Climatology of dust days in the Central Plateau of Iran

Natural Hazards - Dust storms are a major natural hazard to human health. Severe erosive storms in parts of the Central Plateau of Iran have made the situation very difficult for the inhabitants,...     

An adaptive framework for spectral-spatial classification based on a combination of pixel-based and object-based scenarios

Remotely sensed image analysis using spectral-spatial information plays a key role in modern remote sensing applications. This article presents a new semi-automatic framework for spectral-spatial classification of hyperspectral images. The proposed framework benefits from a combination of pixel-based and object-based classification scenarios in which the main parameters are adaptively tuned. In order to reduce the complexity of the method, an unsupervised band selection technique is used as well. Meanwhile, the wavelet thresholding is applied in order to smooth the selected bands. The classification results after applying the proposed method to well-known standard hyperspectral datasets are better than those of the most of the other state-of-the-art approaches. As an example, the overall classification accuracy achieved by applying the proposed semi-automatic spectral-spatial classification framework to the Salinas dataset is more than 99% for 10% training samples per class. Moreover, the vital parameters are adaptively set in our approach.     

Precipitation forecasting using classification and regression trees (CART) model: a comparative study of different approaches

Interest in semiarid climate forecasting has prominently grown due to risks associated with above average levels of precipitation amount. Longer-lead forecasts in semiarid watersheds are difficult to make due to short-term extremes and data scarcity. The current research is a new application of classification and regression trees (CART) model, which is rule-based algorithm, for prediction of the precipitation over a highly complex semiarid climate system using climate signals. We also aimed to compare the accuracy of the CART model with two most commonly applied models including time series modeling (ARIMA), and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for prediction of the precipitation. Various combinations of large-scale climate signals were considered as inputs. The results indicated that the CART model had a better results (with Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency, NSE?>?0.75) compared to the ANFIS and ARIMA in forecasting precipitation. Also, the results demonstrated that the ANFIS method can predict the precipitation values more accurately than the time series model based on various performance criteria. Further, fall forecasts ranked “very good” for the CART method, while the ANFIS and the time series model approximately indicated “satisfactory” and “unsatisfactory” performances for all stations, respectively. The forecasts from the CART approach can be helpful and critical for decision makers when precipitation forecast heralds a prolonged drought or flash flood.