Mapping fractional landscape soils and vegetation components from Hyperion satellite imagery using an unsupervised machine-learning workflow

An unsupervised machine-learning workflow is proposed for estimating fractional landscape soils and vegetation components from remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery. The workflow is applied to EO-1 Hyperion satellite imagery collected near Ibirací, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The proposed workflow includes subset feature selection, learning, and estimation algorithms. Network training with landscape feature class realizations provide a hypersurface from which to estimate mixtures of soil (e.g. 0.5 exceedance for pixels: 75% clay-rich Nitisols, 15% iron-rich Latosols, and 1% quartz-rich Arenosols) and vegetation (e.g. 0.5 exceedance for pixels: 4% Aspen-like trees, 7% Blackberry-like trees, 0% live grass, and 2% dead grass). The process correctly maps forests and iron-rich Latosols as being coincident with existing drainages, and correctly classifies the clay-rich Nitisols and grasses on the intervening hills. These classifications are independently corroborated visually (Google Earth) and quantitatively (random soil samples and crossplots of field spectra). Some mapping challenges are the underestimation of forest fractions and overestimation of soil fractions where steep valley shadows exist, and the under representation of classified grass in some dry areas of the Hyperion image. These preliminary results provide impetus for future hyperspectral studies involving airborne and satellite sensors with higher signal-to-noise and smaller footprints.     

Evaluation of effectiveness of three fuzzy systems and three texture extraction methods for building damage detection from post-event LiDAR data

Building damage maps after disasters can help us to better manage the rescue operations. Researchers have used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for extracting the building damage maps. For producing building damage maps from LiDAR data in a rapid manner, it is necessary to understand the effectiveness of features and classifiers. However, there is no comprehensive study on the performance of features and classifiers in identifying damaged areas. In this study, the effectiveness of three texture extraction methods and three fuzzy systems for producing the building damage maps was investigated. In the proposed method, at first, a pre-processing stage was utilized to apply essential processes on post-event LiDAR data. Second, textural features were extracted from the pre-processed LiDAR data. Third, fuzzy inference systems were generated to make a relation between the extracted textural features of buildings and their damage extents. The proposed method was tested across three areas over the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Three building damage maps with overall accuracies of 75.0%, 78.1% and 61.4% were achieved. Based on outcomes, the fuzzy inference systems were stronger than random forest, bagging, boosting and support vector machine classifiers for detecting damaged buildings.     

Supervised classification of electric power transmission line nominal voltage from high-resolution aerial imagery

For many researchers, government agencies, and emergency responders, access to the geospatial data of US electric power infrastructure is invaluable for analysis, planning, and disaster recovery. Historically, however, access to high quality geospatial energy data has been limited to few agencies because of commercial licenses restrictions, and those resources which are widely accessible have been of poor quality, particularly with respect to reliability. Recent efforts to develop a highly reliable and publicly accessible alternative to the existing datasets were met with numerous challenges – not the least of which was filling the gaps in power transmission line voltage ratings. To address the line voltage rating problem, we developed and tested a basic methodology that fuses knowledge and techniques from power systems, geography, and machine learning domains. Specifically, we identified predictors of nominal voltage that could be extracted from aerial imagery and developed a tree-based classifier to classify nominal line voltage ratings. Overall, we found that line support height, support span, and conductor spacing are the best predictors of voltage ratings, and that the classifier built with these predictors had a reliable predictive accuracy (that is, within one voltage class for four out of the five classes sampled). We applied our approach to a study area in Minnesota.     

The effects of visual realism,spatial abilities,and competition on performance in map-based route learning in men

We report on how visual realism might influence map-based route learning performance in a controlled laboratory experiment with 104 male participants in a competitive context. Using animations of a dot moving through routes of interest, we find that participants recall the routes more accurately with abstract road maps than with more realistic satellite maps. We also find that, irrespective of visual realism, participants with higher spatial abilities (high-spatial participants) are more accurate in memorizing map-based routes than participants with lower spatial abilities (low-spatial participants). On the other hand, added visual realism limits high-spatial participants in their route recall speed, while it seems not to influence the recall speed of low-spatial participants. Competition affects participants’ overall confidence positively, but does not affect their route recall performance neither in terms of accuracy nor speed. With this study, we provide further empirical evidence demonstrating that it is important to choose the appropriate map type considering task characteristics and spatial abilities. While satellite maps might be perceived as more fun to use, or visually more attractive than road maps, they also require more cognitive resources for many map-based tasks, which is true even for high-spatial users.     

下庄竹山下铀矿床黄铁矿元素地球化学特征及其表征意义

竹山下铀矿床是粤北下庄铀矿田内大型铀矿床之一,铀矿化类型为"交点"型和硅化带型。在详细的野外地质调查基础上,对竹山下铀矿床4种不同类型黄铁矿进行元素含量分析及硫同位素测试,结果表明:"交点"型矿石中黄铁矿相对富集Pb、 Cu、 Co、 As、 Ni、 Se、 Bi、 U、 Sb、 Zn等微量元素;"交点"型铀矿化形成于中深部高温环境,成矿热液具有地幔流体特征,成矿过程硫来源与该区花岗岩中黄铁矿的硫来源一致或者相似,花岗岩中的黄铁矿可能为该期成矿事件的产物;竹山下矿床在垂向上表现出越往深部硫逸度越低的特征;"交点"型和硅化带型中黄铁矿具有相似的微量元素配分曲线,表明二者具有相同的成矿热液来源,且与辉绿岩中黄铁矿配分曲线相似,表明该区成矿热液具有深源性。     

2011~2020年勘查地球化学数据处理研究进展

我国建立了包含海量数据的高质量的勘查地球化学数据库,为矿产勘查、环境评价和地质调查等提供了重要的数据支撑。如何高效处理勘查地球化学数据,并从中发掘和识别深层次信息一直是勘查地球化学学科研究的热点和前沿领域。本文在系统调研国内外学者过去十年发表的论著基础上,对勘查地球化学数据处理方法进行分析与对比,从勘查地球化学数据库建设、地球化学异常识别及其不确定性评价等方面概述了我国近十年来在该领域取得的主要研究进展,包括:(1)分形与多重分形模型由于考虑了地球化学空间模式的复杂性和尺度不变性,在全球范围内得到极大的发展和推广,我国学者引领了基于分形与多重分形的勘查地球化学数据处理;(2)机器学习和大数据思维开始在该领域启蒙,并迅速得到关注,正在成为研究热点和前沿领域,我国学者率先开展基于机器学习算法的勘查地球化学大数据挖掘研究;(3)我国学者需要进一步加强勘查地球化学数据缺失值处理以及成分数据闭合效应研究。今后该领域应进一步加强对弱缓地球化学异常识别、异常不确定性评价以及异常识别与其形成机理相结合等方面的研究。     

Spatial landslide susceptibility assessment using machine learning techniques assisted by additional data created with generative adversarial networks

In recent years,landslide susceptibility mapping has substantially improved with advances in machine learning.However,there are still challenges remain in landslide mapping due to the availability of limited inventory data.In this paper,a novel method that improves the performance of machine learning techniques is presented.The proposed method creates synthetic inventory data using Generative Adversarial Networks(GANs)for improving the prediction of landslides.In this research,landslide inventory data of 156 landslide locations were identified in Cameron Highlands,Malaysia,taken from previous projects the authors worked on.Elevation,slope,aspect,plan curvature,profile curvature,total curvature,lithology,land use and land cover(LULC),distance to the road,distance to the river,stream power index(SPI),sediment transport index(STI),terrain roughness index(TRI),topographic wetness index(TWI)and vegetation density are geo-environmental factors considered in this study based on suggestions from previous works on Cameron Highlands.To show the capability of GANs in improving landslide prediction models,this study tests the proposed GAN model with benchmark models namely Artificial Neural Network(ANN),Support Vector Machine(SVM),Decision Trees(DT),Random Forest(RF)and Bagging ensemble models with ANN and SVM models.These models were validated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve(AUROC).The DT,RF,SVM,ANN and Bagging ensemble could achieve the AUROC values of(0.90,0.94,0.86,0.69 and 0.82)for the training;and the AUROC of(0.76,0.81,0.85,0.72 and 0.75)for the test,subsequently.When using additional samples,the same models achieved the AUROC values of(0.92,0.94,0.88,0.75 and 0.84)for the training and(0.78,0.82,0.82,0.78 and 0.80)for the test,respectively.Using the additional samples improved the test accuracy of all the models except SVM.As a result,in data-scarce environments,this research showed that utilizing GANs to generate supplementary samples is promising because it can improve the predictive capability of common landslide prediction models.     

APG:A novel python-based ArcGIS toolbox to generate absence-datasets for geospatial studies

One important step in binary modeling of environmental problems is the generation of absence-datasets that are traditionally generated by random sampling and can undermine the quality of outputs.To solve this problem,this study develops the Absence Point Generation(APG)toolbox which is a Python-based ArcGIS toolbox for automated construction of absence-datasets for geospatial studies.The APG employs a frequency ratio analysis of four commonly used and important driving factors such as altitude,slope degree,topographic wetness index,and distance from rivers,and considers the presence locations buffer and density layers to define the low potential or susceptibility zones where absence-datasets are gener-ated.To test the APG toolbox,we applied two benchmark algorithms of random forest(RF)and boosted regression trees(BRT)in a case study to investigate groundwater potential using three absence datasets i.e.,the APG,random,and selection of absence samples(SAS)toolbox.The BRT-APG and RF-APG had the area under receiver operating curve(AUC)values of 0.947 and 0.942,while BRT and RF had weaker per-formances with the SAS and Random datasets.This effect resulted in AUC improvements for BRT and RF by 7.2,and 9.7％from the Random dataset,and AUC improvements for BRT and RF by 6.1,and 5.4％from the SAS dataset,respectively.The APG also impacted the importance of the input factors and the pattern of the groundwater potential maps,which proves the importance of absence points in environmental bin-ary issues.The proposed APG toolbox could be easily applied in other environmental hazards such as landslides,floods,and gully erosion,and land subsidence.     

A novel index to evaluate discretization methods:A case study of flood susceptibility assessment based on random forest

The selection of a suitable discretization method(DM)to discretize spatially continuous variables(SCVs)is critical in ML-based natural hazard susceptibility assessment.However,few studies start to consider the influence due to the selected DMs and how to efficiently select a suitable DM for each SCV.These issues were well addressed in this study.The information loss rate(ILR),an index based on the informa-tion entropy,seems can be used to select optimal DM for each SCV.However,the ILR fails to show the actual influence of discretization because such index only considers the total amount of information of the discretized variables departing from the original SCV.Facing this issue,we propose an index,infor-mation change rate(ICR),that focuses on the changed amount of information due to the discretization based on each cell,enabling the identification of the optimal DM.We develop a case study with Random Forest(training/testing ratio of 7:3)to assess flood susceptibility in Wanan County,China.The area under the curve-based and susceptibility maps-based approaches were presented to compare the ILR and ICR.The results show the ICR-based optimal DMs are more rational than the ILR-based ones in both cases.Moreover,we observed the ILR values are unnaturally small(＜1％),whereas the ICR values are obviously more in line with general recognition(usually 10％-30％).The above results all demonstrate the superiority of the ICR.We consider this study fills up the existing research gaps,improving the ML-based natural hazard susceptibility assessments.     

面向自然资源信息提取的多源异构数据融合技术——以汉江流域NDVI数据为例

高时空分辨率的自然资源指标数据对大尺度自然资源动态观测与趋势评估至关重要。大数据时代下的海量多源数据为数据高效融合利用提供了可能。以重构汉江流域归一化植被指数(Normalized Difference Vegetation Index,NDVI)数据为例,搭建了PostgreSQL自然资源时空大数据处理底层架构,集成了数据级融合法、特征级融合法和决策级融合法,基于机器学习算法构建了一套面向自然资源信息提取的多源异构数据智能融合技术,实现了多源数据的高效利用与特征空间优选。同时,重构了2000—2019年汉江流域NDVI 1 km逐年数据集,全面反映了汉江流域植被动态变化。研究结果可为地球科学时空大数据的高效提取与模拟分析提供科学参考,为定量核算林草资源禀赋规模、探究生态系统时空演变规律提供一种更精准、更便捷的技术手段。