Mapping mineralogy in evaporite basins through time using multispectral Landsat data: Examples from the Bonneville basin,Utah, USA

The Bonneville basin, located in north-western Utah, is a vast evaporite basin which is home to the world-renowned Bonneville Salt Flats international speedway and is a highly valued landscape undergoing rapid change and anthropogenic influence. Air quality, snowpack, the local hydrological system, and state tourism are all impacted by the nature of the surface sediments exposed in the Bonneville basin. Mapping the Bonneville basin over time with remote sensing methods provides insight into the dynamics and impacts of the changing surface landscape. Utilizing the Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensors, a set of band math indices are empirically established to map the predominant halite, gypsum, and carbonates mineralogical zones of the Bonneville basin. Spectral comparisons of representative samples from the study area and image-derived spectra indicate the halite of the Bonneville basin is wet and that gypsum deposits are slightly mixed with halite. The established indices are assessed in four ways, all of which support the ability of the indices to accentuate the associated mineralogical endmembers. Two study areas within the Bonneville basin are investigated temporally from 1986, 1995, 2005, and 2016 and show changing patterns in mineral distribution that align with surface processes active through these timescales. These indices provide a resource for mapping mineralogy though time in evaporite basins globally with diverse applications for questions about land use and environmental change.     

Regional‐scale mapping of groundwater discharge zones using thermal satellite imagery

Mapping groundwater discharge zones at broad spatial scales remains a challenge, particularly in data sparse regions. We applied a regional scale mapping approach based on thermal remote sensing to map discharge zones in a complex watershed with a broad diversity of geological materials, land cover and topographic variation situated within the Prairie Parkland of northern Alberta, Canada. We acquired winter thermal imagery from the USGS Landsat archive to demonstrate the utility of this data source for applications that can complement both scientific and management programs. We showed that the thermally determined potential discharge areas were corroborated with hydrological (spring locations) and chemical (conservative tracers of groundwater) data. This study demonstrates how thermal remote sensing can form part of a comprehensive mapping framework to investigate groundwater resources over broad spatial scales. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

综合多特征的Landsat 8时序遥感图像棉花分类方法

传统的多时相遥感图像分类大多拘泥于单一特征,本文基于多时相的Landsat 8遥感数据,开展了综合多特征的特征提取与特征选择方法研究。综合了NDVI时间序列、最佳时相反射率光谱特征以及纹理特征作为初始分类特征,并采用基于属性重要度的粗糙集特征选择算法对其进行特征约简。分类结果表明:(1)利用初始分类特征,分类的总体精度达到92.81%,棉花提取精度达87.4%,与仅利用NDVI时间序列相比,精度分别提高5.53%和5.05%;(2)利用粗糙集选择后的特征分类,分类总体精度可达93.66%,棉花分类精度达92.73%,与初始分类特征提取结果相比,棉花分类精度提高5.33%。基于属性重要度的粗糙集特征选择不仅提高了分类精度,同时有效降低了分类器的计算复杂度。     

知识引导的稀疏时间序列遥感数据拟合

在多云多雨的地区,光学遥感存在着获取无云数据困难的难题,这会导致时间序列应用中可用数据匮乏。因此,本文面向稀疏时间序列遥感数据,根据噪声造成遥感影像上归一化差分植被指数(NDVI)被低估的事实,提出了一种知识引导的拟合方法。首先,在遥感影像预处理的基础上,利用先验知识和时序差分法对噪声进行识别和剔除;然后,采用高斯二阶模型对原始数据进行拟合;最后,根据拟合残差更新权重,进行迭代拟合,重复上述过程直至获得稳定的结果。本文以Landsat 8 OLI作为数据源,对浙江省杭州地区的森林数据进行拟合,结果表明:在稀疏时间序列数据的情况下,本文方法与MODIS数据拟合结果的相关系数达到0.92,关键时点(如NDVI峰值点等)的时间误差在5 d;相比当前主流方法的0.88与8 d具有更高的精度。     

Developing detailed age-specific thematic maps for coffee (Coffea arabica L.) in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes using random forests applied on Landsat 8 multispectral sensor

Coffee is a commodity of international trade significance, and its value chain can benefit from age-specific thematic maps. This study aimed to assess the potential of Landsat 8 OLI to develop these maps. Using field-collected samples with the random forest classifier, splitting coffee into three age classes (Scheme A) was compared with running the classification with one compound coffee class (Scheme B). Higher overall classification accuracy was obtained in Scheme B (90.3% for OLI and 86.8% for ETM+) than in Scheme A (86.2% for OLI and 81.0% for ETM+). The NIR band of OLI was the most important band in intra-class discrimination of coffee. Landsat 8 OLI mapped area closely matched farm records (R^2?=?0.88) compared to that of Landsat 7 ETM+ (R^2?=?0.78). It was concluded that Landsat 8 OLI data can be used to produce age-specific thematic maps in coffee production areas although disaggregating coffee classes reduces overall accuracy.     

Updating Landsat time series of surface-reflectance composites and forest change products with new observations

The use of time series satellite data allows for the temporally dense, systematic, transparent, and synoptic capture of land dynamics over time. Subsequent to the opening of the Landsat archive, several time series approaches for characterizing landscape change have been developed, often representing a particular analytical time window. The information richness and widespread utility of these time series data have created a need to maintain the currency of time series information via the addition of new data, as it becomes available. When an existing time series is temporally extended, it is critical that previously generated change information remains consistent, thereby not altering reported change statistics or science outcomes based on that change information. In this research, we investigate the impacts and implications of adding additional years to an existing 29-year annual Landsat time series for forest change. To do so, we undertook a spatially explicit comparison of the 29 overlapping years of a time series representing 1984–2012, with a time series representing 1984–2016. Surface reflectance values, and presence, year, and type of change were compared. We found that the addition of years to extend the time series had minimal effect on the annual surface reflectance composites, with slight band-specific differences (r ≥ 0.1) in the final years of the original time series being updated. The area of stand replacing disturbances and determination of change year are virtually unchanged for the overlapping period between the two time-series products. Over the overlapping temporal period (1984–2012), the total area of change differs by 0.53%, equating to an annual difference in change area of 0.019%. Overall, the spatial and temporal agreement of the changes detected by both time series was 96%. Further, our findings suggest that the entire pre-existing historic time series does not need to be re-processed during the update process. Critically, given the time series change detection and update approach followed here, science outcomes or reports representing one temporal epoch can be considered stable and will not be altered when a time series is updated with newly available data.     

Updating Landsat-based forest cover maps with MODIS images using multiscale spectral-spatial-temporal superresolution mapping

With the high deforestation rates of global forest covers during the past decades, there is an ever-increasing need to monitor forest covers at both fine spatial and temporal resolutions. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat series images have been used commonly for satellite-derived forest cover mapping. However, the spatial resolution of MODIS images and the temporal resolution of Landsat images are too coarse to observe forest cover at both fine spatial and temporal resolutions. In this paper, a novel multiscale spectral-spatial-temporal superresolution mapping (MSSTSRM) approach is proposed to update Landsat-based forest maps by integrating current MODIS images with the previous forest maps generated from Landsat image. Both the 240 m MODIS bands and 480 m MODIS bands were used as inputs of the spectral energy function of the MSSTSRM model. The principle of maximal spatial dependence was used as the spatial energy function to make the updated forest map spatially smooth. The temporal energy function was based on a multiscale spatial-temporal dependence model, and considers the land cover changes between the previous and current time. The novel MSSTSRM model was able to update Landsat-based forest maps more accurately, in terms of both visual and quantitative evaluation, than traditional pixel-based classification and the latest sub-pixel based super-resolution mapping methods The results demonstrate the great efficiency and potential of MSSTSRM for updating fine temporal resolution Landsat-based forest maps using MODIS images.     

Evaluating land cover changes in Eastern and Southern Africa from 2000 to 2010 using validated Landsat and MODIS data

In this study, we assessed land cover land use (LCLU) changes and their potential environmental drivers (i.e., precipitation, temperature) in five countries in Eastern & Southern (E&S) Africa (Rwanda, Botswana, Tanzania, Malawi and Namibia) between 2000 and 2010. Landsat-derived LCLU products developed by the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) through the SERVIR (Spanish for “to serve”) program, a joint initiative of NASA and USAID, and NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were used to evaluate and quantify the LCLU changes in these five countries. Given that the original development of the MODIS land cover type standard products included limited training sites in Africa, we performed a two-level verification/validation of the MODIS land cover product in these five countries. Precipitation data from CHIRPS dataset were used to evaluate and quantify the precipitation changes in these countries and see if it was a significant driver behind some of these LCLU changes. MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) data were also used to see if temperature was a main driver too.Our validation analysis revealed that the overall accuracies of the regional MODIS LCLU product for this African region alone were lower than that of the global MODIS LCLU product overall accuracy (63–66% vs. 75%). However, for countries with uniform or homogenous land cover, the overall accuracy was much higher than the global accuracy and as high as 87% and 78% for Botswana and Namibia, respectively. In addition, the wetland and grassland classes had the highest user’s accuracies in most of the countries (89%–99%), which are the ones with the highest number of MODIS land cover classification algorithm training sites.Our LCLU change analysis revealed that Botswana’s most significant changes were the net reforestation, net grass loss and net wetland expansion. For Rwanda, although there have been significant forest, grass and crop expansions in some areas, there also have been significant forest, grass and crop loss in other areas that resulted in very minimal net changes. As for Tanzania, its most significant changes were the net deforestation and net crop expansion. Malawi’s most significant changes were the net deforestation, net crop expansion, net grass expansion and net wetland loss. Finally, Namibia’s most significant changes were the net deforestation and net grass expansion.The only noticeable environmental driver was in Malawi, which had a significant net wetland loss and could be due to the fact that it was the only country that had a reduction in total precipitation between the periods when the LCLU maps were developed. Not only that, but Malawi also happened to have a slight increase in temperature, which would cause more evaporation and net decrease in wetlands if the precipitation didn’t increase as was the case in that country. In addition, within our studied countries, forestland expansion and loss as well as crop expansion and loss were happening in the same country almost equally in some cases. All of that implies that non-environmental factors, such as socioeconomics and governmental policies, could have been the main drivers of these LCLU changes in many of these countries in E&S Africa. It will be important to further study in the future the detailed effects of such drivers on these LCLU changes in this part of the world.     

Is remote sensing useful for finding and monitoring urban farms?

As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the need for fresh fruits and vegetables in urban areas grows while the difficulty of bringing these perishable products to these areas also increases. Small-scale agriculture located in urban areas is a highly effective and profitable way to provide these products to communities that are far from extensive commercial agricultural areas. Here we describe how remote sensing can be used with data mining approaches to monitor urban and peri-urban farms within cities in both developed and developing countries. Using very high resolution satellite imagery together with moderate and coarse resolution imagery and information from social media and the web, we analyze the usefulness of different methods to identify farms within urban boundaries in four countries. The analysis shows how a mixed-method approach is necessary in order to identify where urban farming is occurring and to monitor its change through time. Although remote sensing-based vegetation and water indices were useful, without ancillary data they are not effective at remotely mapping the locations of urban farms. However, remote sensing is a good way to monitor vegetation condition in locations where actively managed urban farms are known to exist.