scholarly journals Long-Term Spatial and Temporal Monitoring of Cyanobacteria Blooms Using MODIS on Google Earth Engine: A Case Study in Taihu Lake

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianxia Jia ◽  
Xueqi Zhang ◽  
Rencai Dong

As cyanobacteria blooms occur in many types of inland water, routine monitoring that is fast and accurate is important for environment and drinking water protection. Compared to field investigations, satellite remote sensing is an efficient and effective method for monitoring cyanobacteria blooms. However, conventional remote sensing monitoring methods are labor intensive and time consuming, especially when processing long-term images. In this study, we embedded related processing procedures in Google Earth Engine, developed an operational cyanobacteria bloom monitoring workflow. Using this workflow, we measured the spatiotemporal patterns of cyanobacteria blooms in China’s Taihu Lake from 2000 to 2018. The results show that cyanobacteria bloom patterns in Taihu Lake have significant spatial and temporal differentiation: the interannual coverage of cyanobacteria blooms had two peaks, and the condition was moderate before 2006, peaked in 2007, declined rapidly after 2008, remained moderate and stable until 2015, and then reached another peak around 2017; bays and northwest lake areas had heavier cyanobacteria blooms than open lake areas; most cyanobacteria blooms primarily occurred in April, worsened in July and August, then improved after October. Our analysis of the relationship between cyanobacteria bloom characteristics and environmental driving factors indicates that: from both monthly and interannual perspectives, meteorological factors are positively correlated with cyanobacteria bloom characteristics, but as for nutrient loadings, they are only positively correlated with cyanobacteria bloom characteristics from an interannual perspective. We believe reducing total phosphorous, together with restoring macrophyte ecosystem, would be the necessary long-term management strategies for Taihu Lake. Our workflow provides an automatic and rapid approach for the long-term monitoring of cyanobacteria blooms, which can improve the automation and efficiency of routine environmental management of Taihu Lake and may be applied to other similar inland waters.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Ou ◽  
Jianyu Yang ◽  
Zhenrong Du ◽  
Yiming Liu ◽  
Quanlong Feng ◽  
...  

The greenhouse is the fastest growing food production approach and has become the symbol of protected agriculture with the development of agricultural modernization. Previous studies have verified the effectiveness of remote sensing techniques for mono-temporal greenhouse mapping. In practice, long-term monitoring of greenhouse from remote sensing data is vital for the sustainable management of protected agriculture and existing studies have been limited in understanding its spatiotemporal dynamics. This study aimed to generate multi-temporal greenhouse maps in a typical protected agricultural region (Shouguang region, north China) from 1990 to 2018 using Landsat imagery and the Google Earth Engine and quantify its spatiotemporal dynamics that occur as a consequence of the development of protected agriculture in the study area. The multi-temporal greenhouse maps were produced using random forest supervised classification at seven-time intervals, and the overall accuracy of the results greater than 90%. The total area of greenhouses in the study area expanded by 1061.94 km 2 from 1990 to 2018, with the largest growth occurring in 1995–2010. And a large number of increased greenhouses occurred in 10–35 km northwest and 0–5 km primary roads buffer zones. Differential change trajectories between the total area and number of patches of greenhouses were revealed using global change metrics. Results of five landscape metrics showed that various landscape patterns occurred in both spatial and temporal aspects. According to the value of landscape expansion index in each period, the growth mode of greenhouses was from outlying to edge-expansion and then gradually changed to infilling. Spatial heterogeneity, which measured by Shannon’s entropy, of the increased greenhouses was different between the global and local levels. These results demonstrated the advantage of utilizing Landsat imagery and Google Earth Engine for monitoring the development of greenhouses in a long-term period and provided a more intuitive perspective to understand the process of this special agricultural production approach than relevant social science studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Filippo Brandolini ◽  
Guillem Domingo-Ribas ◽  
Andrea Zerboni ◽  
Sam Turner

The necessity of sustainable development for landscapes has emerged as an important theme in recent decades. Current methods take a holistic approach to landscape heritage and promote an interdisciplinary dialogue to facilitate complementary landscape management strategies. With the socio-economic values of the “natural” and “cultural” landscape heritage increasingly recognised worldwide, remote sensing tools are being used more and more to facilitate the recording and management of landscape heritage. Satellite remote sensing technologies have enabled significant improvements in landscape research. The advent of the cloud-based platform of Google Earth Engine (GEE) has allowed the rapid exploration and processing of satellite imagery such as the Landsat and Copernicus Sentinel datasets. In this paper, the use of Sentinel-2 satellite data in the identification of palaeo-riverscape features has been assessed in the Po Plain, selected because it is characterized by human exploitation since the Mid-Holocene. A multi-temporal approach has been adopted to investigate the potential of satellite imagery to detect buried hydrological and anthropogenic features along with spectral index and spectral decomposition analysis. This research represents one of the first applications of the GEE Python application programming interface (API) in landscape studies. The complete free and open-source software (FOSS) cloud protocol proposed here consists of a Python code script developed in Google Colab which could be simply adapted and replicated in different areas of the world.


Author(s):  
S. Abdul Rahaman ◽  
R. Venkatesh

Abstract. Biosphere Reserves are archetypal parts of natural and cultural landscapes encompassing over large area of different ecosystem, it represents bio-geographic zones of an region. Globally, the areas of biosphere reserve is shrinking and exploiting due to the extreme climatic condition, natural calamities and anthropogenic activities, which leads to environmental and land degradation. In this paper Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBSR) area has been selected and it represents a biodiversity-rich ecosystem in the Western Ghats and includes two of the ten biogeographical provinces of India. Amongst the most insubstantial ecosystems in the world, the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is bearing the substance of climate change evident in increasingly unpredictable rainfall and higher temperatures during recent years. The region was mostly unscathed till two centuries ago, but has witnessed large-scale destruction ever since. In this scenario, a need of application of remote sensing and advance machine learning techniques to monitor environmental degradation and its ecosystem in NBSR is more essential. The objective of the present study is to develop satellite image classification techniques that can reliably to map forest cover and land use, and provide the basis for long-term monitoring. Advanced image classification techniques on the cloud-based platform Google Earth Engine (GEE) for mapping vegetation and land use types, and analyse their spatial distributions. To restore degraded ecosystems to their natural conditions through proper management and conservation practices. In order to understand the nature of environmental degradation and its ecosystem in Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve; following thematic criteria’s were grouped in to four major indicators such as Terrain Indicator (TI), Environmental Indicator (EI), Hydro-Meteorological Indicator (HMI) and Socio-Economic Indicator (SEI). The utilisation of remote sensing product of huge datasets and various data product in analysis and advanced machine learning algorithm through Google earth engine are indispensable. After extraction of all the thematic layers by using multi criteria decision and fuzzy linear member based weight and ranks were assigned and overlay in GIS environment at a common pixel size of 30 m. Based on the analysis the resultant layer has been classified into five environmental degraded classes i.e., very high, high, moderate, slight and no degradation. This study is help to identify the degradation and long term monitoring and suggest the appropriate conservation, management and policies, it is a time to implement and protect the Nilgiri biosphere reserves without hindering present stage of natural environment in a sustainable manner.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1433
Author(s):  
Shobitha Shetty ◽  
Prasun Kumar Gupta ◽  
Mariana Belgiu ◽  
S. K. Srivastav

Machine learning classifiers are being increasingly used nowadays for Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) mapping from remote sensing images. However, arriving at the right choice of classifier requires understanding the main factors influencing their performance. The present study investigated firstly the effect of training sampling design on the classification results obtained by Random Forest (RF) classifier and, secondly, it compared its performance with other machine learning classifiers for LULC mapping using multi-temporal satellite remote sensing data and the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. We evaluated the impact of three sampling methods, namely Stratified Equal Random Sampling (SRS(Eq)), Stratified Proportional Random Sampling (SRS(Prop)), and Stratified Systematic Sampling (SSS) upon the classification results obtained by the RF trained LULC model. Our results showed that the SRS(Prop) method favors major classes while achieving good overall accuracy. The SRS(Eq) method provides good class-level accuracies, even for minority classes, whereas the SSS method performs well for areas with large intra-class variability. Toward evaluating the performance of machine learning classifiers, RF outperformed Classification and Regression Trees (CART), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) with a >95% confidence level. The performance of CART and SVM classifiers were found to be similar. RVM achieved good classification results with a limited number of training samples.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 787
Author(s):  
Lei Zhou ◽  
Ting Luo ◽  
Mingyi Du ◽  
Qiang Chen ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
...  

Machine learning has been successfully used for object recognition within images. Due to the complexity of the spectrum and texture of construction and demolition waste (C&DW), it is difficult to construct an automatic identification method for C&DW based on machine learning and remote sensing data sources. Machine learning includes many types of algorithms; however, different algorithms and parameters have different identification effects on C&DW. Exploring the optimal method for automatic remote sensing identification of C&DW is an important approach for the intelligent supervision of C&DW. This study investigates the megacity of Beijing, which is facing high risk of C&DW pollution. To improve the classification accuracy of C&DW, buildings, vegetation, water, and crops were selected as comparative training samples based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE), and Sentinel-2 was used as the data source. Three classification methods of typical machine learning algorithms (classification and regression trees (CART), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM)) were selected to classify the C&DW from remote sensing images. Using empirical methods, the experimental trial method, and the grid search method, the optimal parameterization scheme of the three classification methods was studied to determine the optimal method of remote sensing identification of C&DW based on machine learning. Through accuracy evaluation and ground verification, the overall recognition accuracies of CART, RF, and SVM for C&DW were 73.12%, 98.05%, and 85.62%, respectively, under the optimal parameterization scheme determined in this study. Among these algorithms, RF was a better C&DW identification method than were CART and SVM when the number of decision trees was 50. This study explores the robust machine learning method for automatic remote sensing identification of C&DW and provides a scientific basis for intelligent supervision and resource utilization of C&DW.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 2027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itiya Aneece ◽  
Prasad Thenkabail

As the global population increases, we face increasing demand for food and nutrition. Remote sensing can help monitor food availability to assess global food security rapidly and accurately enough to inform decision-making. However, advances in remote sensing technology are still often limited to multispectral broadband sensors. Although these sensors have many applications, they can be limited in studying agricultural crop characteristics such as differentiating crop types and their growth stages with a high degree of accuracy and detail. In contrast, hyperspectral data contain continuous narrowbands that provide data in terms of spectral signatures rather than a few data points along the spectrum, and hence can help advance the study of crop characteristics. To better understand and advance this idea, we conducted a detailed study of five leading world crops (corn, soybean, winter wheat, rice, and cotton) that occupy 75% and 54% of principal crop areas in the United States and the world respectively. The study was conducted in seven agroecological zones of the United States using 99 Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Hyperion hyperspectral images from 2008–2015 at 30 m resolution. The authors first developed a first-of-its-kind comprehensive Hyperion-derived Hyperspectral Imaging Spectral Library of Agricultural crops (HISA) of these crops in the US based on USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) reference data. Principal Component Analysis was used to eliminate redundant bands by using factor loadings to determine which bands most influenced the first few principal components. This resulted in the establishment of 30 optimal hyperspectral narrowbands (OHNBs) for the study of agricultural crops. The rest of the 242 Hyperion HNBs were redundant, uncalibrated, or noisy. Crop types and crop growth stages were classified using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machines (SVM) in the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform using the 30 optimal HNBs (OHNBs). The best overall accuracies were between 75% to 95% in classifying crop types and their growth stages, which were achieved using 15–20 HNBs in the majority of cases. However, in complex cases (e.g., 4 or more crops in a Hyperion image) 25–30 HNBs were required to achieve optimal accuracies. Beyond 25–30 bands, accuracies asymptote. This research makes a significant contribution towards understanding modeling, mapping, and monitoring agricultural crops using data from upcoming hyperspectral satellites, such as NASA’s Surface Biology and Geology mission (formerly HyspIRI mission) and the recently launched HysIS (Indian Hyperspectral Imaging Satellite, 55 bands over 400–950 nm in VNIR and 165 bands over 900–2500 nm in SWIR), and contributions in advancing the building of a novel, first-of-its-kind global hyperspectral imaging spectral-library of agricultural crops (GHISA: www.usgs.gov/WGSC/GHISA).


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Splinter ◽  
Mitchell Harley ◽  
Ian Turner

Narrabeen-Collaroy Beach, located on the Northern Beaches of Sydney along the Pacific coast of southeast Australia, is one of the longest continuously monitored beaches in the world. This paper provides an overview of the evolution and international scientific impact of this long-term beach monitoring program, from its humble beginnings over 40 years ago using the rod and tape measure Emery field survey method; to today, where the application of remote sensing data collection including drones, satellites and crowd-sourced smartphone images, are now core aspects of this continuing and much expanded monitoring effort. Commenced in 1976, surveying at this beach for the first 30 years focused on in-situ methods, whereby the growing database of monthly beach profile surveys informed the coastal science community about fundamental processes such as beach state evolution and the role of cross-shore and alongshore sediment transport in embayment morphodynamics. In the mid-2000s, continuous (hourly) video-based monitoring was the first application of routine remote sensing at the site, providing much greater spatial and temporal resolution over the traditional monthly surveys. This implementation of video as the first of a now rapidly expanding range of remote sensing tools and techniques also facilitated much wider access by the international research community to the continuing data collection program at Narrabeen-Collaroy. In the past decade the video-based data streams have formed the basis of deeper understanding into storm to multi-year response of the shoreline to changing wave conditions and also contributed to progress in the understanding of estuary entrance dynamics. More recently, ‘opportunistic’ remote sensing platforms such as surf cameras and smartphones have also been used for image-based shoreline data collection. Commencing in 2011, a significant new focus for the Narrabeen-Collaroy monitoring program shifted to include airborne lidar (and later Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)), in an enhanced effort to quantify the morphological impacts of individual storm events, understand key drivers of erosion, and the placing of these observations within their broader regional context. A fixed continuous scanning lidar installed in 2014 again improved the spatial and temporal resolution of the remote-sensed data collection, providing new insight into swash dynamics and the often-overlooked processes of post-storm beach recovery. The use of satellite data that is now readily available to all coastal researchers via Google Earth Engine continues to expand the routine data collection program and provide key insight into multi-decadal shoreline variability. As new and expanding remote sensing technologies continue to emerge, a key lesson from the long-term monitoring at Narrabeen-Collaroy is the importance of a regular re-evaluation of what data is most needed to progress the science.


Author(s):  
Di Yang

A forest patterns map over a large extent at high spatial resolution is a heavily computation task but is critical to most regions. There are two major difficulties in generating the classification maps at regional scale: large training points sets and expensive computation cost in classifier modelling. As one of the most well-known Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) initiatives, OpenstreetMap contributes not only on road network distributions, but the potential of justify land cover and land use. Google Earth Engine is a platform designed for cloud-based mapping with a strong computing power. In this study, we proposed a new approach to generating forest cover map and quantifying road-caused forest fragmentations by using OpenstreetMap in conjunction with remote sensing dataset stored in Google Earth Engine. Additionally, the landscape metrics produced after incorporating OpenStreetMap (OSM) with the forest spatial pattern layers from our output indicated significant levels of forest fragmentation in Yucatan peninsula.


Author(s):  
Di Yang

A forest patterns map over a large extent at high spatial resolution is a heavily computation task but is critical to most regions. There are two major difficulties in generating the classification maps at regional scale: large training points sets and expensive computation cost in classifier modelling. As one of the most well-known Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) initiatives, OpenstreetMap contributes not only on road network distributions, but the potential of justify land cover and land use. Google Earth Engine is a platform designed for cloud-based mapping with a strong computing power. In this study, we proposed a new approach to generating forest cover map and quantifying road-caused forest fragmentations by using OpenstreetMap in conjunction with remote sensing dataset stored in Google Earth Engine. Additionally, the landscape metrics produced after incorporating OpenStreetMap (OSM) with the forest spatial pattern layers from our output indicated significant levels of forest fragmentation in Yucatan peninsula.


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