bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
UPDATING BUILDING MAPS BASED ON OBJECT EXTRACTION AND BUILDING HEIGHT ESTIMATION
Authors: Zhu L. , Shimamura H. , Tachibana K.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. This study presents a novel approach in building change detection for map updating in urban areas. Our approach is based on the integration of building object extraction and building height estimation utilizing existing 2D building maps and newly-acquired high resolution aerial orthoimages & DSMs. In our proposed scheme, the detection of newly-built buildings is carried out based on building object extraction from orthoimages and DSMs. Detection of demolished and reconstructed buildings is performed based on estimating the height of each building using existing building maps and newly-acquired DSMs. Finally the two results are integrated together for map updating. The experimental results showed that the proposed technique performed satisfactorily well in detecting newly-built buildings, demolished buildings and reconstructed buildings, and was very effective in reducing the problem of misdetection and false detection. This technique is already integrated into a practical system for building maps updating.
PLANNING TRIPOLI METRO NETWORK BY THE USE OF REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY
Authors: Alhusain O. , Engedy Gy. , Milady A. , Paulini L. , Soos G.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Tripoli, the capital city of Libya is going through significant and integrated development process, this development is expected to continue in the next few decades. The Libyan authorities have put it as their goal to develop Tripoli to an important metropolis in North Africa. To achieve this goal, they identified goals for the city's future development in all human, economic, cultural, touristic, and nonetheless infrastructure levels. On the infrastructure development level, among other things, they have identified the development of public transportation as one of the important development priorities. At present, public transportation in Tripoli is carried out by a limited capacity bus network alongside of individual transportation. However, movement in the city is characterized mainly by individual transportation with all its disadvantages such as traffic jams, significant air pollution with both carbon monoxide and dust, and lack of parking space. The Libyan authorities wisely opted for an efficient, modern, and environment friendly solution for public transportation, this was to plan a complex Metro Network as the backbone of public transportation in the city, and to develop and integrate the bus network and other means of transportation to be in harmony with the planned Metro network. The Metro network is planned to provide convenient connections to Tripoli International Airport and to the planned Railway station. They plan to build a system of Park and Ride (P+R) facilities at suitable locations along the Metro lines. This paper will present in details the planned Metro Network, some of the applied technological solutions, the importance of applying remote sensing and GIS technologies in different planning phases, and problems and benefits associated with the use of multi-temporal-, multi-format spatial data in the whole network planning phase.
MONITORING OF GLACIAL CHANGE IN THE HEAD OF THE YANGTZE RIVER FROM 1997 TO 2007 USING INSAR TECHNIQUE
Authors: Wu H. , Zhang Y. , Zhang J. , Lu Z. , Zhong W.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Accurate monitoring of the glacier changes is essential to evaluate the environmental-ecological health in the scenario of global change. Conventional method for glacial monitoring is optical remote sensing. However, affected by cloud and snow cover, it is hard to monitor glacier by optical images. With the fast development of InSAR technique, interferometric coherence has been utilized for extracting glacial information. However, it is difficult to distinguish glacial area from non-glacial area when their coherence is similar, especially for short wavelength radar, such as X-band and C-band. In this case, interferometric phase can play an important role to identify glacier. In this paper, phase texture analysis method is proposed to extract glacier. 8 texture features were analyzed based on gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), including mean, variance, homogeneity, contrast, dissimilarity, entropy, second moment, and correlation. Among them, variance, contrast and dissimilarity can distinguish glacier from non-glacier clearly most, so they are chosen for RGB combination. Then the RGB combination image is classified into several land covers by maximum likelihood classification (MLC). After post-classification processing, glacial area can be extracted accurately. With this proposed method, two ERS-2 SAR single look complex (SLC) images acquired in 1997 and two ENVISAT ASAR SLC images acquired in 2007 are used to extract glacial area in 1997 and 2007 over Geladandong area, the head of the Yangtze River. The extracted areas are validated by Landsat TM data, which indicate that the proposed method can obtain accurate glacial area. The results also demonstrate during the 10 years, glacial area over Geladandong decreased fast, with a reduction of 22.97km2.
TENSOR-BASED QUALITY PREDICTION FOR BUILDING MODEL RECONSTRUCTION FROM LIDAR DATA AND TOPOGRAPHIC MAP
Authors: Lin B. C. , You R. J.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. A quality prediction method is proposed to evaluate the quality of the automatic reconstruction of building models. In this study, LiDAR data and topographic maps are integrated for building model reconstruction. Hence, data registration is a critical step for data fusion. To improve the efficiency of the data fusion, a robust least squares method is applied to register boundary points extracted from LiDAR data and building outlines obtained from topographic maps. After registration, a quality indicator based on the tensor analysis of residuals is derived in order to evaluate the correctness of the automatic building model reconstruction. Finally, an actual dataset demonstrates the quality of the predictions for automatic model reconstruction. The results show that our method can achieve reliable results and save both time and expense on model reconstruction.
POLINSAR EXPERIMENTS OF MULTI-MODE X-BAND DATA OVER SOUTH AREA OF CHINA
Authors: Lu L. , Yan Q. , Duan M. , Zhang Y.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. This paper makes the polarimetric and polarimetric interferometric synthetic aperture radar (PolInSAR) experiments with the high-resolution X-band data acquired by Multi-mode airborne SAR system over an area around Linshui, south of China containing tropic vegetation and urban areas. Polarimetric analysis for typical tropic vegetations and man-made objects are presented, some polarimetric descriptors sensitive to vegetations and man-made objects are selected. Then, the PolInSAR information contained in the data is investigated, considering characteristics of the Multi-mode-XSAR dataset, a dual-baseline polarimetric interferometry method is proposed in this paper. The method both guarantees the high coherence on fully polarimetric data and combines the benefits of short and long baseline that helpful to the phase unwrapping and height sensitivity promotion. PolInSAR experiment results displayed demonstrates Multi-mode-XSAR datasets have intuitive capabilities for amount of application of land classification, objects detection and DSM mapping.
SIGNAL NOISE REDUCTION BASED ON WAVELET TRANSFORM IN TWO-WAVELENGTH LIDAR SYSTEM
Authors: Shi S. , Gong W. , Lv L. , Zhu B. , Song S.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Nowadays lidar has become a leading edge technology for photogrammetry and remote sensing. A new lidar with two detection wavelengths was presented in this paper. The two-wavelength lidar can obtain spatial information and spectral information, and intensity of backscatter signals in two-wavelength can be availably used for objects identification and observation. However, the backscatter signals are weak and strongly influenced by the noise. In order to acquire accurate intensity, the signal noise has to be removed. As a useful tool for signal processing, wavelet transform was chosen. In this study, the principle of two-wavelength lidar was introduced and possible noise in the backscatter signal was analysed. Then the signal progressing was executed on the basic of wavelet de-noising. First, singular values caused by varieties of noise source have to be rejected from the signal based on three standard deviations. Second, combination of modulus maxima method and threshold method is used to make further improvement on the signal. Finally, an evaluation of the noise reduction was given to testify the ability of the method. The results show that the effect of the method based on wavelet transform is better than other classical algorithms, and the method is suitable for signal noise reduction in two-wavelength lidar system.
AUTOMATIC EXTRACTION OF WATER IN HIGH-RESOLUTION SAR IMAGES BASED ON MULTI-SCALE LEVEL SET METHOD AND OTSU ALGORITHM
Authors: Sui H. G. , Xu C.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Water extraction has an important significance in flood disaster management and environmental monitoring. Compared to optical sensor, Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which has the properties of high resolution and all-weather acquisition, has been used for water extraction in this paper. Due to the presence of coherent speckles, which can be modeled as strong, multiplicative noise, water extraction in SAR image is very difficult. In order to extract water from SAR images automatically, accurately and quickly, a novel water extraction algorithm combine multi-scale level set method with OTSU algorithm is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we introduced multi-scale framework into level set method. Multi-scale framework is a method considering both global information and local information of the image. The overall structural information of the image can be maintained at coarse scales and detailed information can be kept at fine scales. Therefore, coarser scale extraction results can be used as a prior guide for the finer scale, so that not only are the statistical properties of the signal-resolution image considered, but also statistical variations of multiple resolutions are exploited. Moreover, computational complexity is reduced since much of the work can be accomplished at coarse resolutions, where there are significantly fewer pixels to process. Secondly, based on the multi-scale level set framework, the segmentation result of OTSU algorithm is used to represent the initial segmentation curve. Finally, in order to eliminate the influence of buildings shadow and road, post-processing is considered in this paper. The experiments with real SAR images demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method.
AUTOMATIC EXTERIOR ORIENTATION PROCEDURE FOR LOW-COST UAV PHOTOGRAMMETRY USING VIDEO IMAGE TRACKING TECHNIQUE AND GPS INFORMATION
Authors: Anai T. , Sasaki T. , Osaragi K. , Yamada M. , Otomo F. , Otani H.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. In this paper, we propose the automatic exterior orientation procedure for the Low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry. The Low-cost UAV has become useful tool for low altitude photogrammetry from the rapidly increasing of automatic control technique in past several years. However, automatic exterior orientation is still important issue. The most important point of automatic exterior orientation is the automatic detection of corresponding points in each still image. For this goal, the authors have developed the automatic corresponding point detection technique using both video Image and still images. The video image of this investigation is obtained with still images simultaneously. Therefore, the tracking result of video image gives robust correspondence information between each still image. Moreover, the exterior orientation procedure using GPS information from UAV and minimum ground control points have been investigated. This paper is structured as follows. At the first we describe the over view of automatic exterior orientation procedure in this investigation. As the next, the details of tracking of common feature points and robust bundle adjustment are described. Also, accuracy assessment of this automatic exterior orientation procedure is described. Finally some conclusion is given.
COMPARISON OF DISCRETE RETURN AND WAVEFORM TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING FOR DENSE VEGETATION FILTERING
Authors: Guarnieri A. , Pirotti F. , Vettore A.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. In this paper we present the results of the comparison between two terrestrial laser scanners (TLS), a discrete return system (Riegl LMS-Z620) and an echo-digitizing system (Riegl VZ-400), employed for the survey of a dense forested area, in the italian Alps. The site is actually undergoing a strong debate among the inhabitants and local government authorities about the exploitation of the area as a huge quarry to produce building material. The dispute originates from the uncertainty about the instability of the underlying mountain slope, which was interested in 1966 by a landslide. The whole area was surveyed with the two laser scanners on February 2011 during the vegetation dormant period. A slight different processing workflow was applied to the collected datasets: the VZ-400 scans were pre-filtered by exploiting the "calibrated relative reflectance" readings and the multi-target capability provided by this laser scanning system. Next, two different spatial filters were applied to both the resulting georeferenced 3D models, in order to eliminate as much vegetation as possible: iterative filter and a custom morphological filter, developed by the authors. Achieved results show that for both datasets, the iterative and the morphological filters perform quite well for eliminating the vegetation, though some manual editing is still required since vegetation does not feature a prevalent growing direction. Furthermore, the comparison between the number of points left in the final DTMs shows that the VZ-400 provided a one order of magnitude denser point cloud wrt. the LMS-Z620. This demonstrates that a TLS with multi-target capability can potentially provide a more detailed DTM even in presence of dense vegetation.
TESTING THE GENERALIZATION EFFICIENCY OF OIL SLICK CLASSIFICATION ALGORITHM USING MULTIPLE SAR DATA FOR DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL
Authors: Ozkan C. , Osmanoglu B. , Sunar F. , Staples G. , Kalkan K. , Balık Sanlı F.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Marine oil spills due to releases of crude oil from tankers, offshore platforms, drilling rigs and wells, etc. are seriously affecting the fragile marine and coastal ecosystem and cause political and environmental concern. A catastrophic explosion and subsequent fire in the Deepwater Horizon oil platform caused the platform to burn and sink, and oil leaked continuously between April 20th and July 15th of 2010, releasing about 780,000 m3 of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Today, space-borne SAR sensors are extensively used for the detection of oil spills in the marine environment, as they are independent from sun light, not affected by cloudiness, and more cost-effective than air patrolling due to covering large areas. In this study, generalization extent of an object based classification algorithm was tested for oil spill detection using multiple SAR imagery data. Among many geometrical, physical and textural features, some more distinctive ones were selected to distinguish oil and look alike objects from each others. The tested classifier was constructed from a Multilayer Perception Artificial Neural Network trained by ABC, LM and BP optimization algorithms. The training data to train the classifier were constituted from SAR data consisting of oil spill originated from Lebanon in 2007. The classifier was then applied to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill data in the Gulf of Mexico on RADARSAT-2 and ALOS PALSAR images to demonstrate the generalization efficiency of oil slick classification algorithm.
ATMOSPHERIC CORRECTION COMPARISON OF SPOT-5 IMAGE BASED ON MODEL FLAASH AND MODEL QUAC
Authors: Guo Y. , ZENG F.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. tmospheric correction of satellite remote sensing image is the precondition of quantitative remote sensing study, and also among the difficulties of it. There are various methods and models for atmospheric correction. The author makes the atmospheric correction of SPOT-5 multi-spectrum remote sensing image covering Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan by adopting Model FLAASH and Model QUAC in the trail, and then makes a contrastive analysis of the image before and after the correction from the point of sight, surface features spectral curve and RVI result. The results show that both models with their specific scope of application can both basically eliminate the atmospheric effects and can restore the typical characteristics of various surface features spectral better, emphasis the vegetation information; the one using Model FLASSH has higher accuracy than the one using Model QUAC; it is more convenient to use Model QUAL than Model FLASSH, because it has little dependence on input parameters and calibration accuracy of instruments.
AIRBORNE X-HH INCIDENCE ANGLE IMPACT ON CANOPY HEIGHT RETREIVAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR SPACEBORNE X-HH TANDEM-X GLOBAL CANOPY HEIGHT MODEL
Authors: Tighe M. L. , King D. , Balzter H. , Bannari A. , McNairn H.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. To support international climate change mitigation efforts, the United Nations REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) seeks to reduce land use induced greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. It requires independent monitoring of forest cover and forest biomass information in a spatially explicit form. It is widely recognised that remote sensing is required to deliver this information. Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometry (InSAR) techniques have gained traction in the last decade as a viable technology from which vegetation canopy height and bare earth elevations can be derived. The viewing geometry of a SAR sensor is side-looking where the radar pulse is transmitted out to one side of the aircraft or satellite, defining an incidence angle (θ) range. The incidence angle will change from near-range (NR) to far-range (FR) across of the track of the SAR platform. InSAR uses image pairs and thus, contain two set of incidence angles. Changes in the InSAR incidence angles can alter the relative contributions from the vegetation canopy and the ground surface and thus, affect the retrieved vegetation canopy height. Incidence angle change is less pronounced in spaceborne data than in airborne data and mitigated somewhat when multiple InSAR-data takes are combined. This study uses NEXTMap® single- and multi-pass X-band HH polarized InSAR to derive vegetation canopy height from the scattering phase centre height (hspc). Comparisons with in situ vegetation canopy height over three test sites (Arizona-1, Minnesota-2); the effect of incidence angle changes across swath on the X-HH InSAR hspc was examined. Results indicate at steep incidence angles (θ = 35º), more exposure of lower vegetation canopy structure (e.g. tree trunks) led to greater lower canopy double bounce, increased ground scattering, and decreased volume scattering. This resulted in a lower scattering phase centre height (hspc) or a greater underestimation of vegetation canopy height given by the single-pass X-HH InSAR data. The opposite effect occurs in the far range (θ = 55º), an increase in volume scattering resulted in more accurate vegetation canopy heights when compared to in situ measurements. These findings indicate that incidence angle corrections should be applied to airborne X-HH single-pass InSAR. In contrast, NEXTMap X-HH (multi-pass data) hspc data experienced little or no effect of incidence angle, possibly because NEXTMap is an aggregation of multi-pass flight line strips, which averages data over several incidence angles. These results may aid in the understanding of potential incidence angle effects in Astrium spaceborne Tandem-X data, which will have global digital surface elevation coverage by 2015.
TOMOGRAPHIC SAR INVERSION FROM MIXED REPEAT- AND SINGLE-PASS DATA STACKS – THE TERRASAR-X/TANDEM-X CASE
Authors: Zhu X. X. , Bamler R.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. This paper presents the first demonstration of high precision very high resolution tomographic SAR inversion with the assistance of TanDEM-X data. The data quality of TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X is investigated. TomoSAR algorithms such as SVD-Wiener, Nonlinear Least Squares and SL1MMER are extended for mixed repeat- and single-pass data stacks. A systematic approach is proposed for the fusion of TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X data in which the different data quality provided by the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X data are taken into account by introducing a weighting according to the noise covariance matrix. The proposed approach is evaluated with simulated data. The simulation result shows that the reconstruction accuracy of tomographic SAR inversion can be improved significantly by using jointly fused TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X data.
AN INVESTIGATION OF LOCAL EFFECTS ON SURFACE WARMING WITH GEOGRAPHICALLY WEIGHTED REGRESSION (GWR)
Authors: Xue Y. , Fung T. , Tsou J.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Urban warming is sensitive to the nature (thermal properties, including albedo, water content, heat capacity and thermal conductivity) and the placement (surface geometry or urban topography) of urban surface. In the literature the spatial dependence and heterogeneity of urban thermal landscape is widely observed based on thermal infrared remote sensing within the urban environment. Urban surface warming is conceived as a big contribution to urban warming, the study of urban surface warming possesses significant meaning for probing into the problem of urban warming.The urban thermal landscape study takes advantage of the continuous surface derived from thermal infrared remote sensing at the landscape scale, the detailed variation of local surface temperature can be measured and analyzed through the systematic investigation. At the same time urban environmental factors can be quantified with remote sensing and GIS techniques. This enables a systematic investigation of urban thermal landscape with a link to be established between local environmental setting and surface temperature variation. The goal of this research is utilizing Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to analyze the spatial relationship between urban form and surface temperature variation in order to clarify the local effects on surface warming, moreover to reveal the possible dynamics in the local influences of environmental indicators on the variation of local surface temperature across space and time. In this research, GWR analysis proved that the spatial variation in relationships between environmental setting and surface temperature was significant with Monte Carlo significance test and distinctive in day-night change. Comparatively, GWR facilitated the site specific investigation based on local statistical technique. The inference based on GWR model provided enriched information regarding the spatial variation of local environment effect on surface temperature variation which global model cannot approach.
CLIMATE AND LULC CHANGE SCENARIOS TO STUDY ITS IMPACT ON HYDROLOGICAL REGIME
Authors: Aggarwal S. P. , Garg V. , Gupta P. K. , Nikam B. R. , Thakur P. K.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Climate change, whether as a natural cycle variability and/or due to anthropogenic reasons, is affecting and likely to further affect the water resources, which is a vital necessity for existence of life form. The predicted intensification of hydrological cycle would change all of its constituents both in time and space domain. This is a long term phenomenon and the necessity is to understand the intensity of the effects on various aspects of water resources by way of scientific studies backed by the available field data. Therefore, in the present study, the impact of climate and land use land cover change on entire India under different assumed plausible hypothetical scenarios has been studied. These scenarios were developed by increasing; temperature by 1, 2 and 30C; rainfall by 5, 10 and 15%; and then the combination of both. To carry out this analysis, variable infiltration capacity (VIC) semi-distributed macroscale hydrological model has been investigated. It was found that slight change in climate may pose huge difference on hydrological cycle and its component.
IMAGE INTERPRETATION OF COASTAL AREAS
Authors: Lazaridou M. A.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Coasts were formed with the overall shape of earth's surface. Τhey represent a landform, as determined by the science of geomorphology. Being the boundary between land and sea, they present important features – particularities such as water currents, waves, winds, estuaries, drainage network, pollution etc. Coasts are examined at various levels: continents – oceans, states – large seas, as for example Mediterranean Sea. Greece, because of its horizontal and vertical partitioning, presents great extent and variety of coasts as mainland, peninsulas and islands. Depending on geomorphology, geology, soils, hydrology, land use of the inland and the coasts themselves, these are very diverse. Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (defined by Statute II of ISPRS) is the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information from non-contact imaging and other sensor systems about the Earth and its environment, and other physical objects and of processes through recording, measuring, analyzing and representation. This paper concerns critical considerations on the above. It also includes the case of Thessaloniki coasts in Greece, particularly river estuaries areas (river delta). The study of coastal areas of the wide surroundings of Thessaloniki city includes visual image interpretation – digital image processing techniques on satellite data of high spatial resolution.
Runoff simulation using distributed hydrological modeling approach, remote sensing and GIS techniques: A case study from an Indian agricultural watershed
Authors: Chowdary V. M. , Desai V. R. , Gupta M. , Jeyaram A. , Murthy Y. V. N. K.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Distributed hydrological modeling has the capability of simulating distributed watershed basin processes, by dividing a heterogeneous and complex land surface divided into computational elements such as Hydrologic Response Units (HRU), grid cell or sub watersheds. The present study was taken up to simulate spatial hydrological processes from a case study area of Kansavati watershed in Purulia district of West Bengal, India having diverse geographical features using distributed hydrological modelling approach. In the present study, overland flow in terms of direct runoff from storm rainfall was computed using USDA Soil Conservation Services (SCS) curve number technique and subsequently it served as input to channel routing model. For channel flow routing, Muskingum-Cunge flood routing technique was used, specifically to route surface runoff from the different sub watershed outlet points to the outlet point of the watershed. Model parameters were derived for each grid cell either from remote sensing data or conventional maps under GIS environment. For distributed approach, validation show reasonable fit between the simulated and measured data and CMR value in all the cases is negative and ranges from -0.1 to - 0.3. Further, this study investigates the effect of cell size on runoff simulation for different grid cell sizes of 23, 46, 92, 184, 368, 736, 1472 m resolution. The difference between simulated and observed runoff values increases with the increase of grid size beyond 184 m more prominently. Further, this model can be used to evaluate futuristic water availability scenarios for an agricultural watershed in eastern India.
SATELLITE-BASED MEASUREMENTS FOR BENCHMARKING REGIONAL IRRIGATION PERFORMANCE IN GOULBURN-MURRAY CATCHMENT
Authors: Abuzar M. , McAllister A. , Whitfield D. , Sheffield K.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Irrigation has a significant impact on regional water resources in south-eastern Australia. It is therefore important that objective assessments of the current use of water are undertaken on a routine basis. New remote sensing technologies now provide an opportunity to assess and monitor water use at farm and catchment scales. This study demonstrates the use of satellite-based estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) and NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) in irrigation performance indicators that relate crop water use to crop water requirement (CWR) in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation Region of South-Eastern Australia. The METRIC energy balance algorithm (Allen et al 2007) was used to derive ET estimates from Landsat satellite data.
ESTIMATING BIOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS OF TEA (CAMELLIA SINENSIS (L.)) USING HYPERSPECTRAL TECHNIQUES
Authors: Bian M. , Skidmore A. K. , Schlerf M. , Liu Y. , Wang T.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Tea (Camellia Sinensis (L.)) is an important economic crop and the market price of tea depends largely on its quality. This research aims to explore the potential of hyperspectral remote sensing on predicting the concentration of biochemical components, namely total tea polyphenols, as indicators of tea quality at canopy scale. Experiments were carried out for tea plants growing in the field and greenhouse. Partial least squares regression (PLSR), which has proven to be the one of the most successful empirical approach, was performed to establish the relationship between reflectance and biochemical concentration across six tea varieties in the field. Moreover, a novel integrated approach involving successive projections algorithms as band selection method and neural networks was developed and applied to detect the concentration of total tea polyphenols for one tea variety, in order to explore and model complex nonlinearity relationships between independent (wavebands) and dependent (biochemicals) variables. The good prediction accuracies (r2 > 0.8 and relative RMSEP < 10 %) achieved for tea plants using both linear (partial lease squares regress) and nonlinear (artificial neural networks) modelling approaches in this study demonstrates the feasibility of using airborne and spaceborne sensors to cover wide areas of tea plantation for in situ monitoring of tea quality cheaply and rapidly.
ASSESSMENT OF INDIAN CARBON CYCLE COMPONENTS USING EARTH OBSERVATION SYSTEMS AND GROUND INVENTORY
Authors: Dadhwal V. K.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Improved national carbon assessments are important for UNFCC communications, policy studies and improving the global assessment. Use of EO for land cover dynamics, forest type, cover and phytomass carbon density, productivity and related soil carbon density and regional extrapolation of point flux measurements. A National Carbon Project (NCP) under the Indian Space Research Organisation - Geosphere Biosphere Programme (ISRO – GBP) aims at improving the understanding and quantification of net carbon balance. The NCP has been implemented with three major components – (A) vegetation carbon pools, (B) Soil carbon pools and (C) Soil and Vegetation – Atmosphere Fluxes. A total of 6500 field plot data from forests and trees outside forests have been collected. 1500 field plots have been inventoried for the soil carbon based on the remotely sensed data stratification. A nationwide network of carbon flux towers in different ecosystems for the measurement and modeling of the net carbon flux using eddy covariance techniques is being established and upscaling using satellite remote sensing data and modelling is under process. The amplitude of the diurnal variation in NEE increased with growth of wheat and reached its peak around the pre-anthesis stage. Besides, under NCP, satellite diurnal CO2 have also analyzed the data obtained from AIRS and SCIAMACHY over India and surrounding oceans and was correlated with surface fluxes. The CASA model simulations over India using NOAA AVHRR NDVI.
GLOBAL MONITORING FOR FOOD SECURITY AND SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT – RECENT ADVANCES OF REMOTE SENSING APPLICATIONS TO AFRICAN AND SIBERIAN SHOW CASES
Authors: Komp K. U. , Haub C.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. After four decades of space borne remote sensing, the unmapped white patches have mostly disappeared. Those basic information give the foundations to the observation of changes and even the introduction of monitoring programmes for a various number of features in the natural and human landscape of our planet. Recent indicators for climatic change together with worrisome alterations in regional food production versus the constantly increase of human population demand the design and implementation of reliable land management tools which will serve the food security as well as the sustainable use of resources of the ecosystem in its respective regional context. The positive responses and convincing results of ESA service elements in the efforts towards food security in several African countries have been the basis for the transfer of the methods into another region, the Western Siberian corn-belt. The large extends of cropping schemes in West Siberia demand advanced remote sensing methods to be applied in order to compare the impacts of climatic change not only on the agricultural production but also on risks for the ecosystem. A multi scale approach of remote sensing methods is introduced in analogy to the African activities. An adopted monitoring concept is developed using a nearly daily product of medium resolution for wide areas, high resolution sensors for stratified sample areas and in-situ observations. Beyond methodological research, the ability of remote sensing is contributing to operational solutions that can ensure the nutritional and ecological future of our planet.
EVALUATION OF WHEAT GROWTH MONITORING METHODS BASED ON HYPERSPECTRAL DATA OF LATER GRAIN FILLING AND HEADING STAGES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Authors: Nakanishi T. , Imai Y. , Morita T. , Akamatsu Y. , Odagawa S. , Takeda T. , Kashimura O.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. This study estimated the wheat yield, quality, and growth conditions using hyperspectral data of the later grain filling and heading stages. The study area is located in the suburbs of Mullewa, Western Australia. Various data used included spectral reflectance of wheat measured from the ground and those measured using airborne sensors, wheat growth conditions data, such as LAI, SPAD values, and wheat height, and sample analysis data, including biomass, grain nitrogen content rate, leaf nitrogen content rate, and ash content, of the later grain filling and heading stages. This study consisted of (1) selection of estimation items regarding the wheat yield, quality, and growth conditions by correlation analysis of sample data, (2) definition of estimate equations for selected items, (3) verification of estimation accuracy, and (4) development of estimation maps. As a result, head moisture, which is related to the wheat growth conditions, was well estimated using hyperspectral data of the later grain filling stage. At the same time, grain weight, which is related to the wheat yield, and grain nitrogen content rate and ash content, which are related to the wheat quality, were well estimated using hyperspectral data of the heading stage. This study implies that it is possible to visualize the wheat yield, quality, and growth conditions on a regional scale using hyperspectral data.
SUBDIVISION OF PANTANAL QUATERNARY WETLANDS: MODIS NDVI TIMESERIES IN THE INDIRECT DETECTION OF SEDIMENTS GRANULOMETRY
Authors: Penatti N. C. , de Almeida T. I. R.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. The Pantanal is the world's largest wetland presenting a variety of ecological sub-regions. The region is characterized by seasonal floods followed by long droughts. At this period, some areas rapidly dry, while others remain soaked. The study hypothesis was based on the statement that this phenomenon cannot be totally explained by small relief variations but by the sediment granulometry: the pelitic sediments allow the soil to retain moisture longer, implying that the vegetation has greater possibilities of continuing photosynthetically active even during the drought. It was developed based on the spectral behaviour of MODIS products, validated by previous fieldwork. Using MODIS, we studied a large scale patterns in spatial and seasonal dynamics of the vegetation in different regions of Pantanal. So, two indirect parameters of the local physical environment – sediment granulometry and water availability – potentially can be estimated. We calculated the NDVI from MOD09GQ for rainy and dry seasons, generating triplets (NDVI/NIR and Red bands) that allowed to identify vegetation changes in those periods. The 16-days composites of NDVI (MOD13Q1) were used to generate a 5-year time-series for pixels associated with 161 locals sampled for granulometric analyses. The samples were taken in 10 different areas from the 20 geological and environmentally homologous areas delimited in this research. The clear tendency in the time-series confirms the working hypothesis, indicating that there is a high relationship between drought-related changes in vegetation extracted from NDVI and sediment texture, parameter that plays an important role in soil moisture, influencing the vegetation response to droughts.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF WATERSHED IN DESERT REGION
Authors: Madhava Rao V. , Hermon R. R. , Kesava Rao P. , Phanindra Kumar T.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Change detection from different temporal images usually based on reflectance on natural and human activity impact, using integrated GIS, Remote Sensing and image processing technologies enable impact assessment of watershed in desert region. A time series analysis of seasonal NDVI have been used to estimate net primary productivity, phonological characteristic of vegetative surface, length of growing season and dry drown periods (Ramsey et al., 1995). The study is designed to achieve the objectives to Study the changes in vegetation for selected watershed in a desert districts of Bhilwara, Barmer & Jaisalmer in Rajastan State of India, to identify the changes in density of vegetation, to assess the temporal changes and to assess the impact of the watershed, with an objective to conserve the soil erosion and harvest the rainwater in order to increase the ground water table, to improve the socio economic condition of the people and to stop the migration of the people from the villages in search of livelihood. These activities will have a direct impact on the crop production. The Changes in density of vegetation indicates the quantity of crop production and the growth of vegetation apart from crops and the conservation of land with out scrub/barren land to land with scrub. This gives an picture about the impact of watershed programme in increasing the vegetative cover. The temporal changes help in understanding the changes taken place in the watershed, and facilitate understand the positive as well as negative impacts of any decisions taken in the implementation. The extent and density and type of vegetation for the years, 2000,2004,2005,2007 and 2008, was studied and vegetation growth was analysed using GIS and Digital Image Processing techniques.
SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SELECTED HERMATYPIC CORALS FROM GULF OF KACHCHH, INDIA
Authors: Ray Chaudhury N.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Hermatypic, scleractinian corals are the most important benthic substrates in a coral reef ecosystem. The existing, high (spatial) resolution, broad-band, multi-spectral, space-borne sensors have limited capability to spatially detect and spectrally discriminate coral substrates. In situ hyperspectral signatures of eight coral targets were collected with the help of Analytical Spectral Devices FieldSpec spectroradiometer from Paga and Laku Point reefs of Gulf of Kachchh, India to study the spectral behaviour of corals. The eight coral targets consisted of seven live corals representing four distinct colony morphologies and one bleached coral target. The coral spectra were studied over a continuous range of 350 to 1350 nm. The corals strongly reflected in the NIR and MIR regions with regional central maximas located at 820 and 1070 nm respectively. In the visible region the live coral spectra conformed to "brown mode" of coral reflectance with triple-peaked pattern at 575, 600 and 650 nm. All coral spectra are characterized with two distinct absorption features: chlorophyll absorption at 675 nm and water absorption at 975 nm. The live and the bleached corals get distinguished in the visible region over 400 to 600 nm region. Water column over the targets modifies the spectral shape and magnitude. First and second-order derivatives help in identifying spectral windows to distinguish live and bleached corals.
MODIS TIME SERIES FOR LAND USE CHANGE DETECTION IN FIELDS OF THE AMAZON SOY MORATORIUM
Authors: Risso J. , Rudorff B. F. T. , Adami M. , Aguiar A. P. D. , Freitas R. M.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. A virtual globe to visualize time series of pixels from the MODIS sensor over the South American continent is available in the Internet and was developed at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research. The MODIS images acquired since the year 2000 were transformed to a vegetation index (EVI2, two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index) with pixel size of 250 m. This study aims to use these time series to identify land use changes (LUC) based on the temporal profile of EVI2 values of deforested polygons between 2007 and 2011 within the context of the Soy Moratorium. Deforested polygons were divided in two strata: with and without soy in crop year 2010/11. From the MODIS/EVI2 time series the following classes were identified: forest, degraded forest, total clearing of the area, regrowth of forest, regrowth with pasture, pasture, agriculture, and soy. For stratum 1, the dominant LUC trajectory was: forest – degradation – regrowth / regrowth with pasture. In the second stratum we observed two main LUC trajectories: 1) forest – degraded forest – total clearing of the area – annual crop (rice) – soy; and 2) forest – total clearing of the area – annual crop (rice) – soy. For most samples of stratum 2 the LUC trajectory was agriculture (e.g., rice) between total clearing and soy cultivation. These patterns occurred on average over two harvests, which may be considered the necessary time for soil correction and total removal of above ground stumps and roots to enable mechanized soy harvesting. The fast evaluation of one hundred polygons during 11 years was only possible due to the virtual globe to visualize the MODIS time series that proved to be an important tool to improve the understanding of LUC dynamics in the Amazon region.
TWO-WAY SPATIAL EXTRAPOLATION AND VALIDATION ON ECOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF ELAEOCARPUS JAPONICUS BETWEEN MAIN WATERSHEDS IN HUISUN OF CENTRAL TAIWAN
Authors: Su S. Y. , Lo N. J. , Chang W. I. , Huang K. Y.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. Spatial extrapolation has become a sine qua non and an ad hoc major research focus in applied ecology in the latter half 20th century. Progressive innovations in data acquisition and processing technologies over the last few decades, especially in the fields of 3S (RS, GIS and GPS) and statistical modeling method, have greatly enhanced ecologists' capacity to face the challenge by enabling them to to describe patterns in nature over larger spatial scales and a greater level of details than ever before. Elaeocarpus japonicas (Japanese Elaeocarpus tree, JET) was selected for applying in the concurrent developed technology, such as ecological distribution modeling and ecological extrapolation. The GPS-located JET samples were introduced in a GIS for overlaying with five environmental layers (elevation, slope, aspect, terrain position and vegetation index derived from two-date SPOT-5 images) for ecological information extraction and model building. We created three sampling designs (SD), Tong-Feng samples for SD1, Kuan-Dau samples for SD2, and the merge of the two former datasets for SD3, according to watersheds, and the three SDs were used individually to test the extrapolation ability of predictive models. The results of the two-way extrapolation indicated it is hard to extend the predicted distribution patterns through different watersheds. The main reasons resulting in this outcome were the difference in microclimate and micro-terrain between these two watersheds. Consequently, the models built with SD3 were the more robust. The information of vegetation index in this study poorly improved the models, so we will adopt the hyperspectral data to overcome the shortage of the SPOT-5 images.
MONITORING OF AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN NORWAY
Authors: Wallin H. G. , Engan G.
Published: August 2012

Abstract. An overall societal aim is to ensure a sustainable use and management of agricultural landscapes. This requires continuous delivery of reliable and up-to-date information to decision-makers. To be able to deliver this information, a monitoring program for agricultural landscapes was initiated in Norway 13 years ago. The program documents and reports on land use / land cover changes from data captured through interpretation of true colour aerial photos using stereo instruments. The monitoring programme is based on a sample of 1000 squares of 1 × 1 km and the entire sample of squares is photographed over a five-year period. Each square is then mapped repeatedly every fifth year to record changes. Aerial photo interpretation is based on a custom classification system which is built up hierarchically, with three levels. The first level comprises seven land type classes: Agricultural land, Bare ground, Semi-natural open vegetation, Unforested wetland vegetation, Forest, Urban areas and Water. These land classes are further divided into 24 land types at level two, and approximately 100 land types at level 3. In addition to land type units we map both line elements like stone fences and point elements like buildings and solitary threes. By use of indicators that describe status and change focusing on themes of particular policy interest, we can report on whether policy aims are being fulfilled or not. Four indicator themes have been in focus hitherto: landscape spatial structure, biological diversity, cultural heritage and accessibility. Our data is stored in databases and most of the data quality check/structure process and analyses are now being made in open source software like PostGIS and PostSQL. To assess the accuracy of the photo-interpretation, ground truthing is carried out on 10 % of the squares. The results of this operation document the benefits of having access to photos of the same area from two different years. The program is designed first and foremost to provide reliable statistics at a national level but the aim is also to report at regional levels – for example for counties or for agricultural landscape regions. The national coverage and application of standardized methods enable frequent updating. This method is cost effective and enables us to quantify changes in landscape qualities as well as adapting the programme to take account of e.g. new findings on relevant indicators.