improve estimations of tropical BVOC emissions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingjing Yang ◽  
Si-Bo Duan ◽  
Xiaoyu Zhang ◽  
Penghai Wu ◽  
Cheng Huang ◽  
...  

Land surface temperature (LST) is vital for studies of hydrology, ecology, climatology, and environmental monitoring. The radiative-transfer-equation-based single-channel algorithm, in conjunction with the atmospheric profile, is regarded as the most suitable one with which to produce long-term time series LST products from Landsat thermal infrared (TIR) data. In this study, the performances of seven atmospheric profiles from different sources (the MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiomete atmospheric profile product (MYD07), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder atmospheric profile product (AIRS), the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA2), the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/Global Forecasting System (GFS), NCEP/Final Operational Global Analysis (FNL), and NCEP/Department of Energy (DOE)) were comprehensively evaluated in the single-channel algorithm for LST retrieval from Landsat 8 TIR data. Results showed that when compared with the radio sounding profile downloaded from the University of Wyoming (UWYO), the worst accuracies of atmospheric parameters were obtained for the MYD07 profile. Furthermore, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) values (approximately 0.5 K) of the retrieved LST when using the ECMWF, MERRA2, NCEP/GFS, and NCEP/FNL profiles were smaller than those but greater than 0.8 K when the MYD07, AIRS, and NCEP/DOE profiles were used. Compared with the in situ LST measurements that were collected at the Hailar, Urad Front Banner, and Wuhai sites, the RMSE values of the LST that were retrieved by using the ECMWF, MERRA2, NCEP/GFS, and NCEP/FNL profiles were approximately 1.0 K. The largest discrepancy between the retrieved and in situ LST was obtained for the NCEP/DOE profile, with an RMSE value of approximately 1.5 K. The results reveal that the ECMWF, MERRA2, NCEP/GFS, and NCEP/FNL profiles have great potential to perform accurate atmospheric correction and generate long-term time series LST products from Landsat TIR data by using a single-channel algorithm.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 3478
Author(s):  
Ofer Beeri ◽  
Yishai Netzer ◽  
Sarel Munitz ◽  
Danielle Ferman Mintz ◽  
Ran Pelta ◽  
...  

Daily or weekly irrigation monitoring conducted per sub-field or management zone is an important factor in vine irrigation decision-making. The objective is to determine the crop coefficient (Kc) and the leaf area index (LAI). Since the 1990s, optic satellite imagery has been utilized for this purpose, yet cloud-cover, as well as the desire to increase the temporal resolution, raise the need to integrate more imagery sources. The Sentinel-1 (a C-band synthetic aperture radar—SAR) can solve both issues, but its accuracy for LAI and Kc mapping needs to be determined. The goals of this study were as follows: (1) to test different methods for integrating SAR and optic sensors for increasing temporal resolution and creating seamless time-series of LAI and Kc estimations; and (2) to evaluate the ability of Sentinel-1 to estimate LAI and Kc in comparison to Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8. LAI values were collected at two vineyards, over three (north plot) and four (south plot) growing seasons. These values were converted to Kc, and both parameters were tested against optic and SAR indices. The results present the two Sentinel-1 indices that achieved the best accuracy in estimating the crop parameters and the best method for fusing the optic and the SAR data. Utilizing these achievements, the accuracy of the Kc and LAI estimations from Sentinel-1 were slightly better than the Sentinel-2′s and the Landsat-8′s accuracy. The integration of all three sensors into one seamless time-series not only increases the temporal resolution but also improves the overall accuracy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (9) ◽  
pp. 5301-5318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Xiao ◽  
Shunlin Liang ◽  
Jindi Wang ◽  
Yang Xiang ◽  
Xiang Zhao ◽  
...  

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