Object-oriented crop mapping and monitoring using multi-temporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data

The aim of this paper is to assess the accuracy of an object-oriented classification of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data to map and monitor crops using 19 RADARSAT-2 fine beam polarimetric (FQ) images of an agricultural area in North-eastern Ontario, Canada. Polarimetric images and field data were acquired during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. The classification and field data collection focused on the main crop types grown in the region, which include: wheat, oat, soybean, canola and forage. The polarimetric parameters were extracted with PolSAR analysis using both the Cloude–Pottier and Freeman–Durden decompositions. The object-oriented classification, with a single date of PolSAR data, was able to classify all five crop types with an accuracy of 95% and Kappa of 0.93; a 6% improvement in comparison with linear-polarization only classification. However, the time of acquisition is crucial. The larger biomass crops of canola and soybean were most accurately mapped, whereas the identification of oat and wheat were more variable. The multi-temporal data using the Cloude–Pottier decomposition parameters provided the best classification accuracy compared to the linear polarizations and the Freeman–Durden decomposition parameters. In general, the object-oriented classifications were able to accurately map crop types by reducing the noise inherent in the SAR data. Furthermore, using the crop classification maps we were able to monitor crop growth stage based on a trend analysis of the radar response. Based on field data from canola crops, there was a strong relationship between the phenological growth stage based on the BBCH scale, and the HV backscatter and entropy.     

Crop classification from full-year fully-polarimetric L-band UAVSAR time-series using the Random Forest algorithm

Accurate and timely information on the distribution of crop types is vital to agricultural management, ecosystem services valuation and food security assessment. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems have become increasingly popular in the field of crop monitoring and classification. However, the potential of time-series polarimetric SAR data has not been explored extensively, with several open scientific questions (e.g. the optimal combination of image dates for crop classification) that need to be answered. In this research, the usefulness of full year (both 2011 and 2014) L-band fully-polarimetric Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data in crop classification was fully investigated over an agricultural region with a heterogeneous distribution of crop categories. In total, 11 crop classes including tree crops (almond and walnut), forage crops (grass, alfalfa, hay, and clover), a spring crop (winter wheat), and summer crops (corn, sunflower, tomato, and pepper), were discriminated using the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. The SAR input variables included raw linear polarization channels as well as polarimetric parameters derived from Cloude-Pottier (CP) and Freeman-Durden (FD) decompositions. Results showed clearly that the polarimetric parameters yielded much higher classification accuracies than linear polarizations. The combined use of all variables (linear polarizations and polarimetric parameters) produced the maximum overall accuracy of 90.50 % and 84.93 % for 2011 and 2014, respectively, with a significant increase of approximately 8 percentage points compared with linear polarizations alone. The variable importance provided by the RF illustrated that the polarimetric parameters had a far greater influence than linear polarizations, with the CP parameters being much more important than the FD parameters. The most important acquisitions were the images dated during the peak biomass stage (July and August) when the differences in structural characteristics between most crops were the largest. At the same time, the images in spring (April and May) and autumn (October) also contributed to the crop classification since they respectively provided unique information for discriminating fruit crops (almond and walnut) as well as summer crops (corn, sunflower, and tomato). As a result, the combined use of only four acquisitions (dated May, July, August, and October for 2011 and April, June, August, and October for 2014) was adequate to achieve a nearly-optimal overall accuracy. In light of the promising classification accuracies demonstrated in this research, it becomes increasingly viable to provide accurate and up-to-date crops inventories over large areas based solely on multitemporal polarimetric SAR.     

LSSVM算法在极化SAR影像分类中的应用

最小二乘支持向量机(LSSVM)是针对标准支持向量机(SVM)算法训练时间长的问题而提出的一种改进算法。针对SVM算法在极化SAR影像分类时存在效率较低的问题,以目标分解理论为基础,对LSSVM算法应用于极化SAR影像分类的有效性进行了研究。结果表明,对于极化SAR影像分类,LSSVM算法与SVM算法的分类精度相当,但时间效率远优于SVM算法,并且对参数的调整也具有更好的稳定性,同时泛化能力良好。     

The potential of linear discriminative Laplacian eigenmaps dimensionality reduction in polarimetric SAR classification for agricultural areas

In this paper, the linear discriminative Laplacian eigenmaps (LDLE) dimensionality reduction (DR) algorithm is introduced to C-band polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) agricultural classification. A collection of homogenous areas of the same crop class usually presents physical parameter variation, such as the biomass and soil moisture. Furthermore, the local incidence angle also impacts a lot on the same crop category when the vegetation layer is penetrable with C-band radar. We name this phenomenon as the “observed variation of the same category” (OVSC). The most common PolSAR features, e.g., the Freeman–Durden and Cloude–Pottier decompositions, show an inadequate performance with OVSC. In our research, more than 40 coherent and incoherent PolSAR decomposition models are stacked into the high-dimensionality feature cube to describe the various physical parameters. The LDLE algorithm is then performed on the observed feature cube, with the aim of simultaneously pushing the local samples of the same category closer to each other, as well as maximizing the distance between local samples of different categories in the learnt subspace. Finally, the classification result is obtained by nearest neighbor (NN) or Wishart classification in the reduced feature space. In the simulation experiment, eight crop blocks are picked to generate a test patch from the 1991 Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) C-band fully polarimetric data from of Flevoland test site. Locality preserving projections (LPP) and principal component analysis (PCA) are then utilized to evaluate the DR results of the proposed method. The classification results show that LDLE can distinguish the influence of the physical parameters and achieve a 99% overall accuracy, which is better than LPP (97%), PCA (88%), NN (89%), and Wishart (88%). In the real data experiment, the Chinese Hailaer nationalized farm RadarSat2 PolSAR test set is used, and the classification accuracy is around 94%, which is again better than LPP (90%), PCA (88%), NN (89%), and Wishart (85%). Both experiments suggest that the LDLE algorithm is an effective way of relieving the OVSC phenomenon.     

Multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 polarimetric SAR for maize mapping supported by segmentations from high-resolution optical image

Due to its ability to penetrate the cloud, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has been a great resource for crop mapping. Previous research has verified the applicability of SAR imagery in object-oriented crop classification, however, speckle noise limits the generation of optimal segmentation. This paper proposed an innovative SAR-based maize mapping method supported by optical image, Gaofen-1 PMS, based segmentation, named as parcel-based SAR classification assisted by optical imagery-based segmentation (os-PSC). Polarimetric decomposition was applied to extract polarimetric parameters from multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 data. One Gaofen-1 image was then used for parcel extraction, which was the basic unit for SAR image analysis. The final step was a multi-step classification for final maize mapping including: the potential maize mask extraction, pure/mixed maize parcel division and an integrated maize map production. Results showed that the overall accuracy of the os-PSC method was 89.1%, higher than those of pixel-level classification and SAR-based segmentation methods. The comparison between optical- and SAR-based segmentation demonstrated that optical-based segmentation would be better at representing maize field boundaries than the SAR-based segmentation. Moreover, the parcel- and pixel-level integrated classification will be suitable for many agricultural systems with small landownership where inter-cropping is common. Through integrating advantages of the SAR and optical data, os-PSC shows promising potentials for crop mapping.     

A new Likelihood Ratio for supervised classification of fully polarimetric SAR data: An application for sea ice type mapping

One of the potential applications of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data is the classification of land cover, such as forest canopies, vegetation, sea ice types, and urban areas. In contrast to single or dual polarized SAR systems, full polarimetric SAR systems provide more information about the physical and geometrical properties of the imaged area. This paper proposes a new Bayes risk function which can be minimized to obtain a Likelihood Ratio (LR) for the supervised classification of polarimetric SAR data. The derived Bayes risk function is based on the complex Wishart distribution. Furthermore, a new spatial criterion is incorporated with the LR classification process to produce more homogeneous classes. The application for Arctic sea ice mapping shows that the LR and the proposed spatial criterion are able to provide promising classification results. Comparison with classification results based on the Wishart classifier, the Wishart Likelihood Ratio Test Statistic (WLRTS) proposed by Conradsen et al. (2003) and the Expectation Maximization with Probabilistic Label Relaxation (EMPLR) algorithm are presented. High overall classification accuracy of selected study areas which reaches 97.8% using the LR is obtained. Combining the derived spatial criterion with the LR can improve the overall classification accuracy to reach 99.9%. In this study, fully polarimetric C-band RADARSAT-2 data collected over Franklin Bay, Canadian Arctic, is used.     

结合变化向量分析和直觉模糊聚类的遥感影像变化检测方法

针对多时相遥感影像变化检测存在数据不确定性、检测精度不高等问题,提出了一种结合变化向量分析（CVA）和直觉模糊C均值聚类算法（IFCM）的多时相遥感影像变化检测方法. 首先通过CVA构建两个时相遥感影像的差异影像;然后采用直觉模糊C均值聚类算法对差异影像进行聚类得出变化区域和未变化区域;最后对变化检测结果进行二值化处理并进行精度评价. 选取两个时相的高分一号遥感影像和Szada数据集影像作为实验数据. 实验结果表明,采用提出的方法可有效解决传统方法存在的数据不确定性问题,变化检测精度达到了95.92%和92.70%,是一种可行的遥感影像变化检测方法. 研究结果可用于森林动态变化监测、土地复垦利用规划变化分析以及灾损评估.      

植被高度的极化干涉互协方差矩阵分解反演法

经典三阶段极化干涉SAR植被高反演算法中地面散射相位估计不准确,从而导致植被高反演精度存在偏差。针对这一关键问题,本文提出基于极化干涉互协方差矩阵分解的植被高度反演新方法。该方法利用Freeman分解理论和极化干涉互协方差矩阵,估计出更准确的地面散射相位;然后,结合RVOG模型反演植被高度。利用欧空局（ESA）的软件PolSARpro模拟的L波段极化SAR数据和亚马逊森林地区的ALOS PALSAR L波段数据进行实验,结果表明本文提出的新算法提取的植被高度相比经典三阶段法精度更高,从而验证了算法的有效性和可靠性。     

Scattering property based contextual PolSAR speckle filter

Reliability of the scattering model based polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) speckle filter depends upon the accurate decomposition and classification of the scattering mechanisms. This paper presents an improved scattering property based contextual speckle filter based upon an iterative classification of the scattering mechanisms. It applies a Cloude-Pottier eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition and a fuzzy H/α classification to determine the scattering mechanisms on a pre-estimate of the coherency matrix. The H/α classification identifies pixels with homogeneous scattering properties. A coarse pixel selection rule groups pixels that are either single bounce, double bounce or volume scatterers. A fine pixel selection rule is applied to pixels within each canonical scattering mechanism. We filter the PolSAR data and depending on the type of image scene (urban or rural) use either the coarse or fine pixel selection rule. Iterative refinement of the Wishart H/α classification reduces the speckle in the PolSAR data. Effectiveness of this new filter is demonstrated by using both simulated and real PolSAR data. It is compared with the refined Lee filter, the scattering model based filter and the non-local means filter. The study concludes that the proposed filter compares favorably with other polarimetric speckle filters in preserving polarimetric information, point scatterers and subtle features in PolSAR data.     

Study of coastal wetland classification based on decision rules using ALOS AVNIR-2 images and ancillary geospatial data

Wetlands play irreplaceable key roles in ecological and environmental procedures. To make effective conservation and management, it is essential to understand the wetlands’ distribution and changes. In this study, an approach based on decision rules algorithm in conjunction with maximum likelihood classification is proposed for coastal wetland mapping using multi-temporal remotely sensed imagery and ancillary geospatial data. As a case study, Multi-temporal Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 images acquired by Japanese Advanced Land Observation Satellite are analysed to investigate the seasonal change pattern of coastal wetlands in Washington State, USA. Geospatial data, including Digital Elevation Model and spatial neighbourhood knowledge, are further integrated to characterize wetland features and discriminate classes within a certain elevation ranges. The final result is a refined coastal wetland map with 15 land cover categories. Preliminary evaluation of the final result shows that the proposed approach is effective in coastal wetland mapping.     

RADARSAT-2全极化SAR数据地表覆盖分类

全极化合成孔径雷达(SAR)能够测量每一观测目标的全散射矩阵,但地物分布的复杂性往往造成不同地物具有相似的后向散射信号特征,因而增加了地物信息提取的难度。文中基于北京地区的RADARSAT-2全极化雷达数据,在图像处理的特征分解的基础上,利用PolSARPro软件提取包含地物散射机理信息的各种极化参数,按H-α、A-α、H-A对全极化SAR影像进行基于散射机理的分类,继而将分类结果作为Wishart H/A/α、Wishart H/α的初始类别划分。最后,采用决策树分类算法对基于Wishart分布的监督分类及以上两种分类算法进行融合处理,从而实现地物的分类,并将分类结果与经典的分类算法进行对比分析,验证了文中方法的有效性。     

Full year crop monitoring and separability assessment with fully-polarimetric L-band UAVSAR: A case study in the Sacramento Valley,California

Spatial and temporal information on plant and soil conditions is needed urgently for monitoring of crop productivity. Remote sensing has been considered as an effective means for crop growth monitoring due to its timely updating and complete coverage. In this paper, we explored the potential of L-band fully-polarimetric Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data for crop monitoring and classification. The study site was located in the Sacramento Valley, in California where the cropping system is relatively diverse. Full season polarimetric signatures, as well as scattering mechanisms, for several crops, including almond, walnut, alfalfa, winter wheat, corn, sunflower, and tomato, were analyzed with linear polarizations (HH, HV, and VV) and polarimetric decomposition (Cloude–Pottier and Freeman–Durden) parameters, respectively. The separability amongst crop types was assessed across a full calendar year based on both linear polarizations and decomposition parameters. The unique structure-related polarimetric signature of each crop was provided by multitemporal UAVSAR data with a fine temporal resolution. Permanent tree crops (almond and walnut) and alfalfa demonstrated stable radar backscattering values across the growing season, whereas winter wheat and summer crops (corn, sunflower, and tomato) presented drastically different patterns, with rapid increase from the emergence stage to the peak biomass stage, followed by a significant decrease during the senescence stage. In general, the polarimetric signature was heterogeneous during June and October, while homogeneous during March-to-May and July-to-August. The scattering mechanisms depend heavily upon crop type and phenological stage. The primary scattering mechanism for tree crops was volume scattering (>40%), while surface scattering (>40%) dominated for alfalfa and winter wheat, although double-bounce scattering (>30%) was notable for alfalfa during March-to-September. Surface scattering was also dominant (>40%) for summer crops across the growing season except for sunflower and tomato during June and corn during July-to-October when volume scattering (>40%) was the primary scattering mechanism. Crops were better discriminated with decomposition parameters than with linear polarizations, and the greatest separability occurred during the peak biomass stage (July-August). All crop types were completely separable from the others when simultaneously using UAVSAR data spanning the whole growing season. The results demonstrate the feasibility of L-band SAR for crop monitoring and classification, without the need for optical data, and should serve as a guideline for future research.     

Classification of dual- and single polarized SAR images by incorporating visual features

Fully and partially polarimetric SAR data in combination with textural features have been used extensively for terrain classification. However, there is another type of visual feature that has so far been neglected from polarimetric SAR classification: Color. It is a common practice to visualize polarimetric SAR data by color coding methods and thus it is possible to extract powerful color features from such pseudo color images so as to gather additional crucial information for an improved terrain classification. In this paper, we investigate the application of several individual visual features over different pseudo color generated images along with the traditional SAR and texture features for a novel supervised classification application of dual- and single-polarized SAR data. We then draw the focus on evaluating the effects of the applied pseudo coloring methods on the classification performance. An extensive set of experiments show that individual visual features or their combination with traditional SAR features introduce a new level of discrimination and provide noteworthy improvement of classification accuracies within the application of land use and land cover classification for dual- and single-pol image data.     

Object-based crop classification using multi-temporal SPOT-5 imagery and textural features with a Random Forest classifier

In this study, an object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach was developed to classify field crops using multi-temporal SPOT-5 images with a random forest (RF) classifier. A wide range of features, including the spectral reflectance, vegetation indices (VIs), textural features based on the grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and textural features based on geostatistical semivariogram (GST) were extracted for classification, and their performance was evaluated with the RF variable importance measures. Results showed that the best segmentation quality was achieved using the SPOT image acquired in September, with a scale parameter of 40. The spectral reflectance and the GST had a stronger contribution to crop classification than the VIs and GLCM textures. A subset of 60 features was selected using the RF-based feature selection (FS) method, and in this subset, the near-infrared reflectance and the image acquired in August (jointing and heading stages) were found to be the best for crop classification.     

Efficient paddy field mapping using Landsat-8 imagery and object-based image analysis based on advanced fractel net evolution approach

This paper proposes an efficient paddy field mapping method using object-based image analysis and a bitemporal data set acquired by Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager. In the proposed approach, image segmentation is the first step and its quality has a serious impact on the accuracy of paddy field classification. In order to improve segmentation quality, a new segmentation algorithm based on a frequently used method, fractal net evolution approach, is developed, with improvement mainly in merging criteria. In order to automate the process of scale parameter determination, an unsupervised scale selection method is utilized to determine the optimal scale parameter for the proposed image segmentation approach. After segmentation, four types of object-based features including geometric, spectral, textural, and contextual information are extracted and input into the subsequent classification procedure. By using a random forest classifier, paddy fields and nonpaddy fields are separated. The proposed image segmentation method and the final classification result are both quantitatively evaluated. Our segmentation method outperformed two popular algorithms according to three supervised evaluation criteria. The classification result with overall accuracy of 91.00% and kappa statistic of 0.82 validated the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Further analysis on feature importance indicated that spectral features made the most contribution as compared to the other three types of object-based features.     

Detection and mapping of maize streak virus using RapidEye satellite imagery

The aim of this study was to detect and map MSV using RapidEye multispectral sensor in Ofcolaco farm. To achieve this objective, the acquired RapidEye sensor was classified using the robust Random Forest algorithm. Furthermore, the variable importance technique was used to determine the influence of each spectral band and indices on the mapping accuracy. For better performance of image data, the value of the commonly used vegetation indices in improving the classification accuracy was tested. The results revealed that the use of RapidEye spectral bands in detection and mapping of MSV yielded good classification results with an overall accuracy of 82.75%. The inclusion of vegetation indices computed from RapidEye sensor improved the classification accuracies by 3.4%. The most important RapidEye spectral bands in classifying MSV were near infrared, blue and red-edge. On the other hand, the most important vegetation indices were the Soil adjusted vegetation index, Enhanced vegetation index, Red index and Normalized Vegetation Index. The current study recommends future studies to assess the importance of multi-temporal remote sensing applications in detecting and monitoring the spread of MSV.     

全球地表覆盖制图研究新范式

全球土地覆盖制图在过去的10年中取得重要进展,空间分辨率从300 m增加至30 m,分类详细程度也有所提高,从10余个一级类到包含29类的二级分类体系。然而,利用光学遥感数据在大空间范围制图方面仍有诸多挑战。本文主要介绍在农田、居住区、水体和湿地制图方面的挑战,讨论在使用多时相和多传感器遥感数据上的困难,这将是未来遥感应用的趋势。由于各种地表覆盖数据产品有自己定义的地表覆盖类型体系和处理流程,通过调和以及集成各种全球土地覆盖制图产品能够满足新的应用目的,并且可以最大程度地利用已有的土地覆盖数据。然而,未来全球土地覆盖制图需要能够按照新应用需求动态生成地表覆盖数据产品的能力。过去的研究表明有效地提高局部尺度制图的分类精度,更好的算法、更多种特征变量(新类型的数据或特征)以及更具代表性的训练样本都非常重要。我们却认为特征变量的使用更重要。本文提出了一个全球土地覆盖制图的新范式。在这个新范式中,地表覆盖类型的定义被分解为定性指标的类、定量指标的植被郁闭度和高度。非植被类型通过它们的光谱和纹理信息提取。复合考虑类、郁闭度和高度3种指标来定义和区别包含植被的地表覆盖类型。郁闭度和高度不能在分类算法中提取,需要借助其他直接测量或间接反演方法。新的范式还表明,一个普遍适用的训练样本集有效地提高了在非洲大陆尺度土地覆盖分类。为了确保更加容易地实现从传统的土地覆盖制图到全球土地覆盖制图新范式的转变,建议构建一体化的数据管理和分析系统。通过集成相关的观测数据、样本数据和分析算法,逐步建成全球土地覆盖制图在线系统,构建全球地表覆盖制图门户网站,为数据生产者、数据用户、专业研究人员、决策人员搭建合作互助的平台。     

自适应无监督分类的PolSAR图像机场跑道区域快速检测

针对复杂PolSAR图像场景中机场目标区域检测问题,本文提出一种自适应无监督分类的机场目标快速检测方法,该方法首先对极化SAR相干矩阵分解提取PolSAR图像的特征值图,转化为超像素图实现图像去噪及降维。然后用SLIC超像素分割算法分割构造超像素。基于超像素图构建极化分类特征,并采用无监督的谱聚类方法提取出疑似机场跑道区域,其中的类别数确定利用VAT-DBE(Visual Assessment of cluster Tendency-Dark Block Extraction)算法获得。最后,在疑似区域内结合跑道结构特征进一步辨识检测出场景中的机场跑道区域。利用美国UAVSAR系统采集的多组全极化SAR实测数据对算法进行验证,并与两种已有的无监督跑道检测算法进行对比,实验结果表明,该算法能够快速准确检测出机场跑道区域,处理耗时可减小80%以上。具有更好的鲁棒性。     

利用目标分解特征的全极化SAR海冰分类

特征提取及其选择是SAR海冰分类的重要步骤之一。在众多特征中选取有效特征,进而构建表达地物类型的特征空间是提高分类精度的关键。为此,本文提出一种基于目标分解特征的全极化SAR海冰分类算法。首先,对全极化SAR数据进行多视化处理及滤波操作,生成相干矩阵;其次,对相干矩阵进行目标分解,并针对分解结果提取散射特征参数,进而构建特征空间;再次,通过对所提取的特征进行统计相关性分析,并对高相关特征采用PCA降维,以优化特征组合;最后,设计BP神经网络分类器,并将所得的优化特征矢量作为输入,海冰类别为输出,实现海冰分类。本文以格陵兰中部海域作为研究试验区域,采用L波段ALOS PALSAR全极化数据。通过对本文算法与对比算法的分类结果进行定性定量分析,可以得出本文所选取的特征对海冰识别较好。此外,通过对利用各个不同特征海冰分类结果的性能分析,可以得出基于散射模型的目标分解比基于特征值的H/α/A分解更有助于海冰分类。     

改进的模糊聚类遥感影像分割

聚类是数据挖掘的重要分支之一,引入模糊理论的模糊聚类分析为显示数据提供了模糊处理能力,在许多领域被广泛应用。本文应用考虑邻域关系的约束模糊C均值(Fuzzy C-Means with Constrains,FCM_S)算法,将邻域像素引入到目标函数中,进而有效地利用邻域像素信息,提高分割精度。本文应用FCM_S算法对模拟彩色纹理图像进行分割,计算其混淆矩阵,定性定量地与FCM算法进行对比分析,证明了该算法的鲁棒性。