Tree species identification within an extensive forest area with diverse management regimes using airborne hyperspectral data

Information on tree species composition is crucial in forest management and can be obtained using remote sensing. While the topic has been addressed frequently over the last years, the remote sensing-based identification of tree species across wide and complex forest areas is still sparse in the literature. Our study presents a tree species classification of a large fraction of the Białowieża Forest in Poland covering 62 000 ha and being subject to diverse management regimes. Key objectives were to obtain an accurate tree species map and to examine if the prevalent management strategy influences the classification results. Tree species classification was conducted based on airborne hyperspectral HySpex data. We applied an iterative Support Vector Machine classification and obtained a thematic map of 7 individual tree species (birch, oak, hornbeam, lime, alder, pine, spruce) and an additional class containing other broadleaves. Generally, the more heterogeneous the area was, the more errors we observed in the classification results. Managed forests were classified more accurately than reserves. Our findings indicate that mapping dominant tree species with airborne hyperspectral data can be accomplished also over large areas and that forest management and its effects on forest structure has an influence on classification accuracies and should be actively considered when progressing towards operational mapping of tree species composition.     

Mapping wetland characteristics using temporally dense Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data: A case study in the St. Lucia wetlands,South Africa

Wetlands have been determined as one of the most valuable ecosystems on Earth and are currently being lost at alarming rates. Large-scale monitoring of wetlands is of high importance, but also challenging. The Sentinel-1 and -2 satellite missions for the first time provide radar and optical data at high spatial and temporal detail, and with this a unique opportunity for more accurate wetland mapping from space arises. Recent studies already used Sentinel-1 and -2 data to map specific wetland types or characteristics, but for comprehensive wetland characterisations the potential of the data has not been researched yet. The aim of our research was to study the use of the high-resolution and temporally dense Sentinel-1 and -2 data for wetland mapping in multiple levels of characterisation. The use of the data was assessed by applying Random Forests for multiple classification levels including general wetland delineation, wetland vegetation types and surface water dynamics. The results for the St. Lucia wetlands in South Africa showed that combining Sentinel-1 and -2 led to significantly higher classification accuracies than for using the systems separately. Accuracies were relatively poor for classifications in high-vegetated wetlands, as subcanopy flooding could not be detected with Sentinel-1’s C-band sensors operating in VV/VH mode. When excluding high-vegetated areas, overall accuracies were reached of 88.5% for general wetland delineation, 90.7% for mapping wetland vegetation types and 87.1% for mapping surface water dynamics. Sentinel-2 was particularly of value for general wetland delineation, while Sentinel-1 showed more value for mapping wetland vegetation types. Overlaid maps of all classification levels obtained overall accuracies of 69.1% and 76.4% for classifying ten and seven wetland classes respectively.     

In-season crop classification using elements of the Kennaugh matrix derived from polarimetric RADARSAT-2 SAR data

Accurate spatio-temporal classification of crops is of prime importance for in-season crop monitoring. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data provides diverse physical information about crop morphology. In the present work, we propose a day-wise and a time-series approach for crop classification using full-polarimetric SAR data. In this context, the 4 × 4 real Kennaugh matrix representation of a full-polarimetric SAR data is utilized, which can provide valuable information about various morphological and dielectric attributes of a scatterer. The elements of the Kennaugh matrix are used as the parameters for the classification of crop types using the random forest and the extreme gradient boosting classifiers.The time-series approach uses data patterns throughout the whole growth period, while the day-wise approach analyzes the PolSAR data from each acquisition into a single data stack for training and validation. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility of generating an intermediate crop map, whenever a SAR acquisition is available for any particular day. Besides, the day-wise approach has the least climatic influence as compared to the time series approach. However, as time-series data retains the crop growth signature in the entire growth cycle, the classification accuracy is usually higher than the day-wise data.Within the Joint Experiment for Crop Assessment and Monitoring (JECAM) initiative, in situ measurements collected over the Canadian and Indian test sites and C-band full-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data are used for the training and validation of the classifiers. Besides, the sensitivity of the Kennaugh matrix elements to crop morphology is apparent in this study. The overall classification accuracies of 87.75% and 80.41% are achieved for the time-series data over the Indian and Canadian test sites, respectively. However, for the day-wise data, a ∼6% decrease in the overall accuracy is observed for both the classifiers.     

空-谱融合的条件随机场高光谱影像分类方法

高光谱遥感数据具有光谱信息丰富、图谱合一的特点,目前已经广泛地应用在对地观测中。传统的高光谱分类模型大多过分依赖影像光谱信息,没有充分利用空间特征信息,这使得分类精度还有很大的提升空间。条件随机场是一种概率模型,能够较好地融合空间上下文信息,在高光谱影像分类中已经得到越来越多的关注,但大部分条件随机场模型存在超平滑的现象,会导致影像细节丢失。针对该问题,本文提出了一种优化融合影像空-谱信息的高分辨率/高光谱影像分类方法,该方法将影像的纹理信息与原始光谱信息进行融合,利用SVM分类器对其进行预分类,并将各类概率定义为一元势函数,以融合空间特征信息;然后将空间平滑项和局部类别标签成本项加入二元势函数中,以考虑空间背景信息,并保留各类别中的详细信息。最后,通过两组的高分辨率/高光谱影像数据进行试验。结果表明,与SVM算法、传统的条件随机场方法和面向对象的分类方法相比,本文提出的算法在整体分类精度上分别提高了10%、9%和8%以上,同时在保持地物边缘完整性、避免“同谱异物”与“同物异谱”的现象方面有较明显的优势。     

基于深度学习理论的无人机影像分类

针对无人机影像深度学习分类方法缺乏现状,本文利用深度学习理论卷积神经网络方法对无人机影像进行了分类。该法首先抽取无人机影像作为训练集和检验集,然后建立一个2个卷积层-池化层的卷积神经网络模型进行深度学习,通过设定参数并运行模型实现无人机影像分类。实验表明,本文提出的方法可完成较复杂地区无人机影像分类,其分类精度与支持向量机方法相当,为无人机遥感影像分类提供了一个崭新的技术视点。     

Integrating spectral and non-spectral data to improve urban settlement mapping in a large Latin-American city

ABSTRACT

Information on urban settlements is crucial for sustainability planning and management. While remote sensing has been used to derive such information, its applicability can be compromised due to the complexity in the urban environment. In this study, we developed a remote sensing method to map land cover types in a large Latin-American city, which is well known for its mushrooming unplanned and informal settlements. After carefully considering the landscape complexity there, we designed a data fusion method combining multispectral imagery and non-spectral data for urban and land mapping. Specifically, we acquired a cloud-free Landsat-8 image and two non-spectral datasets, i.e., digital elevation models and road networks. Then, we implemented a set of experiments with different inputs to evaluate their merits in thematic mapping through a supervised protocol. We found that the map generated with the multispectral data alone had an overall accuracy of 73.3% but combining multispectral imagery and non-spectral data yielded a land cover map with 90.7% overall accuracy. Interestingly, the thermal infrared information helped substantially improve both the overall and categorical accuracies, particularly for the two urban classes. The two types of non-spectral data were critical in resolving several spectrally confused categories, thus considerably increasing the mapping accuracy. However, the panchromatic band with higher spatial resolution and its derived textural measurement only generated a marginal accuracy improvement. The novelties of our work are with the successful separation between the two major types of urban settlements in a complex environment using a carefully designed data fusion approach and the insight into the relative merits of the thermal infrared information and non-spectral data in helping resolve the issue of class ambiguity. These findings should be valuable in deriving accurate urban settlement information which can further advance the research on socio-ecological dynamics and urban sustainability.     

Satellite image analysis using crowdsourcing data for collaborative mapping: current and opportunities

ABSTRACT

Researchers are continually finding new applications of satellite images because of the growing number of high-resolution images with wide spatial coverage. However, the cost of these images is sometimes high, and their temporal resolution is relatively coarse. Crowdsourcing is an increasingly common source of data that takes advantage of local stakeholder knowledge and that provides a higher frequency of data. The complementarity of these two data sources suggests there is great potential for mutually beneficial integration. Unfortunately, there are still important gaps in crowdsourced satellite image analysis by means of crowdsourcing in areas such as land cover classification and emergency management. In this paper, we summarize recent efforts, and discuss the challenges and prospects of satellite image analysis for geospatial applications using crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing can be used to improve satellite image analysis and satellite images can be used to organize crowdsourced efforts for collaborative mapping.     

陆源碎屑岩中的古土壤在地层分析中的应用

对各种古土壤的分类标准进行比较之后,重点介绍了Mack的古土壤分类及其土壤的演变序列。Mack的古土壤分类主要依据稳定矿物和保存在土壤中的古地貌属性,将古土壤划分为9种。在地层序列中古土壤的识别标志主要包括颜色、粒度、生物成因构造（植物生长痕迹）、原生沉积构造退化特征、层次化和边界特征、宏观结构特征、矿物及地球化学特征等。可以通过野外观察、室内显微镜观察、实验室化验及地震、测井资料来进行鉴别。陆相盆地具有很强的分隔性,盆地相变又非常复杂,寻找区域性较稳定的层序界面比较困难。越来越多的研究证实用古土壤划分陆相成因地层层序、解决地区及全球对比具有重要的实用价值。     

遥感技术在黑竹沟风景旅游资源调查分类与评价中的应用

随着信息技术的发展,遥感成为了旅游资源调查评价的新手段。阐述了运用遥感新技术对四川省乐山市黑竹沟风景旅游区旅游资源进行调查的过程,并结合现场调研和相关资料对其旅游资源进行了分类和评价。首先对黑竹沟风景旅游区2003年的ETM影像数据遥感图像进行了处理,然后建立了解译标志进行旅游资源信息的提取和分析,最后对黑竹沟风景旅游区的旅游资源进行了客观全面的分类和评价。黑竹沟的旅游资源可分为2大类、7亚类、21个基本类型,是一处景源内容丰富、景象多变的旅游区,发展潜力巨大。