Remote Sensing

13 pages, 4550 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characteristics of BeiDou-3 Experimental Satellite Clocks

by Yifei Lv, Tao Geng, Qile Zhao and Jingnan Liu

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1847; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111847 - 22 Nov 2018

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 4332

The characteristics of the improved Atomic Frequency Standard (AFS) operated on the latest BeiDou-3 experimental satellites are analyzed from day-of-year (DOY) 254 to 281, of the year 2017, considering the following three aspects: stability, periodicity, and prediction precision. The two-step method of Precise [...] Read more.

The characteristics of the improved Atomic Frequency Standard (AFS) operated on the latest BeiDou-3 experimental satellites are analyzed from day-of-year (DOY) 254 to 281, of the year 2017, considering the following three aspects: stability, periodicity, and prediction precision. The two-step method of Precise Orbit Determination (POD) is used to obtain the precise clock offsets. We presented the stability of such new clocks and studied the influence of the uneven distribution of the ground stations on the stability performance of the clock. The results show that the orbit influence on the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) clock offsets is the largest of three satellite types, especially from

3 \times 10^{3}

s to

8.64 \times 10^{4}

s. Considering this orbit influence, the analysis shows that the Passive Hydrogen Maser (PHM) clock carried on C32 is approximately

2.6 \times 10^{- 14}

at an interval of

10^{4}

, and has the best stability for any averaging intervals among the BeiDou satellite clocks, which currently achieves a level comparable to that of the PHM clock of Galileo, and the rubidium (Rb) clocks of Global Positioning System (GPS) Block IIF. The stability of the improved Rb AFS on BeiDou-3 is also superior to that of BeiDou-2 from

3 \times 10^{2}

s to

3 \times 10^{3}

s, and comparable to that of Rb AFS on the Galileo. Moreover, the periodicity of the PHM clock and the improved Rb clock are presented. For the PHM clock, the amplitudes are obviously reduced, while the new Rb clocks did not show a visible improvement, which will need further analysis in the future. As expected, the precision of the short-term clock prediction is improved because of the better characteristics of AFS. The Root Mean Square (RMS) of 1-h clock prediction is less than 0.16 ns. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Research with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS))

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24 pages, 8706 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Three-Dimensional Cloud Volume Reconstruction from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer

by Byungsuk Lee, Larry Di Girolamo, Guangyu Zhao and Yizhe Zhan

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1858; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111858 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4779

Abstract

Characterizing 3-D structure of clouds is needed for a more complete understanding of the Earth’s radiative and latent heat fluxes. Here we develop and explore a ray casting algorithm applied to data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) onboard the Terra satellite, in [...] Read more.

Characterizing 3-D structure of clouds is needed for a more complete understanding of the Earth’s radiative and latent heat fluxes. Here we develop and explore a ray casting algorithm applied to data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) onboard the Terra satellite, in order to reconstruct 3-D cloud volumes of observed clouds. The ray casting algorithm is first applied to geometrically simple synthetic clouds to show that, under the assumption of perfect, clear-conservative cloud masks, the reconstruction method yields overestimation in the volume whose magnitude depends on the cloud geometry and the resolution of the reconstruction grid relative to the image pixel resolution. The method is then applied to two hand-picked MISR scenes, fully accounting for MISR’s viewing geometry for reconstructions over the Earth’s ellipsoidal surface. The MISR Radiometric Camera-by-camera Cloud Mask (RCCM) at 1.1-km resolution and the custom cloud mask at 275-m resolution independently derived from MISR’s red, green, and blue channels are used as input cloud masks. A wind correction method, termed cloud spreading, is applied to the cloud masks to offset potential cloud movements over short time intervals between the camera views of a scene. The MISR cloud-top height product is used as a constraint to reduce the overestimation at the cloud top. The results for the two selected scenes show that the wind correction using the cloud spreading method increases the reconstructed volume up to 4.7 times greater than without the wind correction, and that the reconstructed volume generated from the RCCM is up to 3.5 times greater than that from the higher-resolution custom cloud mask. Recommendations for improving the presented cloud volume reconstructions, as well as possible future passive remote sensing satellite missions, are discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue MISR)

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1 pages, 143 KiB

Open AccessCorrection

Correction: Hu, A. Using Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Method for the Height of F2 Peak Forecasting from Ionosonde Measurements in the Australian Region. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1658

by Andong Hu and Kefei Zhang

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1857; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111857 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2340

Abstract

After publication of the research paper [...] Full article

19 pages, 11927 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sensitivity of TDS-1 GNSS-R Reflectivity to Soil Moisture: Global and Regional Differences and Impact of Different Spatial Scales

by Adriano Camps, Mercedes Vall·llossera, Hyuk Park, Gerard Portal and Luciana Rossato

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1856; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111856 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 73 | Viewed by 6396

Abstract

The potential of Global Navigation Satellite Systems-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) techniques to estimate land surface parameters such as soil moisture (SM) is experimentally studied using 2014–2017 global data from the UK TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) mission. The approach is based on the analysis of the sensitivity to [...] Read more.

The potential of Global Navigation Satellite Systems-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) techniques to estimate land surface parameters such as soil moisture (SM) is experimentally studied using 2014–2017 global data from the UK TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) mission. The approach is based on the analysis of the sensitivity to SM of different observables extracted from the Delay Doppler Maps (DDM) computed by the Space GNSS Receiver–Remote Sensing Instrument (SGR-ReSI) instrument using the L1 (1575.42 MHz) left-hand circularly-polarized (LHCP) reflected signals emitted by the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation satellites. The sensitivity of different GNSS-R observables to SM and its dependence on the incidence angle is analyzed. It is found that the sensitivity of the calibrated GNSS-R reflectivity to surface soil moisture is ~0.09 dB/% up to 30° incidence angle, and it decreases with increasing incidence angles, although differences are found depending on the spatial scale used for the ground-truth, and the region. The sensitivity to subsurface soil moisture has been also analyzed using a network of subsurface probes and hydrological models, apparently showing some dependence, but so far results are not conclusive. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Moisture Retrieval using Radar Remote Sensing Sensors)

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27 pages, 35074 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparison of Artificial Intelligence and Physical Models for Forecasting Photosynthetically-Active Radiation

by Lan Feng, Wenmin Qin, Lunche Wang, Aiwen Lin and Ming Zhang

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1855; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111855 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 4401

Abstract

Different kinds of radiative transfer models, including a relative sunshine-based model (BBM), a physical-based model for tropical environment (PBM), an efficient physical-based model (EPP), a look-up-table-based model (LUT), and six artificial intelligence models (AI) were introduced for modeling the daily photosynthetically-active radiation (PAR, [...] Read more.

Different kinds of radiative transfer models, including a relative sunshine-based model (BBM), a physical-based model for tropical environment (PBM), an efficient physical-based model (EPP), a look-up-table-based model (LUT), and six artificial intelligence models (AI) were introduced for modeling the daily photosynthetically-active radiation (PAR, solar radiation at 400–700 nm), using ground observations at twenty-nine stations, in different climatic zones and terrain features, over mainland China. The climate and terrain effects on the PAR estimates from the different PAR models have been quantitatively analyzed. The results showed that the Genetic model had overwhelmingly higher accuracy than the other models, with the lowest root mean square error (RMSE = 0.5 MJ m⁻²day⁻¹), lowest mean absolute bias error (MAE = 0.326 MJ m⁻²day⁻¹), and highest correlation coefficient (R = 0.972), respectively. The spatial–temporal variations of the annual mean PAR (APAR), in the different climate zones and terrains over mainland China, were further investigated, using the Genetic model; the PAR values in China were generally higher in summer than those in the other seasons. The Qinghai Tibetan Plateau had always been the area with the highest APAR (8.668 MJ m⁻²day⁻¹), and the Sichuan Basin had always been the area with lowest APAR (4.733 MJ m⁻²day⁻¹). The PAR datasets generated by the Genetic model, in this study, could be used in numerous PAR applications, with high accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Atmospheric Remote Sensing)

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1 pages, 172 KiB

Open AccessErratum

Erratum: Ramses A.M. et al. Vegetation Characterization through the Use of Precipitation-Affected SAR Signals. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1647

by Ramses A. Molijn, Lorenzo Iannini, Paco López Dekker, Paulo S.G. Magalhães and Ramon F. Hanssen

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1854; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111854 - 21 Nov 2018

Viewed by 2377

Abstract

After publication of the research paper [...] Full article

23 pages, 13220 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Utilizing Multilevel Features for Cloud Detection on Satellite Imagery

by Xi Wu and Zhenwei Shi

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1853; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111853 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 4905

Abstract

Cloud detection, which is defined as the pixel-wise binary classification, is significant in satellite imagery processing. In current remote sensing literature, cloud detection methods are linked to the relationships of imagery bands or based on simple image feature analysis. These methods, which only [...] Read more.

Cloud detection, which is defined as the pixel-wise binary classification, is significant in satellite imagery processing. In current remote sensing literature, cloud detection methods are linked to the relationships of imagery bands or based on simple image feature analysis. These methods, which only focus on low-level features, are not robust enough on the images with difficult land covers, for clouds share similar image features such as color and texture with the land covers. To solve the problem, in this paper, we propose a novel deep learning method for cloud detection on satellite imagery by utilizing multilevel image features with two major processes. The first process is to obtain the cloud probability map from the designed deep convolutional neural network, which concatenates deep neural network features from low-level to high-level. The second part of the method is to get refined cloud masks through a composite image filter technique, where the specific filter captures multilevel features of cloud structures and the surroundings of the input imagery. In the experiments, the proposed method achieves 85.38% intersection over union of cloud in the testing set which contains 100 Gaofen-1 wide field of view images and obtains satisfactory visual cloud masks, especially for those hard images. The experimental results show that utilizing multilevel features by the combination of the network with feature concatenation and the particular filter tackles the cloud detection problem with improved cloud masks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Analysis of Big Data in Remote Sensing)

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15 pages, 5911 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Collection-6 MODIS Land Surface Temperature Product Using Multi-Year Ground Measurements in an Arid Area of Northwest China

by Lei Lu, Tingjun Zhang, Tiejun Wang and Xiaoming Zhou

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1852; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111852 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 45 | Viewed by 4030

Abstract

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) products are widely used in ecology, hydrology, vegetation monitoring, and global circulation models. Compared to the collection-5 (C5) LST products, the newly released collection-6 (C6) LST products have been refined over bare soil pixels. [...] Read more.

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) products are widely used in ecology, hydrology, vegetation monitoring, and global circulation models. Compared to the collection-5 (C5) LST products, the newly released collection-6 (C6) LST products have been refined over bare soil pixels. This study aims to evaluate the C6 MODIS 1-km LST product using multi-year in situ data covering barren surfaces. Evaluation using all in situ data shows that the MODIS C6 LSTs are underestimated with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 2.59 K for the site in the Gobi area, 3.05 K for the site in the sand desert area, and 2.86 K for the site in the desert steppe area at daytime. For nighttime LSTs, the RMSEs are 2.01 K, 2.88 K, and 1.80 K for the three sites, respectively. Both biases and RMSEs also show strong seasonal signals. Compared to the error of C5 1-km LSTs, the RMSE of C6 1-km LST product is smaller, especially for daytime LSTs, with a value of 2.24 K compared to 3.51 K. The large errors in the sand desert region are presumably due to the lack of global representativeness of the magnitude of emissivity adjustment and misclassification for the barren surface causing error in emissivities. It indicates that the accuracy of the MODIS C6 LST product might be further improved through emissivity adjustment with globally representative magnitude and accurate land cover classification. From this study, the MODIS C6 1-km LST product is recommended for applications. Full article

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19 pages, 5441 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Using TanDEM-X Pursuit Monostatic Observations with a Large Perpendicular Baseline to Extract Glacial Topography

by Sang-Hoon Hong, Shimon Wdowinski, Falk Amelung, Hyun-Cheol Kim, Joong-Sun Won and Sang-Wan Kim

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1851; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111851 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4632

Abstract

Space-based Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) applications have been widely used to monitor the cryosphere over past decades. Owing to temporal decorrelation, interferometric coherence often severely degrades on fast moving glaciers. TanDEM-X observations can overcome the temporal decorrelation because of their simultaneous measurements [...] Read more.

Space-based Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) applications have been widely used to monitor the cryosphere over past decades. Owing to temporal decorrelation, interferometric coherence often severely degrades on fast moving glaciers. TanDEM-X observations can overcome the temporal decorrelation because of their simultaneous measurements by two satellite constellations. In this study, we used the TanDEM-X pursuit monostatic mode with large baseline formation following a scientific phase timeline to develop highly precise topographic elevation models of the Petermann Glacier of Northwest Greenland. The large baseline provided the advantage of extracting topographic information over low relief areas, such as the surface of a glacier. As expected, coherent interferometric phases (>0.8) were well maintained over the glaciers, despite their fast movement, due to the nearly simultaneous TanDEM-X measurements. The height ambiguity, which was defined as the altitude difference corresponding to a 2π phase change of the flattened interferogram, of the dataset was 10.63 m, which was favorable for extracting topography in a low relief region. We validated the TanDEM-X derived glacial topography by comparing it to the SAR/Interferometric radar altimeter observations acquired by CryoSat-2 and the IceBridge Airborne Topographic Mapper laser altimeter measurements. Both observations showed very good correlation within a few meters of the offsets (−12.5~−3.1 m), with respect to the derived glacial topography. Routine TanDEM-X observations will be very useful to better understand the dynamics of glacial movements and topographic change. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from the “International Symposium on Remote Sensing 2018”)

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19 pages, 6654 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Forest Cover and Vegetation Degradation Detection in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area Using BFAST Monitor

by Michael Schultz, Aurélie Shapiro, Jan G. P. W. Clevers, Craig Beech and Martin Herold

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1850; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111850 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 7976

Abstract

Forest cover and vegetation degradation was monitored across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) in southern Africa and the performance of three different methods in detecting degradation was assessed using reference data. Breaks for Additive Season and Trend (BFAST) Monitor was used to [...] Read more.

Forest cover and vegetation degradation was monitored across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) in southern Africa and the performance of three different methods in detecting degradation was assessed using reference data. Breaks for Additive Season and Trend (BFAST) Monitor was used to identify potential forest cover and vegetation degradation using Landsat Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) time series data. Parametric probability-based magnitude thresholds, non-parametric random forest in conjunction with Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) time series, and the combination of both methods were evaluated for their suitability to detect degradation for six land cover classes ranging from closed canopy forest to open grassland. The performance of degradation detection was largely dependent on tree cover and vegetation density. Satisfactory accuracies were obtained for closed woodland (user’s accuracy 87%, producer’s accuracy 71%) and closed forest (user’s accuracy 92%, producer’s accuracy 90%), with lower accuracies for open canopies. The performance of the three methods was more similar for closed canopies and differed for land cover classes with open canopies. Highest user’s accuracy was achieved when methods were combined, and the best performance for producer’s accuracy was obtained when random forest was used. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Environmental Change)

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19 pages, 7659 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Aboveground Tree Biomass Estimation of Sparse Subalpine Coniferous Forest with UAV Oblique Photography

by Jiayuan Lin, Meimei Wang, Mingguo Ma and Yi Lin

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1849; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111849 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 57 | Viewed by 6287

Abstract

In tree Aboveground Biomass (AGB) estimation, the traditional harvest method is accurate but unsuitable for a large-scale forest. The airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) is superior in obtaining the point cloud data of a dense forest and extracting tree heights for AGB [...] Read more.

In tree Aboveground Biomass (AGB) estimation, the traditional harvest method is accurate but unsuitable for a large-scale forest. The airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) is superior in obtaining the point cloud data of a dense forest and extracting tree heights for AGB estimation. However, the LiDAR has limitations such as high cost, low efficiency, and complicated operations. Alternatively, the overlapping oblique photographs taken by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-loaded digital camera can also generate point cloud data using the Aerial Triangulation (AT) method. However, limited by the relatively poor penetrating capacity of natural light, the photographs captured by the digital camera on a UAV are more suitable for obtaining the point cloud data of a relatively sparse forest. In this paper, an electric fixed-wing UAV loaded with a digital camera was employed to take oblique photographs of a sparse subalpine coniferous forest in the source region of the Minjiang River. Based on point cloud data obtained from the overlapping photographs, a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was generated by filtering non-ground points along with the acquisition of a Digital Surface Model (DSM) of Minjiang fir trees by eliminating subalpine shrubs and meadows. Individual tree heights were extracted by overlaying individual tree outlines on Canopy Height Model (CHM) data computed by subtracting the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the rasterized DSM. The allometric equation with tree height (H) as the predictor variable was established by fitting measured tree heights with tree AGBs, which were estimated using the allometric equation on H and Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) in sample tree plots. Finally, the AGBs of all of the trees in the test site were determined by inputting extracted individual tree heights into the established allometric equation. In accuracy assessment, the coefficient of determination (R²) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of extracted individual tree heights were 0.92 and 1.77 m, and the R² and RMSE of the estimated AGBs of individual trees were 0.96 and 54.90 kg. The results demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of applying UAV-acquired oblique optical photographs to the tree AGB estimation of sparse subalpine coniferous forests. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aerial and Near-Field Remote Sensing Developments in Forestry)

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18 pages, 2300 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Landscape-Scale Aboveground Biomass Estimation in Buffer Zone Community Forests of Central Nepal: Coupling In Situ Measurements with Landsat 8 Satellite Data

by Santa Pandit, Satoshi Tsuyuki and Timothy Dube

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1848; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111848 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 4693

Abstract

Knowledge of forest productivity status is an important indicator of the amount of biomass accumulated and the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the carbon cycle. However, accurate and up-to-date information on forest biomass and forest succession remain rudimentary within natural forests. This study [...] Read more.

Knowledge of forest productivity status is an important indicator of the amount of biomass accumulated and the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the carbon cycle. However, accurate and up-to-date information on forest biomass and forest succession remain rudimentary within natural forests. This study sought to understand and establish the potential of a new-generation sensor in estimating aboveground biomass (AGB) stored in the natural forest, also known as ‘community forest’ or buffer zone community forest (BZCF), in the Parsa National Park, Nepal. The utility of the 30-m resolution Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and in situ data was tested using two statistical approaches, namely multiple linear regression (MLR) and random forest (RF). The analysis was done based on four computational procedures. These included spectral bands, vegetation indices and pooled dataset (spectral bands + vegetation indices), and model selected important variables. AGB estimation based on pooled data showed that the RF algorithm produced better results when compared to the use of the MLR model. For instance, the RF model estimated AGB with an R² value of 0.87 and a root mean square error of 20.50 t ha⁻¹, as well as an R² value of 0.95 and a RMSE of 13.3 t ha⁻¹ when using selected important variables. Comparatively, the MLR using pooled data produced an R² value of 0.56 and RMSE value of 37.01 t ha⁻¹. The RF model selected Optimized Soil Adjusted Vegetation index (OSAVI), Simple ratio (SR), Modified simple ratio (MSR), and Normalized difference Vegetation index (NDVI) as the most important variables for estimating AGB, whereas MLR selected band 5 and SR. These findings demonstrate the relevance of the relatively new Landsat 8 sensor in the estimation of AGB in community buffer zones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Vegetation)

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18 pages, 3549 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Consistency Assessments for Global Land-Cover Datasets: A Comparison among GLC2000, CCI LC, MCD12, GLOBCOVER and GLCNMO

by Ting Hua, Wenwu Zhao, Yanxu Liu, Shuai Wang and Siqi Yang

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1846; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111846 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 79 | Viewed by 5846

Abstract

Numerous global-scale land-cover datasets have greatly contributed to the study of global environmental change and the sustainable management of natural resources. However, land-cover datasets inevitably experience information loss because of the nature of the uncertainty in the interpretation of remote-sensing images. Therefore, analyzing [...] Read more.

Numerous global-scale land-cover datasets have greatly contributed to the study of global environmental change and the sustainable management of natural resources. However, land-cover datasets inevitably experience information loss because of the nature of the uncertainty in the interpretation of remote-sensing images. Therefore, analyzing the spatial consistency of multi-source land-cover datasets on the global scale is important to maintain the consistency of time and consider the effects of land-cover changes on spatial consistency. In this study, we assess the spatial consistency of five land-cover datasets, namely, GLC2000, CCI LC, MCD12, GLOBCOVER and GLCNMO, at the global and continental scales through climate and elevation partitions. The influencing factors of surface conditions and data producers on the spatial inconsistency are discussed. The results show that the global overall consistency of the five datasets ranges from 49.2% to 67.63%. The spatial consistency of Europe is high, and the multi-year value is 66.57%. In addition, the overall consistency in the EF climatic zone is very high, around 95%. The surface conditions and data producers affect the spatial consistency of land-cover datasets to different degrees. CCI LC and GLCNMO (2013) have the highest overall consistencies on the global scale, reaching 67.63%. Generally, the consistency of these five global land-cover datasets is relatively low, increasing the difficulty of satisfying the needs of high-precision land-surface-process simulations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Satellite Derived Global Land Product Validation)

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19 pages, 11805 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimating Tree Position, Diameter at Breast Height, and Tree Height in Real-Time Using a Mobile Phone with RGB-D SLAM

by Yongxiang Fan, Zhongke Feng, Abdul Mannan, Tauheed Ullah Khan, Chaoyong Shen and Sajjad Saeed

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1845; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111845 - 21 Nov 2018

Cited by 80 | Viewed by 10384

Abstract

Accurate estimation of tree position, diameter at breast height (DBH), and tree height measurements is an important task in forest inventory. Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) is an important solution. However, the poor global navigation satellite system (GNSS) coverage under the canopy makes the [...] Read more.

Accurate estimation of tree position, diameter at breast height (DBH), and tree height measurements is an important task in forest inventory. Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) is an important solution. However, the poor global navigation satellite system (GNSS) coverage under the canopy makes the MLS system unable to provide globally-consistent point cloud data, and thus, it cannot accurately estimate the forest attributes. SLAM could be an alternative for solutions dependent on GNSS. In this paper, a mobile phone with RGB-D SLAM was used to estimate tree position, DBH, and tree height in real-time. The main aims of this paper include (1) designing an algorithm to estimate the DBH and position of the tree using the point cloud from the time-of-flight (TOF) camera and camera pose; (2) designing an algorithm to measure tree height using the perspective projection principle of a camera and the camera pose; and (3) showing the measurement results to the observer using augmented reality (AR) technology to allow the observer to intuitively judge the accuracy of the measurement results and re-estimate the measurement results if needed. The device was tested in nine square plots with 12 m sides. The tree position estimations were unbiased and had a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.12 m in both the x-axis and y-axis directions; the DBH estimations had a 0.33 cm (1.78%) BIAS and a 1.26 cm (6.39%) root mean square error (RMSE); the tree height estimations had a 0.15 m (1.08%) BIAS and a 1.11 m (7.43%) RMSE. The results showed that the mobile phone with RGB-D SLAM is a potential tool for obtaining accurate measurements of tree position, DBH, and tree height. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Aerial and Near-Field Remote Sensing Developments in Forestry)

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12 pages, 2642 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sparse Cost Volume for Efficient Stereo Matching

by Chuanhua Lu, Hideaki Uchiyama, Diego Thomas, Atsushi Shimada and Rin-ichiro Taniguchi

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1844; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111844 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 30 | Viewed by 5930

Abstract

Stereo matching has been solved as a supervised learning task with convolutional neural network (CNN). However, CNN based approaches basically require huge memory use. In addition, it is still challenging to find correct correspondences between images at ill-posed dim and sensor noise regions. [...] Read more.

Stereo matching has been solved as a supervised learning task with convolutional neural network (CNN). However, CNN based approaches basically require huge memory use. In addition, it is still challenging to find correct correspondences between images at ill-posed dim and sensor noise regions. To solve these problems, we propose Sparse Cost Volume Net (SCV-Net) achieving high accuracy, low memory cost and fast computation. The idea of the cost volume for stereo matching was initially proposed in GC-Net. In our work, by making the cost volume compact and proposing an efficient similarity evaluation for the volume, we achieved faster stereo matching while improving the accuracy. Moreover, we propose to use weight normalization instead of commonly-used batch normalization for stereo matching tasks. This improves the robustness to not only sensor noises in images but also batch size in the training process. We evaluated our proposed network on the Scene Flow and KITTI 2015 datasets, its performance overall surpasses the GC-Net. Comparing with the GC-Net, our SCV-Net achieved to: (1) reduce

73.08 %

GPU memory cost; (2) reduce

61.11 %

processing time; (3) improve the 3PE from

2.87 %

to

2.61 %

on the KITTI 2015 dataset. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Joint Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision Applications in Remote Sensing)

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18 pages, 8760 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Dependence of Sea SAR Image Distribution Parameters on Surface Wave Characteristics

by Jian Sun, Xin Wang, Xinzhe Yuan, Qingjun Zhang, Changlong Guan and Alexander V. Babanin

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1843; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111843 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4246

Abstract

Modeling the statistical distribution of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is essential for sea target detection, which is an important aspect of marine SAR applications. The main goal of this study is to determine the effects of sea states and surface wave texture [...] Read more.

Modeling the statistical distribution of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is essential for sea target detection, which is an important aspect of marine SAR applications. The main goal of this study is to determine the effects of sea states and surface wave texture characteristics on the statistical distributions of sea SAR images. A statistical analysis of the Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) wave mode images (imagettes), covering a variety of sea states and wave conditions, was carried out to investigate the suitability of the statistical distributions often used in the literature for sea states parameters. The results revealed the variation in the distribution parameters in terms of their azimuthal cutoff wavelength (ACW) and the peak-to-background ratio (PBR) of the SAR image intensity spectra. The shape parameters of Gamma and Weibull distribution are sensitive and monotonously decreasing with respect to PBR, while the scale parameter is sensitive to ACW. The K distribution was shown to perform well, with both high and stable accuracy. The results of this paper provide a parameterized scheme for sea state classifications and can potentially be used for choosing the most suitable distribution model according to sea state when performing sea target detection. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Ocean Remote Sensing)

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26 pages, 3779 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Long-Term and High-Resolution Global Time Series of Brightness Temperature from Copula-Based Fusion of SMAP Enhanced and SMOS Data

by Christof Lorenz, Carsten Montzka, Thomas Jagdhuber, Patrick Laux and Harald Kunstmann

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1842; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111842 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 5057

Abstract

Long and consistent soil moisture time series at adequate spatial resolution are key to foster the application of soil moisture observations and remotely-sensed products in climate and numerical weather prediction models. The two L-band soil moisture satellite missions SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) [...] Read more.

Long and consistent soil moisture time series at adequate spatial resolution are key to foster the application of soil moisture observations and remotely-sensed products in climate and numerical weather prediction models. The two L-band soil moisture satellite missions SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) are able to provide soil moisture estimates on global scales and in kilometer accuracy. However, the SMOS data record has an appropriate length of 7.5 years since late 2009, but with a coarse resolution of ∼25 km only. In contrast, a spatially-enhanced SMAP product is available at a higher resolution of 9 km, but for a shorter time period (since March 2015 only). Being the fundamental observable from passive microwave sensors, reliable brightness temperatures (Tbs) are a mandatory precondition for satellite-based soil moisture products. We therefore develop, evaluate and apply a copula-based data fusion approach for combining SMAP Enhanced (SMAP_E) and SMOS brightness Temperature (Tb) data. The approach exploits both linear and non-linear dependencies between the two satellite-based Tb products and allows one to generate conditional SMAP_E-like random samples during the pre-SMAP period. Our resulting global Copula-combined SMOS-SMAP_E (CoSMOP) Tbs are statistically consistent with SMAP_E brightness temperatures, have a spatial resolution of 9 km and cover the period from 2010 to 2018. A comparison with Service Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN)-sites over the Contiguous United States (CONUS) domain shows that the approach successfully reduces the average RMSE of the original SMOS data by 15%. At certain locations, improvements of 40% and more can be observed. Moreover, the median NSE can be enhanced from zero to almost 0.5. Hence, CoSMOP, which will be made freely available to the public, provides a first step towards a global, long-term, high-resolution and multi-sensor brightness temperature product, and thereby, also soil moisture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Moisture Remote Sensing Across Scales)

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19 pages, 7080 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Using Landsat-8 Images for Quantifying Suspended Sediment Concentration in Red River (Northern Vietnam)

by Quang Vinh Pham, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, Nima Pahlevan, La Thi Oanh, Thanh Binh Nguyen and Ngoc Thang Nguyen

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1841; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111841 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 44 | Viewed by 10318

Abstract

Analyzing the trends in the spatial distribution of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in riverine surface water enables better understanding of the hydromorphological properties of its watersheds and the associated processes. Thus, it is critical to identify an appropriate method to quantify spatio-temporal variability [...] Read more.

Analyzing the trends in the spatial distribution of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in riverine surface water enables better understanding of the hydromorphological properties of its watersheds and the associated processes. Thus, it is critical to identify an appropriate method to quantify spatio-temporal variability in SSC. This study aims to estimate SSC in a highly turbid river, i.e., the Red River in Northern Vietnam, using Landsat 8 (L8) images. To do so, in situ radiometric data together with SSC at 60 sites along the river were measured on two different dates during the dry and wet seasons. Analyses of the in situ data indicated strong correlations between SSC and the band-ratio of green and red channels, i.e., r-squared = 0.75 and a root mean square error of ~0.3 mg/L. Using a subsample of in situ radiometric data (n = 30) collected near-concurrently with one L8 image, four different atmospheric correction methods were evaluated. Although none of the methods provided reasonable water-leaving reflectance spectra (ρ_w), it was found that the band-ratio of the green-red ratio is less sensitive to uncertainties in the atmospheric correction for mapping SSC compared to individual bands. Therefore, due to its ease of access, standard L8 land surface reflectance products available via U.S. Geological Survey web portals were utilized. With the empirical relationship derived, we produced Landsat-derived SSC distribution maps for a few images collected in wet and dry seasons within the 2013–2017 period. Analyses of image products suggest that (a) the Thao River is the most significant source amongst the three major tributaries (Lo, Da and Thao rivers) providing suspended load to the Red River, and (b) the suspended load in the rainy season is nearly twice larger than that in the dry season, and it correlates highly with the runoff (correlation coefficient = 0.85). Although it is demonstrated that the atmospheric correction in tropical areas over these sediment-rich waters present major challenges in the retrievals of water-leaving reflectance spectra, the study signifies the utility of band-ratio techniques for quantifying SSC in highly turbid river waters. With Sentinel-2A/B data products combined with those of Landsat-8, it would be possible to capture temporal variability in major river systems in the near future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensing in Geology, Geomorphology and Hydrology)

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22 pages, 8246 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mapping Paddy Rice Using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with Landsat 8 Datasets in the Dongting Lake Area, China

by Meng Zhang, Hui Lin, Guangxing Wang, Hua Sun and Jing Fu

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1840; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111840 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 113 | Viewed by 9170

Abstract

Rice is one of the world’s major staple foods, especially in China. Highly accurate monitoring on rice-producing land is, therefore, crucial for assessing food supplies and productivity. Recently, the deep-learning convolutional neural network (CNN) has achieved considerable success in remote-sensing data analysis. A [...] Read more.

Rice is one of the world’s major staple foods, especially in China. Highly accurate monitoring on rice-producing land is, therefore, crucial for assessing food supplies and productivity. Recently, the deep-learning convolutional neural network (CNN) has achieved considerable success in remote-sensing data analysis. A CNN-based paddy-rice mapping method using the multitemporal Landsat 8, phenology data, and land-surface temperature (LST) was developed during this study. First, the spatial–temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (STARFM) was used to blend the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat data for obtaining multitemporal Landsat-like data. Subsequently, the threshold method is applied to derive the phenological variables from the Landsat-like (Normalized difference vegetation index) NDVI time series. Then, a generalized single-channel algorithm was employed to derive LST from the Landsat 8. Finally, multitemporal Landsat 8 spectral images, combined with phenology and LST data, were employed to extract paddy-rice information using a patch-based deep-learning CNN algorithm. The results show that the proposed method achieved an overall accuracy of 97.06% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.91, which are 6.43% and 0.07 higher than that of the support vector machine method, and 7.68% and 0.09 higher than that of the random forest method, respectively. Moreover, the Landsat-derived rice area is strongly correlated (R² = 0.9945) with government statistical data, demonstrating that the proposed method has potential in large-scale paddy-rice mapping using moderate spatial resolution images. Full article

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22 pages, 3770 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

The AQUI Soil Moisture Network for Satellite Microwave Remote Sensing Validation in South-Western France

by A. Al-Yaari, S. Dayau, C. Chipeaux, C. Aluome, A. Kruszewski, D. Loustau and J.-P. Wigneron

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1839; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111839 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 5177

Abstract

Global soil moisture (SM) products are currently available thanks to microwave remote sensing techniques. Validation of these satellite-based SM products over different vegetation and climate conditions is a crucial step. INRA (National Institute of Agricultural Research) has set up the AQUI SM and [...] Read more.

Global soil moisture (SM) products are currently available thanks to microwave remote sensing techniques. Validation of these satellite-based SM products over different vegetation and climate conditions is a crucial step. INRA (National Institute of Agricultural Research) has set up the AQUI SM and soil temperature in situ network (composed of three main sites Bouron, Bilos, and Hermitage), over a flat area of dense pine forests, in South-Western France (the Bordeaux–Aquitaine region) to validate the Soil Moisture and Ocean salinity (SMOS) satellite SM products. SMOS was launched in 2009 by the European Space Agency (ESA). The aims of this study are to present the AQUI network and to evaluate the SMOS SM product (in the new SMOS-IC version) along with other microwave SM products such as the active ASCAT (Advanced Scatterometer) and the ESA combined (passive and active) CCI (Climate Change Initiative) SM retrievals. A first comparison, using Pearson correlation, Bias, RMSE (Root Mean Square Error), and Un biased RMSE (ubRMSE) scores, between the 0–5 cm AQUI network and ASCAT, CCI, and SMOS SM products was conducted. In general all the three products were able to reproduce the annual cycle of the AQUI in situ observations. CCI and ASCAT had best and similar correlations (R~0.72) over the Bouron and Bilos sites. All had comparable correlations over the Hermitage sites with overall average values of 0.74, 0.68, and 0.69 for CCI, SMOS-IC, and ASCAT, respectively. Considering anomalies, correlation values decreased for all products with best ability to capture day to day variations obtained by ASCAT. CCI (followed by SMOS-IC) had the best ubRMSE values (mostly < 0.04 m³/m³) over most of the stations. Although the region is highly impacted by radio frequency interferences, SMOS-IC followed correctly the in situ SM dynamics. All the three remotely-sensed SM products (except SMOS-IC over some stations) overestimated the AQUI in situ SM observations. These results demonstrate that the AQUI network is likely to be well-suited for satellite microwave remote sensing evaluations/validations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Outstanding Results over Land from the SMOS Mission)

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18 pages, 5931 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Retrieval of the Fine-Mode Aerosol Optical Depth over East China Using a Grouped Residual Error Sorting (GRES) Method from Multi-Angle and Polarized Satellite Data

by Yang Zhang, Zhengqiang Li, Zhihong Liu, Juan Zhang, Lili Qie, Yisong Xie, Weizhen Hou, Yongqian Wang and Zhixiang Ye

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1838; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111838 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4258

Abstract

The fine-mode aerosol optical depth (AOD_f) is an important parameter for the environment and climate change study, which mainly represents the anthropogenic aerosols component. The Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL) instrument [...] Read more.

The fine-mode aerosol optical depth (AOD_f) is an important parameter for the environment and climate change study, which mainly represents the anthropogenic aerosols component. The Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL) instrument can detect polarized signal from multi-angle observation and the polarized signal mainly comes from the radiation contribution of the fine-mode aerosols, which provides an opportunity to obtain AOD_f directly. However, the currently operational algorithm of Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique (LOA) has a poor AOD_f retrieval accuracy over East China on high aerosol loading days. This study focused on solving this issue and proposed a grouped residual error sorting (GRES) method to determine the optimal aerosol model in AOD_f retrieval using the traditional look-up table (LUT) approach and then the AOD_f retrieval accuracy over East China was improved. The comparisons between the GRES retrieved and the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) ground-based AOD_f at Beijing, Xianghe, Taihu and Hong_Kong_PolyU sites produced high correlation coefficients (r) of 0.900, 0.933, 0.957 and 0.968, respectively. The comparisons of the GRES retrieved AOD_f and PARASOL AOD_f product with those of the AERONET observations produced a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.054 versus 0.104 on high aerosol loading days (AERONET mean AOD_f at 865 nm = 0.283). An application using the GRES method for total AOD (AOD_t) retrieval also showed a good expandability for multi-angle aerosol retrieval of this method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical and Laser Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere)

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20 pages, 8549 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Point Pattern Chamfer Registration of Optical and SAR Images Based on Mesh Grids

by Chu He, Peizhang Fang, Dehui Xiong, Wenwei Wang and Mingsheng Liao

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1837; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111837 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3718

Abstract

Automatic image registration of optical-to-Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is difficult because of the inconsistency of radiometric and geometric properties between the optical image and the SAR image. The intensity-based methods may require many calculations and be ineffective when there are geometric distortions [...] Read more.

Automatic image registration of optical-to-Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is difficult because of the inconsistency of radiometric and geometric properties between the optical image and the SAR image. The intensity-based methods may require many calculations and be ineffective when there are geometric distortions between these two images. The feature-based methods have high requirements on features, and there are certain challenges in feature extraction and matching. A new automatic optical-to-SAR image registration framework is proposed in this paper. First, modified holistically nested edge detection is employed to detect the main contours in both the optical and SAR images. Second, a mesh grid strategy is presented to perform a coarse-to-fine registration. The coarse registration calculates the feature matching and summarizes the preliminary results for the fine registration process. Finally, moving direct linear transformation is introduced to perform a homography warp to alleviate parallax. The experimental results show the effectiveness and accuracy of our proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensing Image Processing)

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17 pages, 2338 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Noise-Resilient Online Learning Algorithm for Scene Classification

by Ling Jian, Fuhao Gao, Peng Ren, Yunquan Song and Shihua Luo

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1836; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111836 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4006

Abstract

The proliferation of remote sensing imagery motivates a surge of research interest in image processing such as feature extraction and scene recognition, etc. Among them, scene recognition (classification) is a typical learning task that focuses on exploiting annotated images to infer the category [...] Read more.

The proliferation of remote sensing imagery motivates a surge of research interest in image processing such as feature extraction and scene recognition, etc. Among them, scene recognition (classification) is a typical learning task that focuses on exploiting annotated images to infer the category of an unlabeled image. Existing scene classification algorithms predominantly focus on static data and are designed to learn discriminant information from clean data. They, however, suffer from two major shortcomings, i.e., the noisy label may negatively affect the learning procedure and learning from scratch may lead to a huge computational burden. Thus, they are not able to handle large-scale remote sensing images, in terms of both recognition accuracy and computational cost. To address this problem, in the paper, we propose a noise-resilient online classification algorithm, which is scalable and robust to noisy labels. Specifically, ramp loss is employed as loss function to alleviate the negative affect of noisy labels, and we iteratively optimize the decision function in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space under the framework of Online Gradient Descent (OGD). Experiments on both synthetic and real-world data sets demonstrate that the proposed noise-resilient online classification algorithm is more robust and sparser than state-of-the-art online classification algorithms. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Representation Learning for Remote Sensing Analytics (RLRSA))

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23 pages, 4155 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Developing an Ensemble Precipitation Algorithm from Satellite Products and Its Topographical and Seasonal Evaluations Over Pakistan

by Khalil Ur Rahman, Songhao Shang, Muhammad Shahid and Jiang Li

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1835; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111835 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 41 | Viewed by 5619

Abstract

Accurate estimation of precipitation is critical for hydrological, meteorological, and climate models. This study evaluates the performance of satellite-based precipitation products (SPPs) including Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)-based Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA 3B43-v7), [...] Read more.

Accurate estimation of precipitation is critical for hydrological, meteorological, and climate models. This study evaluates the performance of satellite-based precipitation products (SPPs) including Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)-based Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA 3B43-v7), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely-Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Network (PERSIANN), and PERSIANN-CDR (Climate Data Record), over Pakistan based on Surface Precipitation Gauges (SPGs) at spatial and temporal scales. A novel ensemble precipitation (EP) algorithm is developed by selecting the two best SPPs using the Paired Sample t-test and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The SPPs and EP algorithm are evaluated over five climate zones (ranging from glacial Zone-A to hyper-arid Zone-E) based on six statistical metrics. The result indicated that IMERG outperformed all other SPPs, but still has considerable overestimation in the highly elevated zones (+20.93 mm/month in Zone-A) and relatively small underestimation in the arid zone (−2.85 mm/month in Zone-E). Based on the seasonal evaluation, IMERG and TMPA overestimated precipitation during pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons while underestimating precipitation during the post-monsoon and winter seasons. However, the developed EP algorithm significantly reduced the errors both on spatial and temporal scales. The only limitation of the EP algorithm is relatively poor performance at high elevation as compared to low elevations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Precipitation)

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18 pages, 7821 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Capability of Remotely Sensed Drought Indices for Representing the Spatio–Temporal Variations of the Meteorological Droughts in the Yellow River Basin

by Fei Wang, Zongmin Wang, Haibo Yang, Yong Zhao, Zhenhong Li and Jiapeng Wu

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1834; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111834 - 20 Nov 2018

Cited by 54 | Viewed by 6254

Abstract

Due to the advantages of wide coverage and continuity, remotely sensed data are widely used for large-scale drought monitoring to compensate for the deficiency and discontinuity of meteorological data. However, few studies have focused on the capability of various remotely sensed drought indices [...] Read more.

Due to the advantages of wide coverage and continuity, remotely sensed data are widely used for large-scale drought monitoring to compensate for the deficiency and discontinuity of meteorological data. However, few studies have focused on the capability of various remotely sensed drought indices (RSDIs) to represent the spatio–temporal variations of meteorological droughts. In this study, five RSDIs, namely the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI), Modified Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (MTVDI), and Normalized Vegetation Supply Water Index (NVSWI), were calculated using monthly Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The monthly NDVI and LST data were filtered by the Savitzky–Golay (S-G) filtering method. A meteorological station-based drought index represented by the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) was compared with the RSDIs. Additionally, the dimensionless Skill Score (SS) method was adopted to identify the spatiotemporally optimal RSDIs for presenting meteorological droughts in the Yellow River basin (YRB) from 2000 to 2015. The results indicated that: (1) RSDIs revealed a decreasing drought trend in the overall YRB consistent with the SPEI except for in winter, and different variations of seasonal trends spatially; (2) the optimal RSDIs in spring, summer, autumn, and winter were VHI, TCI, MTVDI, and VCI, respectively, and the average correlation coefficient between the RSDIs and the SPEI was 0.577 (α = 0.05); and (3) different RSDIs have time lags of zero–three months compared with the meteorological drought index. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Vegetation)

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19 pages, 41006 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards a 20 m Global Building Map from Sentinel-1 SAR Data

by Marco Chini, Ramona Pelich, Renaud Hostache, Patrick Matgen and Carlos Lopez-Martinez

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1833; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111833 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 48 | Viewed by 9591

Abstract

This study introduces a technique for automatically mapping built-up areas using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscattering intensity and interferometric multi-temporal coherence generated from Sentinel-1 data in the framework of the Copernicus program. The underlying hypothesis is that, in SAR images, built-up areas exhibit [...] Read more.

This study introduces a technique for automatically mapping built-up areas using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscattering intensity and interferometric multi-temporal coherence generated from Sentinel-1 data in the framework of the Copernicus program. The underlying hypothesis is that, in SAR images, built-up areas exhibit very high backscattering values that are coherent in time. Several particular characteristics of the Sentinel-1 satellite mission are put to good use, such as its high revisit time, the availability of dual-polarized data, and its small orbital tube. The newly developed algorithm is based on an adaptive parametric thresholding that first identifies pixels with high backscattering values in both VV and VH polarimetric channels. The interferometric SAR coherence is then used to reduce false alarms. These are caused by land cover classes (other than buildings) that are characterized by high backscattering values that are not coherent in time (e.g., certain types of vegetated areas). The algorithm was tested on Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide Swath data from five different test sites located in semiarid and arid regions in the Mediterranean region and Northern Africa. The resulting building maps were compared with the Global Urban Footprint (GUF) derived from the TerraSAR-X mission data and, on average, a 92% agreement was obtained. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Classification and Feature Extraction for Remote Sensing Image Analysis)

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27 pages, 6805 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Generalized Hierarchical Model-Based Estimation for Aboveground Biomass Assessment Using GEDI and Landsat Data

by Svetlana Saarela, Sören Holm, Sean P. Healey, Hans-Erik Andersen, Hans Petersson, Wilmer Prentius, Paul L. Patterson, Erik Næsset, Timothy G. Gregoire and Göran Ståhl

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1832; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111832 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 67 | Viewed by 10156

Abstract

Recent developments in remote sensing (RS) technology have made several sources of auxiliary data available to support forest inventories. Thus, a pertinent question is how different sources of RS data should be combined with field data to make inventories cost-efficient. Hierarchical model-based estimation [...] Read more.

Recent developments in remote sensing (RS) technology have made several sources of auxiliary data available to support forest inventories. Thus, a pertinent question is how different sources of RS data should be combined with field data to make inventories cost-efficient. Hierarchical model-based estimation has been proposed as a promising way of combining: (i) wall-to-wall optical data that are only weakly correlated with forest structure; (ii) a discontinuous sample of active RS data that are more strongly correlated with structure; and (iii) a sparse sample of field data. Model predictions based on the strongly correlated RS data source are used for estimating a model linking the target quantity with weakly correlated wall-to-wall RS data. Basing the inference on the latter model, uncertainties due to both modeling steps must be accounted for to obtain reliable variance estimates of estimated population parameters, such as totals or means. Here, we generalize previously existing estimators for hierarchical model-based estimation to cases with non-homogeneous error variance and cases with correlated errors, for example due to clustered sample data. This is an important generalization to take into account data from practical surveys. We apply the new estimation framework to case studies that mimic the data that will be available from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission and compare the proposed estimation framework with alternative methods. Aboveground biomass was the variable of interest, Landsat data were available wall-to-wall, and sample RS data were obtained from an airborne LiDAR campaign that produced simulated GEDI waveforms. The results show that generalized hierarchical model-based estimation has potential to yield more precise estimates than approaches utilizing only one source of RS data, such as conventional model-based and hybrid inferential approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Full Waveform Lidar)

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16 pages, 2825 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Comparison between the MODIS Product (MOD17A2) and a Tide-Robust Empirical GPP Model Evaluated in a Georgia Wetland

by Jianbin Tao, Deepak R Mishra, David L. Cotten, Jessica O’Connell, Monique Leclerc, Hafsah Binti Nahrawi, Gengsheng Zhang and Roshani Pahari

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1831; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111831 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 5403

Abstract

Despite the importance of tidal ecosystems in the global carbon budget, the relationships between environmental drivers and carbon dynamics in these wetlands remain poorly understood. This limited understanding results from the challenges associated with in situ flux studies and their correlation with satellite [...] Read more.

Despite the importance of tidal ecosystems in the global carbon budget, the relationships between environmental drivers and carbon dynamics in these wetlands remain poorly understood. This limited understanding results from the challenges associated with in situ flux studies and their correlation with satellite imagery which can be affected by periodic tidal flooding. Carbon dioxide eddy covariance (EC) towers are installed in only a few wetlands worldwide, and the longest eddy-covariance record from Georgia (GA) wetlands contains only two continuous years of observations. The goals of the present study were to evaluate the performance of existing MODIS Gross Primary Production (GPP) products (MOD17A2) against EC derived GPP and develop a tide-robust Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) based model to predict GPP within a Spartina alterniflora salt marsh on Sapelo Island, GA. These EC tower-based observations represent a basis to associate CO₂ fluxes with canopy reflectance and thus provide the means to use satellite-based reflectance data for broader scale investigations. We demonstrate that Light Use Efficiency (LUE)-based MOD17A2 does not accurately reflect tidal wetland GPP compared to a simple empirical vegetation index-based model where tidal influence was accounted for. The NDMI-based GPP model was capable of predicting changes in wetland CO₂ fluxes and explained 46% of the variation in flux-estimated GPP within the training data, and a root mean square error of 6.96 g C m⁻² in the validation data. Our investigation is the first to create a MODIS-based wetland GPP estimation procedure that demonstrates the importance of filtering tidal observations from satellite surface reflectance data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Satellite-Based Wetland Observation)

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20 pages, 23370 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spectral Responses of As and Pb Contamination in Tailings of a Hydrothermal Ore Deposit: A Case Study of Samgwang Mine, South Korea

by Yongsik Jeong, Jaehyung Yu, Lei Wang and Ji Hye Shin

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1830; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111830 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 5099

Abstract

We analyzed chemical composition, mineralogy, and spectral characteristics of the tailings of a hydrothermal gold mine in South Korea. We measured spectral responses of tailings to arsenic (As) and lead (Pb) concentration and developed and validated a prediction model for As and Pb [...] Read more.

We analyzed chemical composition, mineralogy, and spectral characteristics of the tailings of a hydrothermal gold mine in South Korea. We measured spectral responses of tailings to arsenic (As) and lead (Pb) concentration and developed and validated a prediction model for As and Pb in the tailings. The tailing was heavily contaminated with heavy metal elements and composed of rock forming minerals, gangue minerals and hydrothermal alteration minerals. The spectral features of the tailing were closely related to hydrothermal alteration minerals. The spectral responses associated with As and Pb concentrations were detected in shortwave infrared (SWIR) region at absorption positions of the hydrothermal alteration minerals. The prediction models were constructed using spectral bands of absorption features of the hydrothermal alteration minerals and were statistically significant. We found distinctive differences in spectral characteristics and spectral response to heavy metal contamination between the tailings and soils in the mining area. While the spectral signals to heavy metal concentration of tailings were associated with the hydrothermal alteration minerals, those of soils in mining area were manifested by clay minerals originated from weathering processes. This infers that geological processes associated with formation of soils and tailings are the major controlling factors of spectral responses to heavy metal contamination. This study provides a rare reference for the estimation of As and Pb concentration in the tailings with similar types of ore deposit and host rock. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensing in Geology, Geomorphology and Hydrology)

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31 pages, 7056 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hybrid Camera Array-Based UAV Auto-Landing on Moving UGV in GPS-Denied Environment

by Tao Yang, Qiang Ren, Fangbing Zhang, Bolin Xie, Hailei Ren, Jing Li and Yanning Zhang

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1829; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111829 - 19 Nov 2018

Cited by 59 | Viewed by 9274

Abstract

With the rapid development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems, the autonomous landing of a UAV on a moving Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) has received extensive attention as a key technology. At present, this technology is confronted with such problems as operating in [...] Read more.

With the rapid development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems, the autonomous landing of a UAV on a moving Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) has received extensive attention as a key technology. At present, this technology is confronted with such problems as operating in GPS-denied environments, a low accuracy of target location, the poor precision of the relative motion estimation, delayed control responses, slow processing speeds, and poor stability. To address these issues, we present a hybrid camera array-based autonomous landing UAV that can land on a moving UGV in a GPS-denied environment. We first built a UAV autonomous landing system with a hybrid camera array comprising a fisheye lens camera and a stereo camera. Then, we integrated a wide Field of View (FOV) and depth imaging for locating the UGV accurately. In addition, we employed a state estimation algorithm based on motion compensation for establishing the motion state of the ground moving UGV, including its actual motion direction and speed. Thereafter, according to the characteristics of the designed system, we derived a nonlinear controller based on the UGV motion state to ensure that the UGV and UAV maintain the same motion state, which allows autonomous landing. Finally, to evaluate the performance of the proposed system, we carried out a large number of simulations in AirSim and conducted real-world experiments. Through the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the experimental results, as well as the analysis of the time performance, we verified that the autonomous landing performance of the system in the GPS-denied environment is effective and robust. Full article

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Remote Sens., Volume 10, Issue 11 (November 2018) – 189 articles

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