Landsat-8 vs. Sentinel-2: examining the added value of sentinel-2’s red-edge bands to land-use and land-cover mapping in Burkina Faso

The availability of freely available moderate-to-high spatial resolution (10–30 m) satellite imagery received a major boost with the recent launch of the Sentinel-2 sensor by the European Space Agency. Together with Landsat, these sensors provide the scientific community with a wide range of spatial, spectral, and temporal properties. This study compared and explored the synergistic use of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 data in mapping land use and land cover (LULC) in rural Burkina Faso. Specifically, contribution of the red-edge bands of Sentinel-2 in improving LULC mapping was examined. Three machine-learning algorithms – random forest, stochastic gradient boosting, and support vector machines – were employed to classify different data configurations. Classification of all Sentinel-2 bands as well as Sentinel-2 bands common to Landsat-8 produced an overall accuracy, that is 5% and 4% better than Landsat-8. The combination of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 red-edge bands resulted in a 4% accuracy improvement over that of Landsat-8. It was found that classification of the Sentinel-2 red-edge bands alone produced better and comparable results to Landsat-8 and the other Sentinel-2 bands, respectively. Results of this study demonstrate the added value of the Sentinel-2 red-edge bands and encourage multi-sensoral approaches to LULC mapping in West Africa.     

1990—2018年长沙市土地利用变化对生态系统服务价值的影响

评估生态系统服务价值(Ecosystem Service Values,ESV)有利于衡量生态系统服务供给潜力和生态效益的大小,对城市生态规划与土地利用管控起到重要的支撑作用。选择长沙市为研究区域,基于1990、2000、2010和2018年4期土地利用现状遥感监测数据集,利用ArcGIS软件和经本地化校正的当量因子法,分析1990—2018年间的土地利用变化特征,并探讨土地利用变化对ESV的影响。结果表明: ①1990—2018年长沙市土地利用变化轨迹以耕地→林地互相转化以及建设用地对耕地、林地的侵占为主; ②1990—2018年长沙市的ESV共减少53.17×10⁸ 元,降幅3.59%,除水域外各类ESV均呈下降趋势,林地和耕地服务价值减少最明显; ③在各单项服务功能中,水文调节的价值最大,其次是气候调节,两者之和占总价值的54%; ④“退耕还林”“退田还湖”“兴工强市”等政策引起的土地利用变化势必对ESV造成影响,城市快速扩张、土地开发会导致ESV不断下降。综合分析认为,在调整研究区土地利用结构、优化土地配置时应充分重视水域、林地等生态系统服务价值较高的土地利用类型,减缓ESV的下降趋势。     

具有随机扰动和混合时滞的两层异质网络的同步研究

在现实生活中,很多复杂的系统不是由单个网络来表示,而是由一组相互依赖的网络系统来表示的.本文研究了具有随机扰动和混合时滞的两层异质网络的对应节点的同步控制问题.基于随机微分时滞方程的LaSalle不变原理和Lyapunov稳定性理论,采用牵制控制方法,对部分节点实施控制,给出了实现同步的充分条件.为了降低反馈控制的增益,结合自适应控制的方法,进一步弱化了两层异质网络实现同步的条件.最后,通过数值仿真,验证了理论结果的有效性.     

Stage level,volume and time‐frequency information content of Lake Tana using stochastic and wavelet analysis methods

Lake Tana is the largest fresh water body situated in the north‐western highlands of Ethiopia. In addition to its ecological services, it serves for local transport, electric power generation, fishing, recreational purposes, and source of dry season irrigation water supply. Evidence shows that the lake has dried at least once at about 15,000–17,000 before present owing to a combination of high evaporation and low precipitation events. Past attempts to understand and simulate historical fluctuation of Lake Tana based on simplistic water balance approach of inflow, outflow, and storage have failed to capture well‐known events of drawdown and rise of the lake that have happened in the last 44 years. This study tested different stochastic methods of lake level and volume simulation for supporting Lake Tana operational planning decision support. Three stochastic methods (perturbations approach, Monte Carlo methods, and wavelet analysis) were employed for lake level and volume simulation, and the results were compared with the stage level measurements. Forty‐four years of daily, monthly, and mean annual lake level data have shown a Gaussian variation with goodness of fit at 0.01 significant levels of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. The stochastic simulations predicted the lake stage level of the 1972, 1984, and 2002/2003 historical droughts 99% of the time. The information content (frequency) of fluctuation of Lake Tana for various periods was resolved using Wigner's Time‐Frequency Decomposition method. The wavelet analysis agreed with the perturbations and Monte Carlo simulations resolving the time (1970s, 1980s, and 2000s) in which low frequency and high spectral power fluctuation has occurred. The Monte Carlo method has shown its superiority for risk analysis over perturbation and deterministic method whereas wavelet analysis reconstructed historical record of lake stage level at daily and monthly time scales. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulating the effects of spatial configurations of agricultural ditch drainage networks on surface runoff from agricultural catchments

The study of runoff is a crucial issue because it is closely related to flooding, water quality and erosion. In cultivated catchments, agricultural ditch drainage networks are known to influence runoff. As anthropogenic elements, agricultural ditch drainage networks can therefore be altered to better manage surface runoff in cultivated catchments. However, the relationship between the spatial configuration, i.e. the density and the topology, of agricultural ditch drainage networks and surface runoff in cultivated catchments is not understood. We studied this relationship by using a random network simulator that was coupled to a distributed hydrological model. The simulations explored a large variety of spatial configurations corresponding to a thousand stochastic agricultural ditch drainage networks on a 6.4 km² Mediterranean cultivated catchment. Next, several distributed hydrological functions were used to compute water flow paths and runoff for each simulation. The results showed that (i) denser networks increased the drained volume and the peak discharge and decreased hillslopes runoff, (ii) greater network density did not affect the surface runoff any further above a given network density, (iii) the correlation between network density and runoff was weaker for small subcatchments (< 2 km²) where the variability in the drained area that resulted from changes in agricultural ditch drainage networks increased the variability of runoff and (iv) the actual agricultural ditch drainage network appeared to be well optimized for managing runoff as compared with the simulated networks. Finally, our results highlighted the role of agricultural ditch drainage networks in intercepting and decreasing overland flow on hillslopes and increasing runoff in drainage networks. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generation of correlated properties in heterogeneous porous media

The spatial distribution of rock properties in porous media, such as permeability and porosity, often is strongly variable. Therefore, these properties usefully may be considered as a random field. However, this variability is correlated frequently on length scales comparable to geological lengths (for example, scales of sand bodies or facies). To solve various engineering problems (for example, in the oil recovery process) numerical models of a porous medium often are used. A need exists then to understand correlated random fields and to generate them over discretized numerical grids. The paper describes the general mathematical methods required to do this, with one particular method (the nearest neighbor model) described in detail. How parameters of the mathematical model may be related to rock property statistics for the nearest neighbor model is shown. The method is described in detail in one, two, and three dimensions. Examples are given of how model parameters may be determined from real data.     

Simulation of the time-space evolution of an extratropical cyclonic precipitation field over USA

The time-space evolution of an extratropical cyclonic precipitation field over U S A is simulated in a stochastic setting as outlined in Kavvas et al. (1988). The birth of a cyclonic storm is characterized by the simultaneous birth of a cyclone center and births of subsynoptic precipitation areas (SPA) at preferred locations around the cyclone center. The precipitation cores and cells which are used as the fundamental building blocks of the SPAs are approximated by circular precipitation areas (CPA) of different sizes. The time space evolution of the precipitation field after the birth is governed by (1) the movement of the synoptic cyclone described by the cyclone center trajectory, (2) independent nonidentically distributed random velocities of the individual CPAs relative to the cyclone center, (3) the births of new CPAs in time and space relative to the cyclone center, (4) the independent evolution in time of the individual spatially uniform intensities of the existing CPAs, (5) the expansion and shrinkage of the existing CPAs in the course of movement and (6) the dissipation (death) of a random number of existing CPAs within the cyclonic system. The computer simulation, the results of which are presented in this paper, successfully reproduced the general mesoscale and synoptic scale features of the radar detected cyclonic rain fields as observed by Austin and Houze (1972), Houze et al. (1976), Hobbs (1978), Hobbs and Locatelli (1978), Houze (1981), Houze and Hobbs (1982) and others.     

Modeling long term lake variations by physically based stochastic dynamic models

Several physically based stochastic dynamic models (SDM) are described including year-to-year variations of water volume in terminal and non-terminal lakes, streamflow of lake-fed rivers, and salinity of an inland sea (the Sea of Azov). All of these models are based upon the SDM of water volume of terminal lakes developed by Kritzky and Menkel in 1946 in co-operation with Kolomogorov. Explicit formulae are derived for second order statistical moments of the output processes, including variance, correlation function, spectra, etc., under the assumption that the forcing functions from stationary random sequences. The least-squares prediction problem is solved for both stationary and non-stationary cases. Some of the processes are shown to possess high statistical predictability. Actual predictions are compared with independent observations. Problems for further study are stated.     

河流污染带的随机模拟方法

根据随机理论，推导了一个描述污染带变化的概率模型，并采用Ｍｏｎｔｅ－Ｃａｒｌｏ抽样法对其求数值解。该随机模型的解是一个随机物，实例计算表明，它的解能够反映任一计算点的浓度变化趋势及范围，并能够给浓度等值线附加上概率的意义，表现了在不确定因素的影响下，污染带随机变化的情况。