scholarly journals The predictability of reported drought events and impacts in the Ebro Basin using six different remote sensing data sets

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 4747-4765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Linés ◽  
Micha Werner ◽  
Wim Bastiaanssen

Abstract. The implementation of drought management plans contributes to reduce the wide range of adverse impacts caused by water shortage. A crucial element of the development of drought management plans is the selection of appropriate indicators and their associated thresholds to detect drought events and monitor the evolution. Drought indicators should be able to detect emerging drought processes that will lead to impacts with sufficient anticipation to allow measures to be undertaken effectively. However, in the selection of appropriate drought indicators, the connection to the final impacts is often disregarded. This paper explores the utility of remotely sensed data sets to detect early stages of drought at the river basin scale and determine how much time can be gained to inform operational land and water management practices. Six different remote sensing data sets with different spectral origins and measurement frequencies are considered, complemented by a group of classical in situ hydrologic indicators. Their predictive power to detect past drought events is tested in the Ebro Basin. Qualitative (binary information based on media records) and quantitative (crop yields) data of drought events and impacts spanning a period of 12 years are used as a benchmark in the analysis. Results show that early signs of drought impacts can be detected up to 6 months before impacts are reported in newspapers, with the best correlation–anticipation relationships for the standard precipitation index (SPI), the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and evapotranspiration (ET). Soil moisture (SM) and land surface temperature (LST) offer also good anticipation but with weaker correlations, while gross primary production (GPP) presents moderate positive correlations only for some of the rain-fed areas. Although classical hydrological information from water levels and water flows provided better anticipation than remote sensing indicators in most of the areas, correlations were found to be weaker. The indicators show a consistent behaviour with respect to the different levels of crop yield in rain-fed areas among the analysed years, with SPI, NDVI and ET providing again the stronger correlations. Overall, the results confirm remote sensing products' ability to anticipate reported drought impacts and therefore appear as a useful source of information to support drought management decisions.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Linés ◽  
Micha Werner ◽  
Wim Bastiaanssen

Abstract. The implementation of drought management plans contributes to reduce the wide range of adverse impacts caused by water shortage. A crucial element of the development of drought management plans is the selection of appropriate indicators and their associated thresholds to detect drought events and monitor their evolution. Drought indicators should be able to detect emerging drought processes that will lead to impacts with sufficient anticipation to allow measures to be undertaken effectively. However, in the selection of appropriate drought indicators the connection to the final impacts is often disregarded. This paper explores the utility of remotely sensed data sets to detect early stages of drought at the river basin scale, and how much time can be gained to inform operational land and water management practices. Six different remote sensing data sets with different spectral origin and measurement frequency are considered, complemented by a group of classical in situ hydrologic indicators. Their predictive power to detect past drought events is tested in the Ebro basin. Qualitative (binary information based on media records) and quantitative (crop yields) data of drought events and impacts spanning a period of 12 years are used as a benchmark in the analysis. Results show that early signs of drought impacts can be detected up to some 6 months before impacts are reported in newspapers, with the best correlation-anticipation relationships for the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Evapotranspiration (ET). Soil Moisture (SM) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) offer also good anticipation, but with weaker correlations, while Gross Primary Production (GPP) presents moderate positive correlations only for some of the rainfed areas. Although classical hydrological information from water levels and water flows provided better anticipation than remote sensing indicators in most of the areas, correlations were found to be weaker. The indicators show a consistent behaviour with respect to the different levels of crop yield in rainfed areas among the analysed years, with SPI, NDVI and ET providing again the stronger correlations. Overall, the results confirm remote sensing products’ ability to anticipate reported drought impacts and therefore appear as a useful source of information to support drought management decisions.


Eos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong Liu ◽  
James Acker

Using satellite remote sensing data sets can be a daunting task. Giovanni, a Web-based tool, facilitates access, visualization, and exploration for many of NASA’s Earth science data sets.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e6227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Dalponte ◽  
Lorenzo Frizzera ◽  
Damiano Gianelle

An international data science challenge, called National Ecological Observatory Network—National Institute of Standards and Technology data science evaluation, was set up in autumn 2017 with the goal to improve the use of remote sensing data in ecological applications. The competition was divided into three tasks: (1) individual tree crown (ITC) delineation, for identifying the location and size of individual trees; (2) alignment between field surveyed trees and ITCs delineated on remote sensing data; and (3) tree species classification. In this paper, the methods and results of team Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM) are presented. The ITC delineation (Task 1 of the challenge) was done using a region growing method applied to a near-infrared band of the hyperspectral images. The optimization of the parameters of the delineation algorithm was done in a supervised way on the basis of the Jaccard score using the training set provided by the organizers. The alignment (Task 2) between the delineated ITCs and the field surveyed trees was done using the Euclidean distance among the position, the height, and the crown radius of the ITCs and the field surveyed trees. The classification (Task 3) was performed using a support vector machine classifier applied to a selection of the hyperspectral bands and the canopy height model. The selection of the bands was done using the sequential forward floating selection method and the Jeffries Matusita distance. The results of the three tasks were very promising: team FEM ranked first in the data science competition in Task 1 and 2, and second in Task 3. The Jaccard score of the delineated crowns was 0.3402, and the results showed that the proposed approach delineated both small and large crowns. The alignment was correctly done for all the test samples. The classification results were good (overall accuracy of 88.1%, kappa accuracy of 75.7%, and mean class accuracy of 61.5%), although the accuracy was biased toward the most represented species.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 2208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanisław Szombara ◽  
Paulina Lewińska ◽  
Anna Żądło ◽  
Marta Róg ◽  
Kamil Maciuk

Analyses of riverbed shape evolution are crucial for environmental protection and local water management. For narrow rivers located in forested, mountain areas, it is difficult to use remote sensing data used for large river regions. We performed a study of the Prądnik River, located in the Ojców National Park (ONP), Poland. A multitemporal analysis of various data sets was performed. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR)-based data and orthophotomaps were compared with classical survey methods, and 78 cross-sectional profiles were done via GNSS and tachymetry. In order to add an extra time step, the old maps of this region were gathered, and their content was compared with contemporary data. The analysis of remote sensing data suggests that they do not provide sufficient information on the state and changes of riverbanks, river course or river depth. LiDAR data sets do not show river bottoms, and, due to plant life, do not document riverbanks. The orthophotomaps, due to tree coverage and shades, cannot be used for tracking the whole river course. The quality of old maps allows only for general shape analysis over time. This paper shows that traditional survey methods provide sufficient accuracy for such analysis, and the resulted cross-sectional profiles can and should be used to validate other, remote sensing, data sets. We diagnosed problems with the inventory and monitoring of such objects and proposed methods to refine the data acquisition.


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