Mapping Everest

Abstract

From its inception in the middle of the 19th century, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) took a keen interest in the exploration and mapping of the Everest region. This formed an integral part of the many Everest expeditions, some of which had individual surveyors or survey parties attached to them. Many mountaineers took part in this work, particularly those with a scientific background. But it was not until 1961 that a comprehensive map was produced of the Everest region.     

Urban Biogeographical Analysis of Spontaneous Tree Growth on Stone Retaining Walls

Stone retaining walls in urban Hong Kong provided vertical habitats for spontaneous colonization by a diversified humid-tropical flora with large trees. A citywide survey assessed wall and tree characteristics to understand wall-tree relationships and identify conservation candidates. Nonparametric correlations were computed between 28 wall attributes versus tree count, tree biomass, and species-vegetation factors. Most of the 245 walls, with 1275 trees, were in residential areas. Moraceae dominated the 30 tree species, predominantly genus Ficus, and especially F. microcarpa. Natives formed the overwhelming majority, largely with pioneer and ruderal traits. The positive effect of adjacent built-up land use and negative effect of wall exposure indicated sheltering from wind could facilitate tree growth. Wall height was a key determinant as taller walls furnished more surfaces free from human disturbance and conducive to seed deposition by frugivorous birds and bats. Stone width offered more horizontal microsites for seeds to lodge. Stone roughness operated at the microscale to encourage nonarboreal vegetation. Joint attributes exerted strong influence on tree growth and less so on nontree affiliates. The walls-cum-vegetation, many older than 100 years, presented a precious natural-cum-cultural heritage, deserving protection as an urban ecological asset.     

Sediment trapping by a tree belt: processes and consequences for sediment delivery

Restoring belts of perennial vegetation in landscapes is widely recognized as a measure of improving landscape function. While there have been many studies of the transport of pollutants through grass filter strips, few have addressed sediment related processes through restored tree belts. In order to identify these processes and quantify their relative contribution to sediment trapping, a series of rainfall simulations was conducted on a 600 m² hillslope comprising a pasture upslope of a 15 year old tree belt. Although the simulated events were extreme (average recurrence intervals ～10 and 50 yr), the trapping efficiency of the tree belt was very high: at least 94% of the total mass of sediments was captured. All the size fractions were trapped with a minimum Sediment Trapping Ratio (STR) of 91% for the medium‐sized fragments. Fractions < 1·3 µm and > 182 µm were totally captured (STR = 100%). Through the joint analysis of sediment budgets and soil surface conditions, we identified different trapping processes. The main trapping process is the sedimentation (at least 62% of trapped sediment mass) with deposits in the backwater and as micro‐terraces within the tree belt. Modelling results show that the coarsest size fractions above 75 µm are preferentially deposited. Joint infiltration of water and sediments has also been noticed, however, this process alone cannot explain the selective trapping of the finest fractions. We suggest that the finest fractions transported by the overland flow may be trapped by adsorption on the abundant litter present within the tree belt. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于 SPOT-5影像的吴哥地区水体提取方法研究

对于一个较小研究区提取地物信息,需要更高的空间分辨率和适合的光谱信息。以柬埔寨吴哥窟西北部为研究对象,开展基于SPOT-5影像的水体信息提取方法研究。通过分析研究区内的地物光谱特征信息,发现各地物在绿色波段和短波红外波段虽然都有下降趋势,但是水体的变化程度最大。利用这个信息建立决策树的一种水体提取模型:Band3/Band41.73并且Band1Band4。通过与NDWI法、决策树模型提取精度进行对比,证明该模型提取精度有较大提高,可有效地消除水田对提取精度的影响。     

基于决策树的漓江上游土地覆盖分类

针对山区植被分类受地形复杂、植被类型多样、验证数据获取困难等因素限制基于多光谱数据的亚热带山区土地利用/覆盖分类存在困难,探究利用物候信息对亚热带山区植被实施分类的效果。综合运用归一化植被指数(NDVI)、比值植被指数(RVI)、归一化水指数(NDWI),同时考虑到海拔高度对植被类型的影响,建立决策树模型。该模型基于多时相Landsat TM影像,利用了不同地物类型的物候特征和光谱差异,将漓江上游地区分为8种土地覆盖类型。实验结果表明,分类结果总体精度达到86.40%,Kappa系数为0.83。     

激光雷达森林参数反演研究进展

激光雷达通过发射激光能量和接收返回信号的方式,来获取高精度的森林空间结构和林下地形信息。全波形激光雷达通过记录返回信号的全部能量,得到亚米级植被垂直剖面;离散回波激光雷达记录的单个或多个回波,表示来自不同冠层的回波信号。星载激光雷达一般采用全波形或光子计数激光剖面系统,仅能获取卫星轨道下方的单波束或多波束数据,用于区域/全球范围的森林垂直结构及变化观测。机载激光雷达多采用离散回波或全波形激光扫描系统,能够获取飞行轨迹下方特定视场范围内的扫描数据,用于林分/区域范围的森林结构观测。地基激光雷达多采用离散回波激光扫描系统,获取以测站为中心的球形空间内扫描数据,用于单木/样地范围的森林结构观测。激光雷达单木因子估测方法可分为CHM单木法、NPC单木法和体元单木法3类。CHM单木法通过局部最大值识别树冠顶点,采用区域生长或图像分割算法识别树冠边界或树冠主方向,NPC单木法一般通过空间聚类或形态学算法识别单木,体元单木法在3维体元空间采用区域生长或空间聚类算法识别树冠。根据激光雷达冠层高度分布可以估测林分因子,冠层高度分布特征来自于离散点云或全波形。多时相激光雷达可用于森林生长量、生物量变化等监测,以及森林采伐、灾害等引起的结构变化监测。随着激光雷达技术的发展,它将在森林调查、生态环境建模等生产与科学研究领域中得到更为广泛的应用。     

遥感影像提取土地覆盖信息的决策树优化方法

针对高分辨率遥感影像分类的传统ID3算法采用的信息增益熵为局部非回溯的启发式的缺点,提出了决策树引入模拟退火算法,得到一个面向影像特征优先级的优化的决策树分类算法。采用优化的决策树算法进行高分辨率遥感影像的分类,能较好地解决样本依赖性问题,并且得到一个全局优化的分类结果。通过实验,对农村地区的SPOT影像进行分类,并且通过对较优尺度下优化的决策树算法与神经网络算法和最大似然法对实验区域的影像分类精度的比较,证明了与ID3决策树分类方法相比较,优化的决策树方法能有效地提高农村地区在各尺度下SPOT影像的分类精度。     

An improved tree crown delineation method based on live crown ratios from airborne LiDAR data

Individual tree crowns are one of the basic forest inventory data, which can be used in various forest-related studies such as biomass and carbon stock estimation. High-resolution remote-sensing data including airborne LiDAR-derived surfaces have been widely used for delineating tree crowns. This study proposes an improved tree crown delineation algorithm that can be effectively applied to a range of forests with a limited number of parameters considering its operational use with airborne LiDAR data. The proposed algorithm integrates morphological operators, Otsu’s method, marker-controlled watershed segmentation, and the concept of crown ratios. The proposed algorithm was compared with the region growing method, a widely used tree crown delineation algorithm. The two algorithms were evaluated over 10 plots in rugged terrain located in Kangwon Province in South Korea. Results show that the proposed approach produced much better performance (~87% matched on average) for 10 plots with a range of tree densities than the region growing method (~60% matched on average). The proposed algorithm worked better for sparse plots than dense ones. It also worked well for deciduous plots (plots 1 and 4). On the other hand, the region growing method produced relatively low accuracy with many merged crowns, which requires additional postprocessing such as a resplit step.     

A robust cylindrical fitting to point cloud data

Environmental, engineering and industrial modelling of natural features (e.g. trees) and man-made features (e.g. pipelines) requires some form of fitting of geometrical objects such as cylinders, which is commonly undertaken using a least-squares method that—in order to get optimal estimation—assumes normal Gaussian distribution. In the presence of outliers, however, this assumption is violated leading to a Gaussian mixture distribution. This study proposes a robust parameter estimation method, which is an improved and extended form of vector algebraic modelling. The proposed method employs expectation maximisation and maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to find cylindrical parameters in case of Gaussian mixture distribution. MLE computes the model parameters assuming that the distribution of model errors is a Gaussian mixture corresponding to inlier and outlier points. The parameters of the Gaussian mixture distribution and the membership functions of the inliers and outliers are computed using an expectation maximisation algorithm from the histogram of the model error distribution, and the initial guess values for the model parameters are obtained using total least squares. The method, illustrated by a practical example from a terrestrial laser scanning point cloud, is novel in that it is algebraic (i.e. provides a non-iterative solution to the global maximisation problem of the likelihood function), is practically useful for any type of error distribution model and is capable of separating points of interest and outliers.