Mapping ground lichens using forest inventory and optical satellite data

In remote sensing studies of land surface temperatures (LST), thematic land-use and land-cover (LULC) data are frequently employed for simple correlation analyses between LULC types and their thermal signatures. Development of quantitative surface descriptors could improve our capabilities for modeling urban thermal landscapes and advance urban climate research. This study developed an analytical procedure based upon a spectral unmixing model for characterizing and quantifying the urban landscape in Indianapolis, Indiana. A Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus image of the study area, acquired on 22 June 2002, was spectrally unmixed into four fraction endmembers, namely, green vegetation, soil, high and low albedo. Impervious surface was then computed from the high and low albedo images. A hybrid classification procedure was developed to classify the fraction images into seven land-use and land-cover classes. Next, pixel-based LST measurements were related to urban surface biophysical descriptors derived from spectral mixture analysis (SMA). Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate land-cover based relationships between LST and impervious surface and green vegetation fractions for an analysis of the causes of LST variations. Results indicate that fraction images derived from SMA were effective for quantifying the urban morphology and for providing reliable measurements of biophysical variables such as vegetation abundance, soil, and impervious surface. An examination of LST variations within census block groups and their relationships with the compositions of LULC types, biophysical descriptors, and other relevant spatial data shows that LST possessed a weaker relation with the LULC compositions than with other variables (including urban biophysical descriptors, remote sensing biophysical variables, GIS-based impervious surface variables, and population density). Further research should be directed to refine spectral mixture modeling. The use of multi-temporal remote sensing data for urban time-space modeling and comparison of urban morphology in different geographical settings are also feasible.

Dynamics of the Swedish forest carbon pool between 2010 and 2015 estimated from satellite L-band SAR observations

A model-based performance test for forest classifiers on remote-sensing imagery

The relationship between moose (Alces alces) browsing utilisation and the occurrence of different forage species in Sweden

Urban environments are characterized by high spectral and spatial heterogeneity and, as a consequence, most urban pixels in moderate-resolution imagery contain multiple land-cover materials. Despite these complexities, virtually all urban land cover can be generalized as a combination of vegetation, impervious surfaces, and soil (V–I–S components), in addition to water. Previous work has demonstrated the potential of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) to model the subpixel abundance of V–I–S components. Here, the authors test whether the technique is sufficiently robust to map V–I–S components for a diverse set of cities, selecting 10 urban centers in the state of Rondônia, Brazil, to represent a range of populations, development histories, and economic activities. For each urban sample, a 20 km × 20 km region centered over the built-up area was subset from Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imagery. MESMA was applied to all subscenes using the same spectral library, model constraints, and selection rules. Accuracy of the modeled V–I–S fractions was assessed using high-resolution images mosaicked from digital aerial videography. Modeled fractions and reference fractions were highly correlated, with R2 values exceeding 0.75 for all materials in multiple cities across a region. Model complexity, or the number of endmembers required to accurately model each pixel, was correlated with the degree of human impact on the landscape. Built-up areas, as delineated by model complexity, exhibited a strong fit to the well-established relationship between the built-up area of a settlement and its population. Finally, this work demonstrates that the V–I–S components as modeled by MESMA can capture both inter- and intraurban variability, suggesting that these data products could contribute to comparative studies of urbanizing areas through time and across regions.

Remote sensing estimation of impervious surface is significant in monitoring urban development and determining the overall environmental health of a watershed, and it has therefore attracted more interest recently in the remote sensing community. The main objective of this paper is to examine and compare the effectiveness of two advanced algorithms for estimating impervious surfaces from medium spatial resolution satellite images, namely, linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA) and artificial neural network (ANN). Terra's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer [(ASTER); acquired on June 16,2001] and a Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) image (acquired on June 22, 2000) of Indianapolis, IN, were used for the analysis. The LSMA was employed to generate high- and low-albedo, vegetation, and soil fraction images (endmembers), and an image of impervious surfaces was then estimated by adding high- and low-albedo fraction images. Furthermore, an ANN model, specifically the multilayer-perceptron feedforward network with the back-propagation learning algorithm, was employed as a subpixel image classifier to estimate impervious surfaces. Accuracy assessment was performed against a high- resolution digital orthophoto. The results show that ANN was more effective than LSMA in generating impervious surfaces with high statistical accuracy. For the ASTER image, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the impervious surface map with the ANN model was 12.3%, and the one that resulted from LSMA was 13.2%. For the ETM+ image, the RMSE with the ANN model was 16.7%, and the one from LSMA was 18.9%. The better performance of ANN over LSMA is mainly attributable to the ANN'S capability of handling the nonlinear mixing of image spectrum. In order to test the seasonal sensitivity of satellite images for estimating impervious surfaces, LSMA was applied to two additional ASTER images of the same area, which are acquired on April 5, 2004, and October 3, 2000, respectively. The results were then compared with the ASTER image acquired in June in terms of RMSE. The June image had the highest accuracy, whereas the October image was better than the one in April. Plant phenology caused changes in the variance partitioning and impacted the mixing-space characterization, leading to a less accurate estimation of impervious surfaces.

Four techniques for estimating leaf area index (LAI) from remote sensing data (linear spectral mixture analysis, moisture stress index, modification of spectral vegetation indices, and normalized distance method) were investigated to determine the degree to which the parameters associated with each method influence the quality of computed landscape-level estimates of LAI. A series of Monte Carlo simulations were used to test the quality of each estimation method. These simulations showed that the quality of landscape-level LAI estimates depends on the initial modeling quality and the inherent landscape variability in terms of LAI. A multiscale analysis was also performed across a portion of the Upper Elbow River watershed in Alberta, Canada, using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and resampled Satellite pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) imagery. This analysis was performed to determine the extent to which the derived relationships are scale dependent. Spatial statistical analysis revealed the tendency of the correlation of input parameters to vary inversely with distance. These results confirm the validity of the derived estimation relationships. The multiscale analysis also demonstrated that remote estimation techniques have a significant sensitivity to variations in scale, almost irrespective of the remote estimation method used.

Pressure on the Wiang Nong Lom and Nong Luang wetland resources in the Chiang Saen Valley of Chiang Rai Province (Thailand) has increased in recent years with the expansion of farmlands and other major sources of wetland conflict related to public land encroachment. Both of these wetlands have been designated as strategic ecosystems. Yet, there is a limited understanding of the way different wetlands respond to change drivers (agriculture, climate, population, etc.), and currently no scientifically valid protocols exist for local wetland mapping and monitoring. Distinguishing between small wetlands and land use and land cover (LULC) components is a challenging affair due to the highly heterogeneous landscape and spectral similarity of compositionally different types of tropical regions. The goals of this article are both technological and substantive, i.e., it aims to (A) propose a synthesis of quantitative techniques that can improve LULC mapping using remotely sensed data (Landsat TM, ETM+, OLI), and (B) assess the wetland changes during the last three decades and better understand the interaction between wetland changes, human population, and the environment. In regards to goal (A), the proposed classification approach employed a synthesis of techniques of decision tree classification (DTC), maximum likelihood classification (MLC), and Mahalanobis distance classification (MDC), with different bands and ancillary data inputs. The results demonstrated that the implementation of the DTC algorithms to address LULC mapping problems exhibited an overall mapping accuracy of 83.9%, which is significantly higher than that of MLC and MDC. It was found that the DTC technique performs well when combined with visible, near-infrared (NIR), and shortwave-infrared bands, a digital elevation model and normalized difference vegetation index layers. Subsequently, the postclassification analysis using DTC showed a notable improvement of approximately 88.0% classification accuracy. Regarding goal (B), our results showed that during the last 30 years, wetland areas in the Chiang Saen Valley have experienced a dramatic decrease of 30.5%, whereas forest landscape surrounding the wetlands has decreased by an astonishing 50.9%. Contrarily, we found that agricultural land size has increased by 24.3%. We suggest that ground data can be linked to the etiology of these results, including the gradual conversion of wetlands to rice cultivation fields as a result of the government rice pledging scheme. Large areas in the study region have been cultivated by para-rubber, palm oil, and pineapple agribusiness production since 2003. In addition, short-term subsidizing government policies promote intensive production for commercial agriculture prompting farmers to transition from subsistence to commercial farming, further impacting wetland conversion. As a result, and in further view of the fact that rapidly expanding agricultural areas have contributed significantly to the decrease of wetland areas during the last three decades, the Chiang Saen Valley wetlands have been designated as wetlands of international importance. The overall recommendation of the present work is that special land-use policy and relevant regulation and/or legislation are critical components of any effort to achieve wetland sustainability.

The migration of radionuclides in forest ecosystems depends on soil and hydrological conditions and the rate of decomposition of forest litter. Ground lichens appear as intermediaries between air pollution and soil, and are depositors of radioactive substances. In the dry and fresh pine forest conditions they have a significant impact on migration in forest ecosystems. Thus, the purpose of research is to determine the effect of ground lichens on the 137Cs migration in system "soil – plant" in bor conditions of Polissya Nature Reserve. The research includes route-forwarding and laboratory tests by standard methods. The test samples were taken in the territory of Polesye Natural Reservation. Spectrometric studies are conducted by licensed laboratories of the Institute of Regional Environmental Problems of Zhytomyr National Agroecological University. We revealed that the migration of radionuclides in forest stands depends on several factors, the main of which are soil-hydrological conditions and the rate of decomposition of forest litter. The process of decomposition of forest litter depends on the composition of living ground cover. Ground lichens significantly accelerate it. We have also determined that the lichen accelerate the decomposition of litter in coniferous forest plantations, resulting in a more intense release of 137Cs from forest litter and transferred it to the available for plants and water-soluble forms of exchange in the soil. This leads to an increase in the migration of radionuclides in forest ecosystems. The coefficients of 137Cs transition in higher plants in dry and fresh forests with lichen cover are higher than in plantations without lichens. Thus, our conclusion evaluates that the effect of lichen cover on the distribution of 137Cs in forest ecosystems is expressed primarily in accelerating the release of radionuclides from the forest litter and promote access to plant their chemical forms in the soil.

Augmenting Landsat time series with Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 data products: Assessment of spectral correspondence

In this paper, a model-based approach to multiresolution fusion of remotely sensed images is presented. Given a high spatial resolution panchromatic (Pan) image and a lowspatial resolution multispectral (MS) image acquired on the same geographical area, the presented method aims to enhance the spatial resolution of the MS image to the resolution of the Pan observation. The proposed fusion technique utilizes the spatial correlation of each of the high-resolution MS channels by using an autoregressive (AR) model, whose parameters are learnt from the analysis of the Pan data. Under the assumption that the parameters of the AR model for the Pan image are the same as those that represent the MS images due to spectral correlation, the proposed technique exploits the learnt parameter values in the context of a proper regularization technique to estimate the high spatial resolution fields for the MS bands. This results in a combination of the spectral characteristics of the low-resolution MS data with the high spatial resolution of the Pan image. The main advantages of the proposed technique are: 1) unlike standard methods proposed in the literature, it requires no registration between the Pan and the MS images; 2) it models effectively the texture of the scene during the fusion process; 3) it shows very small spectral distortion (as it is less affected, compared to standard methods, by the specific digital numbers of pixels in the Pan image, since it exploits the learnt parameters from the Pan image rather than the actual Pan digital numbers for fusion); and 4) it can be used in critical situations in which the Pan and the MS images are acquired (also by different sensors) in slightly different areas. Quantitative experimental results obtained using Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Quickbird images point out the effectiveness of the proposed method

An assessment of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) sea ice concentrations under winter conditions using ice concentrations derived from Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imagery obtained during the March 2003 Arctic sea ice validation field campaign is presented. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Environmental Technology Laboratory's Airborne Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer Measurements, which were made from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration P 3B aircraft during the campaign, were used primarily as a diagnostic tool to understand the comparative results and to suggest improvements to the AMSR-E ice concentration algorithm. Based on the AMSR-E/ETM+ comparisons, a good overall agreement with little bias (~1%) for areas of first year and young sea ice was found. Areas of new ice production result in a negative bias of about 5% in the AMSR-E ice concentration retrievals, with a root mean square error of 8%. Some areas of deep snow also resulted in an underestimate of the ice concentration (~10%). For all ice types combined and for the full range of ice concentrations, the bias ranged from 0% to 3%, and the rms errors ranged from 1% to 7%, depending on the region. The new-ice and deep-snow biases are expected to be reduced through an adjustment of the new-ice and ice-type C algorithm tie points

The spatial distribution of benthic habitats in the Gulf of Batabanó obtained by remote sensing, using five images from the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) satellite sensor, is reported for the first time. The map covers a total underwater area of 21,305 km2 and is presented at the 1:250,000 scale. Five benthic habitats were identified within this area and located using the supervised classification technique: medium- to high-density seagrass, low-density seagrass, sand with scarce vegetation, mud with scarce vegetation, and rock. Seagrass covers 64.85% (13,818 km2) of the total area, while 35.15% (7,487 km2) corresponds to the remaining benthic habitats with or without scarce vegetation. Both the underwater vegetation (seagrass and macro seaweed) and the substratum types were considered. Results were confirmed by in situ measurements obtained from three research cruises between 2003 and 2005. This map represents an important characterization of the Cuban platform waters in order to better understand these ecosystems, and can be used in future change detection analyses to monitor the health of benthic habitats in the Gulf of Batabanó.

Launched in April 1999, the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument is in its sixth year of operation. The ETM+ instrument has been the most stable of any of the Landsat instruments. To date, the best onboard calibration source for the reflective bands has been the Full Aperture Solar Calibrator, a solar-diffuser-based system, which has indicated changes of between 1% to 2% per year in the ETM+ gain for bands 1-4 and 8 and less than 0.5%/year for bands 5 and 7. However, most of this change is believed to be caused by changes in the solar diffuser panel, as opposed to a change in the instrument's gain. This belief is based partially on vicarious calibrations and observations of invariant sites, hyperarid sites of the Sahara and Arabia. Weighted average slopes determined from these datasets suggest changes of 0.0% to 0.4% per year for bands 1-4 and 8 and 0.4% to 0.5% per year for bands 5 and 7. Absolute calibration of the reflective bands of the ETM+ is consistent with vicarious observations and other sensors generally at the 5% level, though there appear to be some systematic differences.

The frequent presence of clouds in passive remotely sensed imagery severely limits its regular exploitation in various application fields. Thus, the removal of cloud cover from this imagery represents an important preprocessing task consisting in the reconstruction of cloud-contaminated data. The intent of this study is to propose two novel general methods for the reconstruction of areas obscured by clouds in a sequence of multitemporal multispectral images. Given a cloud-contaminated image of the sequence, each area of missing measurements is reconstructed through an unsupervised contextual prediction process that reproduces the local spectro-temporal relationships between the considered image and an opportunely selected subset of the remaining temporal images. In the first method, the contextual prediction process is implemented by means of an ensemble of linear predictors, each trained over a local multitemporal region that is spectrally homogeneous in each temporal image of the selected subset. In order to obtain such regions, each temporal image is locally classified by an unsupervised classifier based on the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. In the second method, the local spectro-temporal relationships are reproduced by a single nonlinear predictor based on the support vector machines (SVM) approach. To illustrate the performance of the two proposed methods, an experimental analysis on a sequence of three temporal images acquired by the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus sensor over a total period of four months is reported and discussed. It includes a detailed simulation study that aims at assessing with different reconstruction quality criteria the accuracy of the methods in different qualitative and quantitative cloud contamination conditions. Compared with two techniques based on compositing algorithms for cloud removal, the proposed methods show a clear superiority, which makes them a promising and useful tool in solving the considered problem, whose great complexity is commensurate with its practical importance.