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Novel Advances in Aquatic Vegetation Monitoring in Ocean, Lakes and Rivers

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing in Agriculture and Vegetation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2019) | Viewed by 45622

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Special Issue Editor

School of Water, Energy and Environment, Cranfield University, College Road, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK430AL, UK
Interests: surface water flooding; standardised monitoring approaches; systems engineering; disruptive technologies; climate change; extreme events
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the development of strategies for water ecosystem mapping and monitoring. Overall, this is primarily due to legislative efforts to improve the quality of water bodies and oceans. Remote sensing has played a key role in the development of such approaches; from the use of drones for vegetation mapping to autonomous vessels for water quality monitoring. Within the specific context of vegetation characterization, the wide range of available observations, from satellite imagery to high resolution drone aerial imagery, has enabled the development of monitoring and mapping strategies at multiple scales (e.g., micro and meso-scales). This Special Issue aims to collate recent advances in remote sensing based methods applied to ocean, river and lake vegetation characterization, including seaweed/kelp, submerged and emergent vegetation, floating-leaf and free-floating plants. Manuscripts can be related to any aspects of remote sensing techniques used for ecosystem science based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation, including the development of be-spoke algorithms, sensors and technology for vegetation identification, as well as the quantification of the uncertainty associated with state-of-the art methodologies for vegetation characterization. Of special interest are those manuscripts with real regulatory applications of remote sensing methods to vegetation quality enhancement in oceans, rivers and lakes. The following topics are considered for this Special Issue:

Sub-topics:

  • Emerging technologies for vegetation mapping;
  • Uncertainty and accuracy of remote sensing techniques for vegetation characterization;
  • Comparison of existing methods for vegetation mapping and characterization;
  • Up-scaling/down-scaling of vegetation mapping and characterization methods;
  • Development of tools (analytical/interface) to report vegetation risk along rivers and catchments;
  • Ecosystem science based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
  • Regulatory based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
  • Novel monitoring techniques to quantify vegetation changes over time;
  • Optimization of monitoring/sampling programs for vegetation mapping, assessment and characterization;
  • The use of vegetation monitoring for restoration appraisal and effective management;
  • The implications of bias in vegetation characterizations on regulatory assessments (e.g., Water Framework Directive);
  • Holistic and integrated approaches for large scale vegetation characterization (the use of proxy variables);
  • Literature reviews and meta-analysis of existing methods;
  • Data Science aspects of vegetation mapping (how to develop remote sensing data bases for effective and accurate national scale assessment);
  • Industrial based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
  • Vegetation blooms and their impacts.

Dr. Monica Rivas Casado
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ocean
  • rivers
  • lakes
  • submerged vegetation
  • emergent vegetation
  • free-floating plants
  • floating-leave plants
  • monitoring and mapping scales
  • regulation

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 7795 KiB  
Article
Performance Evaluation of Newly Proposed Seaweed Enhancing Index (SEI)
by Muhammad Danish Siddiqui, Arjumand Z. Zaidi and Muhammad Abdullah
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(12), 1434; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121434 - 17 Jun 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5024
Abstract
Seaweed is a valuable coastal resource for its use in food, cosmetics, and other items. This study proposed new remote sensing based seaweed enhancing index (SEI) using spectral bands of near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave-infrared (SWIR) of Landsat 8 satellite data. Nine Landsat 8 [...] Read more.
Seaweed is a valuable coastal resource for its use in food, cosmetics, and other items. This study proposed new remote sensing based seaweed enhancing index (SEI) using spectral bands of near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave-infrared (SWIR) of Landsat 8 satellite data. Nine Landsat 8 satellite images of years 2014, 2016, and 2018 for the January, February, and March months were utilized to test the performance of SEI. The seaweed patches in the coastal waters of Karachi, Pakistan were mapped using the SEI, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and floating algae index (FAI). Seaweed locations recorded during a field survey on February 26, 2014, were used to determine threshold values for all three indices. The accuracy of SEI was compared with NDVI while placing FAI as the reference index. The accuracy of NDVI and SEI were assessed by matching their spatial extent of seaweed cover with FAI enhanced seaweed area. SEI images of January 2016, February 2018, and March 2018 enhanced less than 50 percent of the corresponding FAI total seaweed areas. However, on these dates the NDVI performed very well, matching more than 95 percent of FAI seaweed coverage. Except for these three times, the performance of SEI in the remaining six images was either similar to NDVI or even better than NDVI. SEI enhanced 99 percent of FAI seaweed cover on January 2018 image. Overall, seaweed area not covered by FAI was greater in SEI than NDVI in almost all images, which needs to be further explored in future studies by collecting extensive field information to validate SEI mapped additional area beyond the extent of FAI seaweed cover. Based on these results, in the majority of the satellite temporal images selected for this study, the performance of the newly proposed index—SEI, was found either better than or similar to NDVI. Full article
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23 pages, 33996 KiB  
Article
Using 1st Derivative Reflectance Signatures within a Remote Sensing Framework to Identify Macroalgae in Marine Environments
by Ben Mcilwaine, Monica Rivas Casado and Paul Leinster
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(6), 704; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11060704 - 23 Mar 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 7358
Abstract
Macroalgae blooms (MABs) are a global natural hazard that are likely to increase in occurrence with climate change and increased agricultural runoff. MABs can cause major issues for indigenous species, fish farms, nuclear power stations, and tourism activities. This project focuses on the [...] Read more.
Macroalgae blooms (MABs) are a global natural hazard that are likely to increase in occurrence with climate change and increased agricultural runoff. MABs can cause major issues for indigenous species, fish farms, nuclear power stations, and tourism activities. This project focuses on the impacts of MABs on the operations of a British nuclear power station. However, the outputs and findings are also of relevance to other coastal operators with similar problems. Through the provision of an early-warning detection system for MABs, it should be possible to minimize the damaging effects and possibly avoid them altogether. Current methods based on satellite imagery cannot be used to detect low-density mobile vegetation at various water depths. This work is the first step towards providing a system that can warn a coastal operator 6–8 h prior to a marine ingress event. A fundamental component of such a warning system is the spectral reflectance properties of the problematic macroalgae species. This is necessary to optimize the detection capability for the problematic macroalgae in the marine environment. We measured the reflectance signatures of eight species of macroalgae that we sampled in the vicinity of the power station. Only wavelengths below 900 nm (700 nm for similarity percentage (SIMPER)) were analyzed, building on current methodologies. We then derived 1st derivative spectra of these eight sampled species. A multifaceted univariate and multivariate approach was used to visualize the spectral reflectance, and an analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) provided a species-level discrimination rate of 85% for all possible pairwise comparisons. A SIMPER analysis was used to detect wavebands that consistently contributed to the simultaneous discrimination of all eight sampled macroalgae species to both a group level (535–570 nm), and to a species level (570–590 nm). Sampling locations were confirmed using a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), with the collected imagery being used to produce a single orthographic image via standard photogrammetric processes. The waveband found to contribute consistently to group-level discrimination has previously been found to be associated with photosynthetic pigmentation, whereas the species-level discriminatory waveband did not share this association. This suggests that the photosynthetic pigments were not spectrally diverse enough to successfully distinguish all eight species. We suggest that future work should investigate a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)-based sensor using the wavebands highlighted above. This should facilitate the development of a regional-scale early-warning MAB detection system using UAVs, and help inform optimum sensor filter selection. Full article
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21 pages, 7716 KiB  
Article
Mapping Substrate Types and Compositions in Shallow Streams
by Milad Niroumand-Jadidi, Nima Pahlevan and Alfonso Vitti
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(3), 262; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030262 - 29 Jan 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4684
Abstract
Remote sensing of riverbed compositions could enable advances in hydro-morphological and habitat modeling. Substrate mapping in fluvial systems has not received as much attention as in nearshore, optically shallow inland, and coastal waters. As finer spatial-resolution image data become more available, a need [...] Read more.
Remote sensing of riverbed compositions could enable advances in hydro-morphological and habitat modeling. Substrate mapping in fluvial systems has not received as much attention as in nearshore, optically shallow inland, and coastal waters. As finer spatial-resolution image data become more available, a need emerges to expand research on the remote sensing of riverbed composition. For instance, research to date has primarily been based on spectral reflectance data from above the water surface without accounting for attenuation by the water-column. This study analyzes the impacts of water-column correction for substrate mapping in shallow fluvial systems (depth < 1 m). To do so, we performed three different experiments: (a) analyzing spectroscopic measurements in a hydraulic laboratory setting, (b) simulating water-leaving radiances under various optical scenarios, and (c) evaluating the potential to map bottom composition from a WorldView-3 (WV3) image of a river in Northern Italy. Following the retrieval of depth and diffuse attenuation coefficient ( K d ), bottom reflectances were estimated using a water-column correction method. The results indicated significant enhancements in streambed maps based on bottom reflectances relative to maps produced from above-water spectra. Accounting for deep-water reflectance, embedded in the water-column correction, was demonstrated to have the greatest impact on the retrieval of bottom reflectance in NIR bands, when the water column is relatively thick (>0.5 m) and/or when the water is turbid. We also found that the WV3’s red-edge band (i.e., 724 nm) considerably improved the characterization of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) densities from either above-water or retrieved bottom spectra. This study further demonstrated the feasibility of mapping SAV density classes from a WV3 image of the Sarca River in Italy by retrieving the bottom reflectances. Full article
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18 pages, 11598 KiB  
Article
Rapid Invasion of Spartina alterniflora in the Coastal Zone of Mainland China: New Observations from Landsat OLI Images
by Mingyue Liu, Dehua Mao, Zongming Wang, Lin Li, Weidong Man, Mingming Jia, Chunying Ren and Yuanzhi Zhang
Remote Sens. 2018, 10(12), 1933; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10121933 - 01 Dec 2018
Cited by 116 | Viewed by 7506
Abstract
Plant invasion imposes significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Thus, monitoring the spatial pattern of invasive plants is vital for effective ecosystem management. Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) has been one of the most prevalent invasive plants along the China coast, [...] Read more.
Plant invasion imposes significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Thus, monitoring the spatial pattern of invasive plants is vital for effective ecosystem management. Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) has been one of the most prevalent invasive plants along the China coast, and its spread has had severe ecological consequences. Here, we provide new observation from Landsat operational land imager (OLI) images. Specifically, 43 Landsat-8 OLI images from 2014 to 2016, a combination of object-based image analysis (OBIA) and support vector machine (SVM) methods, and field surveys covering the whole coast were used to construct an up-to-date dataset for 2015 and investigate the spatial variability of S. alterniflora in the coastal zone of mainland China. The classification results achieved good estimation, with a kappa coefficient of 0.86 and 96% overall accuracy. Our results revealed that there was approximately 545.80 km2 of S. alterniflora distributed in the coastal zone of mainland China in 2015, from Hebei to Guangxi provinces. Nearly 92% of the total area of S. alterniflora was distributed within four provinces: Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Fujian. Seven national nature reserves invaded by S. alterniflora encompassed approximately one-third (174.35 km2) of the total area of S. alterniflora over mainland China. The Yancheng National Nature Reserve exhibited the largest area of S. alterniflora (115.62 km2) among the reserves. Given the rapid and extensive expansion of S. alterniflora in the 40 years since its introduction and its various ecological effects, geospatially varied responding decisions are needed to promote sustainable coastal ecosystems. Full article
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16 pages, 3631 KiB  
Article
A New Method for Mapping Aquatic Vegetation Especially Underwater Vegetation in Lake Ulansuhai Using GF-1 Satellite Data
by Qi Chen, Ruihong Yu, Yanling Hao, Linhui Wu, Wenxing Zhang, Qi Zhang and Xunan Bu
Remote Sens. 2018, 10(8), 1279; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10081279 - 14 Aug 2018
Cited by 44 | Viewed by 7319
Abstract
It is difficult to accurately identify and extract bodies of water and underwater vegetation from satellite images using conventional vegetation indices, as the strong absorption of water weakens the spectral feature of high near-infrared (NIR) reflected by underwater vegetation in shallow lakes. This [...] Read more.
It is difficult to accurately identify and extract bodies of water and underwater vegetation from satellite images using conventional vegetation indices, as the strong absorption of water weakens the spectral feature of high near-infrared (NIR) reflected by underwater vegetation in shallow lakes. This study used the shallow Lake Ulansuhai in the semi-arid region of China as a research site, and proposes a new concave–convex decision function to detect submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and identify bodies of water using Gao Fen 1 (GF-1) multi-spectral satellite images with a resolution of 16 meters acquired in July and August 2015. At the same time, emergent vegetation, “Huangtai algae bloom”, and SAV were classified simultaneously by a decision tree method. Through investigation and verification by field samples, classification accuracy in July and August was 92.17% and 91.79%, respectively, demonstrating that GF-1 data with four-day short revisit period and high spatial resolution can meet the standards of accuracy required by aquatic vegetation extraction. The results indicated that the concave–convex decision function is superior to traditional classification methods in distinguishing water and SAV, thus significantly improving SAV classification accuracy. The concave–convex decision function can be applied to waters with SAV coverage greater than 40% above 0.3 m and SAV coverage 40% above 0.1 m under 1.5 m transparency, which can provide new methods for the accurate extraction of SAV in other regions. Full article
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26 pages, 70019 KiB  
Article
Decision-Tree, Rule-Based, and Random Forest Classification of High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery for Wetland Mapping and Inventory
by Tedros M. Berhane, Charles R. Lane, Qiusheng Wu, Bradley C. Autrey, Oleg A. Anenkhonov, Victor V. Chepinoga and Hongxing Liu
Remote Sens. 2018, 10(4), 580; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10040580 - 09 Apr 2018
Cited by 158 | Viewed by 13005
Abstract
Efforts are increasingly being made to classify the world’s wetland resources, an important ecosystem and habitat that is diminishing in abundance. There are multiple remote sensing classification methods, including a suite of nonparametric classifiers such as decision-tree (DT), rule-based (RB), and random forest [...] Read more.
Efforts are increasingly being made to classify the world’s wetland resources, an important ecosystem and habitat that is diminishing in abundance. There are multiple remote sensing classification methods, including a suite of nonparametric classifiers such as decision-tree (DT), rule-based (RB), and random forest (RF). High-resolution satellite imagery can provide more specificity to the classified end product, and ancillary data layers such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and hydrogeomorphic layers such as distance-to-a-stream can be coupled to improve overall accuracy (OA) in wetland studies. In this paper, we contrast three nonparametric machine-learning algorithms (DT, RB, and RF) using a large field-based dataset (n = 228) from the Selenga River Delta of Lake Baikal, Russia. We also explore the use of ancillary data layers selected to improve OA, with a goal of providing end users with a recommended classifier to use and the most parsimonious suite of input parameters for classifying wetland-dominated landscapes. Though all classifiers appeared suitable, the RF classification outperformed both the DT and RB methods, achieving OA >81%. Including a texture metric (homogeneity) substantially improved the classification OA. However, including vegetation/soil/water metrics (based on WorldView-2 band combinations), hydrogeomorphic data layers, and elevation data layers to increase the descriptive content of the input parameters surprisingly did not markedly improve the OA. We conclude that, in most cases, RF should be the classifier of choice. The potential exception to this recommendation is under the circumstance where the end user requires narrative rules to best manage his or her resource. Though not useful in this study, continuously increasing satellite imagery resolution and band availability suggests the inclusion of ancillary contextual data layers such as soil metrics or elevation data, the granularity of which may define its utility in subsequent wetland classifications. Full article
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