Medium Spatial Resolution Images Research Articles

Detection of impervious surface change with multitemporal Landsat images in an urban–rural frontier

Mapping and monitoring impervious surface dynamic change in a complex urban–rural frontier with medium or coarse spatial resolution images is a challenge due to the mixed pixel problem and the spectral confusion between impervious surfaces and other non-vegetation land covers. This research selected Lucas do Rio Verde County in Mato Grosso State, Brazil as a case study to improve impervious surface estimation performance by the integrated use of Landsat and QuickBird images and to monitor impervious surface change by analyzing the normalized multitemporal Landsat-derived fractional impervious surfaces. This research demonstrates the importance of two-step calibrations. The first step is to calibrate the Landsat-derived fraction impervious surface values through the established regression model based on the QuickBird-derived impervious surface image in 2008. The second step is to conduct the normalization between the calibrated 2008 impervious surface image with other dates of impervious surface images. This research indicates that the per-pixel based method overestimates the impervious surface area in the urban–rural frontier by 50%–60%. In order to accurately estimate impervious surface area, it is necessary to map the fractional impervious surface image and further calibrate the estimates with high spatial resolution images. Also normalization of the multitemporal fractional impervious surface images is needed to reduce the impacts from different environmental conditions, in order to effectively detect the impervious surface dynamic change in a complex urban–rural frontier. The procedure developed in this paper for mapping and monitoring impervious surface area is especially valuable in urban–rural frontiers where multitemporal Landsat images are difficult to be used for accurately extracting impervious surface features based on traditional per-pixel based classification methods as they cannot effectively handle the mixed pixel problem.

Automatic change detection of buildings in urban environment from very high spatial resolution images using existing geodatabase and prior knowledge

The updating of geodatabases (GDB) in urban environments is a difficult and expensive task. It may be facilitated by an automatic change detection method. Several methods have been developed for medium and low spatial resolution images. This study proposes a new method for change detection of buildings in urban environments from very high spatial resolution images (VHSR) and using existing digital cartographic data. The proposed methodology is composed of several stages. The existing knowledge on the buildings and the other urban objects are first modelled and saved in a knowledge base. Some change detection rules are defined at this stage. Then, the image is segmented. The parameters of segmentation are computed thanks to the integration between the image and the geodatabase. Thereafter, the segmented image is analyzed using the knowledge base to localize the segments where the change of building is likely to occur. The change detection rules are then applied on these segments to identify the segments that represent the changes of buildings. These changes represent the updates of buildings to be added to the geodatabase. The data used in this research concern the city of Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) and the city of Rabat (Morocco). For Sherbrooke, we used an Ikonos image acquired in October 2006 and a GDB at the scale of 1:20,000. For Rabat, a QuickBird image acquired in August 2006 has been used with a GDB at the scale of 1:10,000. The rate of good detection is 90%. The proposed method presents some limitations on the detection of the exact contours of the buildings. It could be improved by including a shape post-analysis of detected buildings. The proposed method could be integrated into a cartographic update process or as a method for the quality assessment of a geodatabase. It could be also be used to identify illegal building work or to monitor urban growth.

Regional mapping of human settlements in southeastern China with multisensor remotely sensed data

Mapping human settlements from remotely sensed data at regional and global scales has attracted increasingly attention but remains a challenge. The thresholding technique is a common approach for settlement mapping based on the DMSP-OLS data. However, this approach often omits the areas with small proportional settlements such as towns and villages and overestimates urban extents, resulting in information loss of spatial patterns. This paper explored an integrated approach based on a combined use of multiple remotely sensed data to map settlements in southeastern China. Human settlements for selected sites were mapped from Landsat ETM+ images with a hybrid approach and they were used as reference data. The DMSP-OLS and Terra MODIS NDVI data were combined to develop a settlement index image. This index image was used to map a pixel-based settlement image with expert rules. A regression model was established to estimate fractional settlements at the regional scale, which the DMSP-OLS and MODIS NDVI data were used as independent variables and the settlement data derived from ETM+ images were used as a dependent variable. This research indicated that a combination of DMSP-OLS and NDVI variables provided a better estimation performance than single DMSP-OLS or NDVI variable, and the integrated approach for settlement mapping at the regional scale was promising. Compared to the results from the traditional thresholding technique, the estimated fractional settlement image in this paper greatly improved the spatial patterns of settlement distribution and accuracy of settlement areas. This paper provided a rapid and accurate approach to estimate fractional settlements from coarse spatial resolution images at the regional scale by combining a limited number of medium spatial resolution images. This research is especially valuable for timely updating settlement databases at regional and global scales with limited time, labor, and cost.

Remote sensing of soils and vegetation: regional aspects

Professor K. Ya. Kondratyev made a significant contribution to soils and vegetation research using data from airspace observations. This paper is a brief review of the part of Kondratyev's versatile activity dealing with radiation transfer theory for the atmospheric correction of multispectral satellite images. New opportunity is outlined of remote sensing data applications developing the elaborated techniques of multispectral imagery processing. The applications are presented by classification procedures of natural objects in the processed images and by retrieval procedures of quantitative parameters of forest and other types of vegetation such as the amount of green phytomass together with discrimination of forest species (coniferous, deciduous, mixed) for each individual pixel. Some results are shown of the relevant applications for multispectral satellite images of medium and high spatial resolution.

Extraction of bridges over water from IKONOS panchromatic data

Compared to remote sensing images of medium or low spatial resolution, high‐resolution remote sensing images can provide observation data containing more detailed information for georesearch. Accordingly, an important issue for current computer and geoscience experts is to develop useful methods or technology to extract information from these high‐resolution satellite images. As part of a series of research into object extraction, this paper focuses mainly on the extraction of bridges over water from high‐resolution panchromatic satellite images. Since bridges over water are obviously adjacent to water in remote sensing images, this paper proposes a practical knowledge‐based bridge extraction method for remote sensing images of high spatial resolution. The steps involved are: water extraction based on Gauss Markov Random Field (GMRF)‐Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification methods which use a SVM to classify the image based on textural features expressed by a GMRF; image thinning and removal of fragmented lines; main trunk detection by width; vectorization; and feature expression. Finally, tests are described for two pieces of panchromatic IKONOS satellite images with a 1 m resolution. The experimental results show that the proposed method is suitable for images with a single‐peak histogram (contrast between water and land is sharp) or a multi‐peak histogram (greyscale value of water is close to that of land).

Bathymetric Estimation Using MERIS Images in Coastal Sea Waters

Bathymetric estimation using remote sensing images has previously been applied to high spatial resolution imagery such as CASI, Ikonos, or SPOT but not on medium spatial resolution images (i.e., MERIS). This choice can be justified when there is a need to map the bathymetry on large areas. In this letter, we present the results of the bathymetry estimation over a large known area, the Gulf of Lion (France), expanding over 270times180 km

Spectral linear mixing model in low spatial resolution image data

Different ways to estimate the spectral reflectance for the component classes in a mixture problem have been proposed in the literature (pure pixels, spectral library, field measurements). One of the most common approaches consists in the use of pure pixels, i.e., pixels that are covered by a single component class. This approach presents the advantage of allowing the extraction of the components' reflectance directly from the image data. This approach, however, is generally not feasible in the case of low spatial resolution image data, due to the large ground area covered by a single pixel. In this paper, a methodology aiming to overcome this limitation is proposed. The proposed approach makes use of the spectral linear mixing model. In the proposed methodology, the components' proportions in image data are estimated using a medium spatial resolution image as auxiliary data. The linear mixing model is then solved for the unknown spectral reflectances. Experiments are presented, using Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, as low and medium spatial resolution image data, respectively, acquired on the same date over the Tapajos study site, Brazilian Amazon. Three component classes or endmembers are present in the scene covered by the experiment, namely vegetation, exposed soil, and shade. The components' spectral reflectance for the Terra MODIS spectral bands were then estimated by applying the proposed methodology. The reliability of these estimates is appraised by analyzing scatter diagrams produced by the Terra MODIS spectral bands and also by comparing the fraction images produced using both image datasets. This methodology appears appropriate for up-scaling information for regional and global studies.

Comparison of the use of WiFS and LISS images to estimate the area burned in a large forest fire

We evaluate the utility of medium spatial resolution images from the Wide Field Sensor (WiFS) for the estimation of the area burned in a large fire. The performance of methodologies using these images is compared with similar methodologies using high spatial resolution image from the Linear Imaging and Self Scanning Sensor (LISS-III) and other ancillary data. Both sensors are located onboard the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite 1C (IRS-1C). The post-fire LISS image was analysed by means of Matched Filtering (MF) techniques. Two WiFS images (pre- and post-fire) were analysed using MF techniques and also by means of changes in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Ground data were used to classify the three thematic images obtained in several post-fire classes. The results show a greater proportion of transition areas between burned and unburned places and a slightly larger area burned estimation in the WiFS than in the LISS analysis. Nevertheless, the results obtained, and the comparisons with ground data, indicate that medium spatial resolution images' estimation of the area burned is a useful tool at regional and national scales.