Integrating terrain and vegetation indices for identifying potential soil erosion risk area

The present paper offers an innovative method to monitor the change in soil erosion potential by integrating terrain and vegetation indices derived from remote sensing data. Three terrain indices namely, topographic wetness index (TWI), stream power index (SPI) and slope length factor (LS), were derived from the digital elevation model. Normalized vegetation index (NDVI) was derived for the year 1988 and 2004 using remote sensing images. K-mean clustering was performed on staked indices to categorize the study area into four soil erosion potential classes. The validation of derived erosion potential map using USLE model showed a good agreement. Results indicated that there was a significant change in the erosion potential of the watershed and a gradual shifting of lower erosion potential class to next higher erosion potential class over the study period.     

Use of service middleware based on ECHO with CSW for discovery and registry of MODIS data

Nowadays, NASA is producing several terabytes Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data everyday; how to find the data with criteria, such as specific times, locations, and scales using an international standard becomes more and more important. In this paper, a service-oriented architecture for use of the integration Earth Observation System Clearing-HOuse (ECHO) with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Catalogue Service—Web profile (CSW) is put forward. The architecture consists of three roles: a service requester (the user), a service provider (the ECHO metadata server), and a service broker (the GeoNetwork CSW and MODIS registry service middleware). The core component-MODIS registry service middleware includes three components: metadata fetcher, metadata transformer, and metadata register. The metadata fetcher is used to fetch metadata from ECHO metadata server; the metadata transformer is responsible for transform metadata from one form to another; the metadata register is in charge of registering ISO19139-based metadata to CSW. A prototype system is designed and implemented by using the service middleware technology and a standard interface and protocol. The feasibility and the response time of registry and retrieval of MODIS data are evaluated by means of a realistic LPDAAC_ECS MODIS data center. The implementation of this prototype system and the experiment show that the architecture and method is feasible and effective.     

An enhanced bit-wise parallel algorithm for real-time GPS software receiver

Software-based global positioning system (GPS) receivers perform all the baseband signal processing and the high level functions on a general purpose processor. The heavy computational loads of the signal correlation in baseband processing make it difficult for software receivers to operate in real time. In order to improve the real-time performance, an enhanced bit-wise parallel algorithm has been developed in this study. The enhanced algorithm has been implemented and tested in a 12 channels real-time GPS software receiver. The system consists of a radio frequency front end, a data acquisition board and software that runs on a laptop with a Pentium-M 1.5 GHz processor running the Window^® XP operating system. The data acquisition board packs the 2-bit intermediate frequency samples with a 2-bit in/8-bit out shift register and transfers the packed samples to laptop through a USB port. The software running on the laptop performs all the baseband and navigation processing in real time. The test results show that the enhanced algorithm significantly improves the real-time performance of the software receiver by reducing the computational operations for signal correlation by 50% compared with the existing bit-wise parallel algorithm. Furthermore, the enhanced algorithm also reduces the amount of required memory for storing data for signal correlation.     

Vulnerability Assessment and Earthquake Risk Mapping in Part of North Iran Using Geospatial Techniques

Earthquakes cause huge loss of lives and infrastructure every year in Iran. Many settlement areas (urban & rural) as well as Tehran, the capital city of Iran are located in the hazardous area. This research deals with the earthquake risk assessment and mapping based on recent remote sensing information on a GIS platform. The study area is part of Central Alborz in southern Caspian Sea and north of capital city of Tehran called Marzanabad area. It is a potentially high-risk zone as several earthquakes have occurred in the past. The study’s main objective is to develop an Earthquake Risk Map at the scale of 1:25,000 to identify high-risk zone and vulnerability areas to the settlements and infrastructure of area. Digital lineaments wear extraction and analysis for identification the faults using several RADAR and optical images with spatial analysis techniques. The probable faults were detected by superimposition of the lithological and geomorphologic features and their variance over the lineaments in a GIS environment. This research work involved fault identification on the remote sensed dataset as well as field studies and the risky areas were classified in the vicinity of the faults by applying different buffer with specifying distance of the source/site of risk to fault location. Statistical analysis of Earthquake Risk Map (ERM) by GIS indicated that 32% of the total area with about 66% of settlements and 52% of population is located in strongly high-risk and high-risk zone. Moderately low risk and low risk zones cover 38.67% of total area, which is free of settlements as well as population. The Earthquake map elaborated in this research work will be a useful tool for disaster management as well as urban and regional planning of future activities in the area.     

An Introduction to MODISI and SCMOD Methods for Correction of the MODIS Snow Assessment Algorithm

Detection, monitoring and precise assessment of the snow covered regions is an important issue. Snow cover area and consequently the amount of runoff generated from snowmelt have a significant effect on water supply management. To precisely detect and monitor the snow covered area we need satellite images with suitable spatial and temporal resolutions where we usually lose one for the other. In this study, products of two sensors MODIS and ASTER both on board of TERRA platform having low and high spatial resolution respectively were used. The objective of the study was to modify the snow products of MODIS by using simultaneous images of ASTER. For this, MODIS snow index image with high temporal resolution were compared with that of ASTER, using regression and correlation analysis. To improve NDSI index two methods were developed. The first method generated from direct comparison of ASTER averaged NDSI with those of MODIS (MODISI). The second method generated by dividing MODIS NDSI index into 10 codes according to their percentage of surface cover and then compared the results with the difference between ASTER averaged and MODIS snow indices (SCMOD). Both methods were tested against some 16 MODIS pixels. It is found that the precision of the MODISI method was more than 96%. This for SCMOD was about 98%. The RMSE of both methods were as good as 0.02.     

Accuracy improvement of ASTER stereo satellite generated DEM using texture filter

The grid DEM(digital elevation model) generation can be from any of a number of sources:for instance,analogue to digital conversion of contour maps followed by application of the TIN model,or direct elevation point modelling via digital photogrammetry applied to airborne images or satellite images.Currently,apart from the deployment of point-clouds from LiDAR data acquisition,the generally favoured approach refers to applications of digital photogrammetry.One of the most important steps in such deployment i...     

Geo-scape,a granularity depended spatialization tool for visualizing multidimensional data sets

Recently,the expertise accumulated in the field of geovisualization has found application in the visualization of abstract multidimensional data,on the basis of methods called spatialization methods.Spatialization methods aim at visualizing multidimensional data into low-dimensional representational spaces by making use of spatial metaphors and applying dimension reduction techniques.Spatial metaphors are able to provide a metaphoric framework for the visualization of information at different levels of gran...     

GPS-RTK与全站仪结合在丘陵地区公路断面测量中的应用

介绍了GPS-RTK和全站仪测量技术的特点及二者结合测量公路断面的方法,通过实例论述了该方法运用在丘陵地区公路测量中的实用性和高效性,并进行了精度分析。     

一定分布模式下的最优Lp估计

观测数据在一定的分布模式下,需从理论上解决究竟用多大的ｐ值进行Ｌｐ估计（最优ｐ值的确定）,本文基于渐近方差整体最小的原则,给出了最优Ｌｐ估计的定义。观测数据中含有粗差（异常值）的扰动,其误差分布可视为污染分布,作者分析了最优ｐ值的大小,结果表明,若观测数据中含有不同大小、数量的粗差,为使Ｌｐ估计差最小,则ｐ将取［１．２,１．５］中的某一定值,Ｌｐ估计结果最优,此结论对测量数据处理具有一定的参考价值     

地球空间信息技术在新一轮国土资源大调查中的应用探讨

从分析全球变化和社会可持续发展研究的要求出发,提出地球空间信息技术的形成背景和应用基础。针对新一轮国土资源大调查的性质和任务,探讨了地球空间信息技术在新一轮国土资源大调查中的应用。