Remote Sensing, Volume 7, Issue 4

The present study analyses the new Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) lights data to determine whether it can provide more accurate proxies for socioeconomic data in areas with poor quality data than proxies based on stable lights. Our...

Road damage detection and assessment from high-resolution remote sensing image is critical for natural disaster investigation and disaster relief. In a disaster context, the pairing of pre-disaster and post-disaster road data for change detection and...

Characterizing and monitoring terrestrial, or land, surface features, such as forests, deserts, and cities, are fundamental and continuing goals of Earth Observation (EO). EO imagery and related technologies are essential for increasing our scientifi...

Surface net radiation plays an important role in land–atmosphere interactions. The net radiation can be retrieved from satellite radiative products, yet its accuracy needs comprehensive assessment. This study evaluates monthly surface net radiation...

Land cover identification and area quantification are key aspects of implementing the European Common Agriculture Policy. Legitimacy of support provided to farmers is monitored using the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), with land cover ident...

For airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) polarimetric calibration (PolCAL) based on distributed targets, it is important to ensure the removal of both the polarimetric distortion and terrain slope effect. This paper proposes a new technique for Po...

The urban heat island (UHI) effect resulting from rapid urbanization generally has a negative impact on urban residents. Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province in China, was selected to assess surface thermal patterns and its correlation with La...

The Leaf Area Index (LAI) is one of the most frequently applied measures to characterize vegetation and its dynamics and functions with remote sensing. Satellite missions, such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) operation...

China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, is characterized by rapid changes in its inundation area and hydrodynamics, so in this study, a hydrodynamic model of Poyang Lake was established to simulate these long-term changes. Inundation informatio...

Urbanization-associated land use and land cover (LULC) changes lead to modifications of surface microclimatic and hydrological conditions, including the formation of urban heat islands and changes in surface runoff pattern. The goal of the paper is t...

This study analyzed the vertical distribution of gravimetric water content (GWC), relative water content (RWC), and equivalent water thickness (EWT) in winter wheat during heading and early ripening stages, and evaluated the position of leaf number a...

Object-based image analysis allows several different features to be calculated for the resulting objects. However, a large number of features means longer computing times and might even result in a loss of classification accuracy. In this study, we u...

In recent years, space-borne InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar) techniques have shown their capabilities to provide precise measurements of Earth surface displacements for monitoring natural processes. Landslides threaten human lives an...

It has been suggested that airborne laser scanning (ALS) could be used for operational monitoring of vegetation changes in the alpine tree line caused by climate change. Because the vegetation is low in such tree-less areas close to the alpine zone,...

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a key role in water resource management. It is important to understand the ET spatio-temporal pattern of South Asia for understanding and anticipating serious water resource shortages. In this study, daily ET in 2008 was...

Providing accurate maps of mangroves, where the spatial scales of the mapped features correspond to the ecological structures and processes, as opposed to pixel sizes and mapping approaches, is a major challenge for remote sensing. This study develop...

One way to model a tree is to use a collection of geometric primitives to represent the surface and topology of the stem and branches of a tree. The circular cylinder is often used as the geometric primitive, but it is not the only possible choice. W...

Physically-based approaches for estimating Leaf Area Index (LAI) using remote sensing data rely on radiative transfer (RT) models. Currently, many RT models are freely available, but determining the appropriate RT model for LAI retrieval is still pro...

Satellite remote sensing provides global observations of the Earth’s surface and provides useful information for monitoring smoke plumes emitted from forest fires. The aim of this study is to automatically separate smoke plumes from the background by...

This paper presents the proposed criteria for measuring the quality and completeness of field spectroscopy metadata in a spectral archive. Definitions for metadata quality and completeness for field spectroscopy datasets are introduced. Unique method...

Remote predictions of the nitrogen nutrition index (NNI) are useful for precise nitrogen (N) management in the field. Several studies have recommended two methods for estimating the NNI, which are classified as mechanistic and semi-empirical methods...

This paper investigates the positioning accuracy of image pairs achieved by integrating images from multiple satellites. High-resolution satellite images from IKONOS, QuickBird, and KOMPSAT-2 for Daejeon, Korea were combined to produce pairs of stere...

In spite of considerable efforts to monitor global vegetation, biomass quantification in drylands is still a major challenge due to low spectral resolution and considerable background effects. Hence, this study examines the potential of the space-bor...

This paper proposes a practical split-window algorithm (SWA) for retrieving land surface temperature (LST) from Landsat-8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) data. This SWA has a universal applicability and a set of parameters that can be applied when ret...

We analyzed potential land degradation processes in semiarid regions worldwide using long time series of remote sensing images and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for the period 1981 to 2011. The objectives of the study were to iden...

As a critical variable to characterize the biophysical processes in ecological environment, and as a key indicator in the surface energy balance, evapotranspiration and urban heat islands, Land Surface Temperature (LST) retrieved from Thermal Infra-R...

Mapping forest aboveground biomass (AGB) using satellite data is an important task, particularly for reporting of carbon stocks and changes under climate change legislation. It is known that AGB can be mapped using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), but...

Between 2006 and 2011, the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array L-type Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) instrument acquired multi-temporal datasets under several environmental conditions and multiple configurations of look angle and...

This paper proposes an automatic method for detecting landslides by using an integrated approach comprising object-oriented image analysis (OOIA), a genetic algorithm (GA), and a case-based reasoning (CBR) technique. It consists of three main phases:...

Surface models provide key knowledge of the 3-d structure of forests. Aerial stereo imagery acquired during routine mapping campaigns covering the whole of Switzerland (41,285 km²), offers a potential data source to calculate digital surface models (...

The successful launch of the Landsat 8 satellite with two thermal infrared bands on February 11, 2013, for continuous Earth observation provided another opportunity for remote sensing of land surface temperature (LST). However, calibration notices is...

In managed landscapes, conservation planning requires effective methods to identify high-biodiversity areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of airborne laser scanning (ALS) and forest estimates derived from satellite images...

A workflow for combining airborne lidar, optical satellite data and National Forest Inventory (NFI) plots for cost efficient operational mapping of a nationwide sample of 5 × 5 km squares in the National Inventory of Landscapes in Sweden (NILS) lands...

Polarimetric SAR (POLSAR) provides a rich set of information about objects on land surfaces. However, not all information works on land surface classification. This study proposes a new, integrated algorithm for optimal urban classification using POL...

This study evaluates the potential to determine the global distribution of hydrated aerosols based on Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data products. Knowledge of hydrated aerosol global distribution is of...

As result of the “Global Land Cover Mapping at Finer Resolution” project led by National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC), one of the first global land cover datasets at 30-meters resolution (GlobeLand30) has been produced for the years 2000 and 2010...

The development of reliable methods for the estimation of crown architecture parameters is a key issue for the quantitative evaluation of tree crop adaptation to environment conditions and/or growing system. In the present work, we developed and test...

Mapping and monitoring of woodland resources is necessary, since woodland is vital for the natural environment and human survival. The intent of this paper is to propose a fusion scheme for woodland extraction with different frequency (P- and X-band)...

Precise spatio-temporal measurements of rainfall during seasonal monsoons are critical for accurate hydrologic analyses in the tropical regions of Southeast Asia. The use of satellite precipitation data is technologically sound but requires downscali...

Based on a novel bare surface soil moisture (SSM) retrieval model developed from the synergistic use of the diurnal cycles of land surface temperature (LST) and net surface shortwave radiation (NSSR) (Leng et al. 2014. “Bare Surface Soil Moisture Ret...

The study of urban climate requires frequent and accurate monitoring of land surface temperature (LST), at the local scale. Since currently, no space-borne sensor provides frequent thermal infrared imagery at high spatial resolution, the scientific c...

Analyzing massive remotely-sensed datasets presents formidable challenges. The volume of satellite imagery collected often outpaces analytical capabilities, however thorough analyses of complete datasets may provide new insights into processes that w...

Wetlands are dynamic in space and time, providing varying ecosystem services. Field reference data for both training and assessment of wetland inventories in the State of Minnesota are typically collected as GPS points over wide geographical areas an...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-based remote sensing offers great possibilities to acquire in a fast and easy way field data for precision agriculture applications. This field of study is rapidly increasing due to the benefits and advantages for farm...

The assessment of land degradation and the quantification of its effects on land productivity have been both a scientific and political challenge. After four decades of Earth Observation (EO) applications, little agreement has been gained on the magn...

Dry Land Asia is the largest arid and semi-arid region in the northern hemisphere that suffers from land desertification. Over the period 1982–2011, there were both overall improvement and regional degeneration in the vegetation NDVI. We analyze futu...

The mission of this study is to compare Net Primary Productivity (NPP) estimates using (i) forest inventory data and (ii) spatio-temporally continuous MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) remote sensing data for Austria. While forest...

Taking advantage of multiple new remote sensing data sources, especially from Chinese satellites, the CropWatch system has expanded the scope of its international analyses through the development of new indicators and an upgraded operational methodol...

The challenge of converting global agricultural food, fiber and energy crop cultivation into an ecologically and economically sustainable production process requires the most efficient agricultural management strategies. Development, control and main...

Anomaly detection has received considerable interest for hyperspectral data exploitation due to its high spectral resolution. A well-known algorithm for hyperspectral anomaly detection is the RX detector. A number of variations have been studied sinc...