scholarly journals Formation of Fused Images of the Land Surface from Radar and Optical Images in Spatially Distributed On-Board Operational Monitoring Systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Vadim A. Nenashev ◽  
Igor G. Khanykov
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Operational Monitoring ◽  
Functional Transformation ◽  
Location System ◽  
Fused Image ◽  
Spatially Distributed

This paper considers the issues of image fusion in a spatially distributed small-size on-board location system for operational monitoring. The purpose of this research is to develop a new method for the formation of fused images of the land surface based on data obtained from optical and radar devices operated from two-position spatially distributed systems of small aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles. The advantages of the method for integrating information from radar and optical information-measuring systems are justified. The combined approach allows removing the limitations of each separate system. The practicality of choosing the integration of information from several widely used variants of heterogeneous sources is shown. An iterative approach is used in the method for combining multi-angle location images. This approach improves the quality of synthesis and increases the accuracy of integration, as well as improves the information content and reliability of the final fused image by using the pixel clustering algorithm, which produces many partitions into clusters. The search for reference points on isolated contours is carried out on a pair of left and right images of the docked image from the selected partition. For these reference points, a functional transformation is determined. Having applied it to the original multi-angle heterogeneous images, the degree of correlation of the fused image is assessed. Both the position of the reference points of the contour and the desired functional transformation itself are refined until the quality assessment of the fusion becomes acceptable. The type of functional transformation is selected based on clustered images and then applied to the original multi-angle heterogeneous images. This process is repeated for clustered images with greater granularity in case if quality assessment of the fusion is considered to be poor. At each iteration, there is a search for pairs of points of the contour of the isolated areas. Areas are isolated with the use of two image segmentation methods. Experiments on the formation of fused images are presented. The result of the research is the proposed method for integrating information obtained from a two-position airborne small-sized radar system and an optical location system. The implemented method can improve the information content, quality, and reliability of the finally established fused image of the land surface.

scholarly journals Formation of a fused image of the land surface based on pixel clustering of location images in a multi-position onboard system

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-340
Author(s):  
Vadim Nenashev ◽  
Igor Khanykov
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Variable Number ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Composite Image ◽  
Functional Transformation ◽  
Optical Images ◽  
Fused Image ◽  
Onboard System

The paper proposes a method for fusioning multi-angle images implementing the algorithm for quasi-optimal clustering of pixels to the original images of the land surface. The original multi-angle images formed by the onboard equipment of multi-positional location systems are docked into a single composite image and, using a high-speed algorithm for quasi-optimal pixel clustering, are reduced to several colors while maintaining characteristic boundaries. A feature of the algorithm of quasi-optimal pixel clustering is the generation of a series of partitions with gradually increasing detail due to a variable number of clusters. This feature allows you to choose an appropriate partition of a pair of docked images from the generated series. The search for reference points of the isolated contours is performed on a pair of images from the selected partition of the docked image. A functional transformation is determined for these points. And after it has been applied to the original images, the degree of correlation of the fused image is estimated. Both the position of the reference points of the contour and the desired functional transformation itself are refined until the evaluation of the fusion quality is acceptable. The type of functional transformation is selected according to the images reduced in color, which later is applied to the original images. This process is repeated for clustered images with greater detail in the event that the assessment of the fusion quality is not acceptable. The purpose of present study is to develop a method that allows synthesizing fused image of the land surface from heteromorphic and heterogeneous images. The paper presents the following features of the fusing method. The first feature is the processing of a single composite image from a pair of docked source images by the pixel clustering algorithm, what makes it possible to isolate the same areas in its different parts in a similar way. The second feature consists in determining the functional transformation by the isolated reference points of the contour on the processed pair of clustered images, which is later applied to the original images to combine them. The paper presents the results on the synthesis of a fused image both from homogeneous (optical) images and from heterogeneous (radar and optical) images. A distinctive feature of the developed method is to improve the quality of synthesis, increase the accuracy and information content of the final fused image of the land surface.  

scholarly journals FUSION OF THE OPTICAL AND RADAR IMAGES OF THE LAND SURFACE IN MULTI-POSITION ON-BOARD SYSTEMS FOR OPERATIONAL MONITORING

2021 ◽  
Vol XLIV-2/W1-2021 ◽  
pp. 107-111
Author(s):  
I. G. Khanykov ◽  
V. A. Nenashev
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Operational Monitoring ◽  
Content Quality ◽  
Location System ◽  
Radar Images ◽  
Segmentation Methods ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
Optical Location

Abstract. The issues of image fusion in a two-position small-size radar on-board operational monitoring system are considered. The aim of present research is to develop a method for fusion of images of the land surface based on data obtained from a multi-sensor spatially distributed on-board location system implemented on the basis of a UAV. The method of combining different-angle location images is implemented iteratively. At each iteration, there is a search for pairs of points of the contour of the isolated areas. Areas are highlighted using two image segmentation methods. The final result is a proposed method for information fusion from a two-position on-board small-sized radar system and an optical location system. The implemented method of fusion makes it possible to increase the information content, quality and reliability of information about the observed underlying surfaces and the physical objects detected on them. The practical significance of the results obtained lies in the formation of integral information in real time in the interests of environmental reconnaissance, monitoring in hard-to-reach and dangerous places for human life, as well as in order to promptly prevent natural and man-made emergencies.

scholarly journals Unsupervised Sub-Pixel Water Body Mapping with Sentinel-3 OLCI Image

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Wang ◽  
Feng Ling ◽  
Huaiying Yao ◽  
Yaolin Liu ◽  
Shuna Xu
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Water Body ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Body Mapping ◽  
Water Index ◽  
Land Surface Water ◽  
Body Map

Mapping land surface water bodies from satellite images is superior to conventional in situ measurements. With the mission of long-term and high-frequency water quality monitoring, the launch of the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) onboard Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B provides the best possible approach for near real-time land surface water body mapping. Sentinel-3 OLCI contains 21 bands ranging from visible to near-infrared, but the spatial resolution is limited to 300 m, which may include lots of mixed pixels around the boundaries. Sub-pixel mapping (SPM) provides a good solution for the mixed pixel problem in water body mapping. In this paper, an unsupervised sub-pixel water body mapping (USWBM) method was proposed particularly for the Sentinel-3 OLCI image, and it aims to produce a finer spatial resolution (e.g., 30 m) water body map from the multispectral image. Instead of using the fraction maps of water/non-water or multispectral images combined with endmembers of water/non-water classes as input, USWBM directly uses the spectral water index images of the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) extracted from the Sentinel-3 OLCI image as input and produces a water body map at the target finer spatial resolution. Without the collection of endmembers, USWBM accomplished the unsupervised process by developing a multi-scale spatial dependence based on an unsupervised sub-pixel Fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm. In both validations in the Tibet Plate lake and Poyang lake, USWBM produced more accurate water body maps than the other pixel and sub-pixel based water body mapping methods. The proposed USWBM, therefore, has great potential to support near real-time sub-pixel water body mapping with the Sentinel-3 OLCI image.

scholarly journals A framework for quantifying hydrologic effects of soil structure across scales

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bonetti ◽  
Zhongwang Wei ◽  
Dani Or
Keyword(s):  
Soil Texture ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Soil Structure ◽  
Pedotransfer Functions ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Spatial Correlations ◽  
Surface Parameterization ◽  
Exchange Processes ◽  
Local Soil ◽  
Spatially Distributed

AbstractEarth system models use soil information to parameterize hard-to-measure soil hydraulic properties based on pedotransfer functions. However, current parameterizations rely on sample-scale information which often does not account for biologically-promoted soil structure and heterogeneities in natural landscapes, which may significantly alter infiltration-runoff and other exchange processes at larger scales. Here we propose a systematic framework to incorporate soil structure corrections into pedotransfer functions, informed by remote-sensing vegetation metrics and local soil texture, and use numerical simulations to investigate their effects on spatially distributed and areal averaged infiltration-runoff partitioning. We demonstrate that small scale soil structure features prominently alter the hydrologic response emerging at larger scales and that upscaled parameterizations must consider spatial correlations between vegetation and soil texture. The proposed framework allows the incorporation of hydrological effects of soil structure with appropriate scale considerations into contemporary pedotransfer functions used for land surface parameterization.

Characteristics and Predictability of Midwestern United States Drought

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hoell ◽  
Trent W. Ford ◽  
Molly Woloszyn ◽  
Jason A. Otkin ◽  
Jon Eischeid
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Snow Water Equivalent ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Northern Great Plains ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Midwestern United States ◽  
Wave Trains

AbstractCharacteristics and predictability of drought in the Midwestern United States, spanning the Great Plains to the Ohio Valley, at local and regional scales are examined during 1916-2015. Given vast differences in hydroclimatic variability across the Midwest, drought is evaluated in four regions identified using a hierarchical clustering algorithm applied to an integrated drought index based on soil moisture, snow water equivalent, and three-month runoff from land surface models forced by observed analyses. Highlighting the regions containing the Ohio Valley (OV) and Northern Great Plains (NGP), the OV demonstrates a preference for sub-annual droughts, the timing of which can lead to prevalent dry epochs, while the NGP demonstrates a preference for annual-to-multi-annual droughts. Regional drought variations are closely related to precipitation, resulting in a higher likelihood of drought onset or demise during wet seasons: March-November in the NGP and all year in the OV, with a preference for March-May and September-November. Due to the distinct dry season in the NGP, there is a higher likelihood of longer drought persistence, as the NGP is four times more likely to experience drought lasting at least one year compared to the OV. While drought variability in all regions and seasons are related to atmospheric wave trains spanning the Pacific-North American sector, longer-lead predictability is limited to the OV in December-February because it is the only region/season related to slow-varying sea surface temperatures consistent with El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The wave trains in all other regions appear to be generated in the atmosphere, highlighting the importance of internal atmospheric variability in shaping Midwestern drought.

Improving the Quality Assessment band in Landsat cloud images for the application of cloud removal  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boli Yang ◽  
Yan Feng ◽  
Ruyin Cao
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Missing Values ◽  
Similarity Index ◽  
Visual Assessment ◽  
New Method ◽  
Landsat Data ◽  
Cloud Detection ◽  
Cloud Removal ◽  
Ultimate Objective

<p>Cloud contamination is a serious obstacle for the application of Landsat data. Thick clouds can completely block land surface information and lead to missing values. The reconstruction of missing values in a Landsat cloud image requires the cloud and cloud shadow mask. In this study, we raised the issue that the quality of the quality assessment (QA) band in current Landsat products cannot meet the requirement of thick-cloud removal. To address this issue, we developed a new method (called Auto-PCP) to preprocess the original QA band, with the ultimate objective to improve the performance of cloud removal on Landsat cloud images. We tested the new method at four test sites and compared cloud-removed images generated by using three different QA bands, including the original QA band, the modified QA band by a dilation of two pixels around cloud and cloud shadow edges, and the QA band processed by Auto-PCP (“QA_Auto-PCP”). Experimental results, from both actual and simulated Landsat cloud images, show that QA_Auto-PCP achieved the best visual assessment for the cloud-removed images, and had the smallest RMSE values and the largest Structure SIMilarity index (SSIM) values. The improvement for the performance of cloud removal by QA_Auto-PCP is because the new method substantially decreases omission errors of clouds and shadows in the original QA band, but meanwhile does not increase commission errors. Moreover, Auto-PCP is easy to implement and uses the same data as cloud removal without additional image collections. We expect that Auto-PCP can further popularize cloud removal and advance the application of Landsat data.     </p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Cloud detection, Cloud shadows, Cloud simulation, Cloud removal, MODTRAN</p>

Medical Image Fusion in Wavelet and Ridgelet Domains

2017 ◽  
pp. 711-723
Author(s):  
Vikrant Bhateja ◽  
Abhinav Krishn ◽  
Himanshi Patel ◽  
Akanksha Sahu
Keyword(s):  
Image Fusion ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Medical Image ◽  
Similarity Index ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Structural Similarity ◽  
Fusion Algorithm ◽  
Medical Image Fusion ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Fused Image

Medical image fusion facilitates the retrieval of complementary information from medical images and has been employed diversely for computer-aided diagnosis of life threatening diseases. Fusion has been performed using various approaches such as Pyramidal, Multi-resolution, multi-scale etc. Each and every approach of fusion depicts only a particular feature (i.e. the information content or the structural properties of an image). Therefore, this paper presents a comparative analysis and evaluation of multi-modal medical image fusion methodologies employing wavelet as a multi-resolution approach and ridgelet as a multi-scale approach. The current work tends to highlight upon the utility of these approaches according to the requirement of features in the fused image. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) based fusion algorithm has been employed in both ridgelet and wavelet domains for purpose of minimisation of redundancies. Simulations have been performed for different sets of MR and CT-scan images taken from ‘The Whole Brain Atlas'. The performance evaluation has been carried out using different parameters of image quality evaluation like: Entropy (E), Fusion Factor (FF), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and Edge Strength (QFAB). The outcome of this analysis highlights the trade-off between the retrieval of information content and the morphological details in finally fused image in wavelet and ridgelet domains.

scholarly journals Evaluation of TsHARP Utility for Thermal Sharpening of Sentinel-3 Satellite Images Using Sentinel-2 Visual Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Huryna ◽  
Yafit Cohen ◽  
Arnon Karnieli ◽  
Natalya Panov ◽  
William P. Kustas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Primary Methods ◽  
Thermal Images ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Sentinel 2

A spatially distributed land surface temperature is important for many studies. The recent launch of the Sentinel satellite programs paves the way for an abundance of opportunities for both large area and long-term investigations. However, the spatial resolution of Sentinel-3 thermal images is not suitable for monitoring small fragmented fields. Thermal sharpening is one of the primary methods used to obtain thermal images at finer spatial resolution at a daily revisit time. In the current study, the utility of the TsHARP method to sharpen the low resolution of Sentinel-3 thermal data was examined using Sentinel-2 visible-near infrared imagery. Compared to Landsat 8 fine thermal images, the sharpening resulted in mean absolute errors of ~1 °C, with errors increasing as the difference between the native and the target resolutions increases. Part of the error is attributed to the discrepancy between the thermal images acquired by the two platforms. Further research is due to test additional sites and conditions, and potentially additional sharpening methods, applied to the Sentinel platforms.

scholarly journals A New Physically-Based Spatially-Distributed Groundwater Flow Module for SWAT+

Hydrology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Ryan T. Bailey ◽  
Katrin Bieger ◽  
Jeffrey G. Arnold ◽  
David D. Bosch
Keyword(s):  
Water Balance ◽  
Groundwater Flow ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Swat Model ◽  
Watershed Model ◽  
Groundwater Head ◽  
Physically Based ◽  
Spatially Distributed ◽  
Modeling Code

Watershed models are used worldwide to assist with water and nutrient management under conditions of changing climate, land use, and population. Of these models, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and SWAT+ are the most widely used, although their performance in groundwater-driven watersheds can sometimes be poor due to a simplistic representation of groundwater processes. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new physically-based spatially-distributed groundwater flow module called gwflow for the SWAT+ watershed model. The module is embedded in the SWAT+ modeling code and is intended to replace the current SWAT+ aquifer module. The model accounts for recharge from SWAT+ Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs), lateral flow within the aquifer, Evapotranspiration (ET) from shallow groundwater, groundwater pumping, groundwater–surface water interactions through the streambed, and saturation excess flow. Groundwater head and groundwater storage are solved throughout the watershed domain using a water balance equation for each grid cell. The modified SWAT+ modeling code is applied to the Little River Experimental Watershed (LREW) (327 km2) in southern Georgia, USA for demonstration purposes. Using the gwflow module for the LREW increased run-time by 20% compared to the original SWAT+ modeling code. Results from an uncalibrated model are compared against streamflow discharge and groundwater head time series. Although further calibration is required if the LREW model is to be used for scenario analysis, results highlight the capabilities of the new SWAT+ code to simulate both land surface and subsurface hydrological processes and represent the watershed-wide water balance. Using the modified SWAT+ model can provide physically realistic groundwater flow gradients, fluxes, and interactions with streams for modeling studies that assess water supply and conservation practices. This paper also serves as a tutorial on modeling groundwater flow for general watershed modelers.

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