Abstract
Wetlands provide society with a myriad of ecosystem services, such as water storage, food sources, and flood control. The ecosystem services provided by a wetland are largely dependent on its hydrological dynamics. Constant monitoring of the spatial extent of water surfaces and the duration of flooding of a wetland is necessary to understand the impact of drought on the ecosystem services a wetland provides. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has the potential to reveal wetland dynamics. Multitemporal SAR image analysis for wetland monitoring has been extensively studied based on the advances of modern SAR missions. Unfortunately, most previous studies utilized monopath SAR images, which result in limited success. Tracking changes in individual wetlands remains a challenging task because several environmental factors, such as wind-roughened water, degrade image quality. In general, the data acquisition frequency is an important factor in time series analysis. We propose a Gaussian process-based temporal interpolation (GPTI) method that enables the synergistic use of SAR images taken from multiple paths. The proposed model is applied to a series of Sentinel-1 images capturing wetlands in Okanogan County, Washington State. Our experimental analysis demonstrates that the multiple path analysis based on the proposed method can extract seasonal changes more accurately than a single path analysis.
Highlights
Anthropogenic climate change has increased the damage caused by weather-related disasters, such as droughts [1]
Where VH and VV intensity in the Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images taken from Path166 are denoted as x166(VH) and x166(VV), respectively, and VH and VV intensity in the SAR images taken from Path115 are denoted as x115(VH) and x115(VV), respectively
Most previous studies utilized monopath SAR images, which results in limited success because the availability of such images is deficient for operational monitoring
Summary
Anthropogenic climate change has increased the damage caused by weather-related disasters, such as droughts [1]. Severe droughts can completely alter hydrological landscapes and create tipping points that alter the condition and function of individual wetlands. In some periods of severe drought, the surface water of wetlands and other water bodies may completely disappear [2]. One of the most vulnerable ecosystems to droughts are wetlands, which are inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater seasonally. Et al (2008) reported that some riparian tree species are vulnerable to the increase in soil salinity caused by droughts [4]. Johnson et al (2005) reported that climate change causes habitat shifts of waterfowl in wetlands [6]. The importance of preserving wetlands has been well documented, landscape-level data for drought impacts are scarce [7], which is mainly because tracking changes in wetlands over weeks and months requires the installation of expensive monitoring equipment or frequent visits for field observations
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