scholarly journals Forest Canopy Height and Gaps from Multiangular BRDF, Assessed with Airborne LiDAR Data

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 2566 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Wang ◽  
Wenge Ni-Meister

Both vegetation multi-angular and LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing data are indirectly and directly linked with 3D vegetation structure parameters, such as the tree height and vegetation gap fraction, which are critical elements in above-ground biomass and light profiles for photosynthesis estimation. LiDAR, particularly LiDAR using waveform data, provides accurate estimates of these structural parameters but suffers from not enough spatial samplings. Structural parameters retrieved from multiangular imaging data through the inversion of physical models have larger uncertainties. This study searches for an analytical approach to fuse LiDAR and multiangular data. We explore the relationships between vegetation structure parameters derived from airborne vegetation LiDAR data and multiangular data and present a new potential angle vegetation index to retrieve the tree height and gap fraction using multi-angular data in Howland Forest, Maine. The BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution factor) index named NDMM (normalized difference between the maximum and minimum reflectance) linearly increases with the tree height and decreases with the gap fraction. In addition, these relationships are also dependent on the wavelength, tree species, and stand density. The NDMM index performs better in conifer (R = 0.451 for tree height and R = 0.472 for the gap fraction using the near infrared band) than in deciduous and mixed forests. It is superior in sparse (R = 0.569 for tree height and R = 0.604 for the gap fraction using the near infrared band) compared to dense forest. Moreover, the NDMM index is more strongly related to tree height and the gap fraction at the near infrared band than at the three visible bands. This study sheds light on the possibility of using multiangular data to map vegetation’s structural parameters in larger regions for carbon cycle studies through the fusion of LiDAR and multiangular remote sensing data.

CERNE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Sevillano-Marco ◽  
Alfonso Fernández-Manso ◽  
Carmen Quintano ◽  
Marcela Poulain

A Chinese-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) and an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) scenes coupled with ancillary georeferenced data and field survey were employed to examine the potential of the remote sensing data in stand basal area, volume and aboveground biomass assessment over large areas of Pinus radiata D. Don plantations in Northwestern Spain. Statistical analysis proved that the near infrared band and the shade fraction image showed significant correlation coefficients with all stand variables considered. Predictive models were accordingly selected and utilized to undertake the spatial distribution of stand variables in radiata stands delimited by the National Forestry Map. The study reinforces the potentiality of remote sensing techniques in a cost-effective assessment of forest systems.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 692
Author(s):  
MD Abdul Mueed Choudhury ◽  
Ernesto Marcheggiani ◽  
Andrea Galli ◽  
Giuseppe Modica ◽  
Ben Somers

Currently, the worsening impacts of urbanizations have been impelled to the importance of monitoring and management of existing urban trees, securing sustainable use of the available green spaces. Urban tree species identification and evaluation of their roles in atmospheric Carbon Stock (CS) are still among the prime concerns for city planners regarding initiating a convenient and easily adaptive urban green planning and management system. A detailed methodology on the urban tree carbon stock calibration and mapping was conducted in the urban area of Brussels, Belgium. A comparative analysis of the mapping outcomes was assessed to define the convenience and efficiency of two different remote sensing data sources, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and WorldView-3 (WV-3), in a unique urban area. The mapping results were validated against field estimated carbon stocks. At the initial stage, dominant tree species were identified and classified using the high-resolution WorldView3 image, leading to the final carbon stock mapping based on the dominant species. An object-based image analysis approach was employed to attain an overall accuracy (OA) of 71% during the classification of the dominant species. The field estimations of carbon stock for each plot were done utilizing an allometric model based on the field tree dendrometric data. Later based on the correlation among the field data and the variables (i.e., Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI and Crown Height Model, CHM) extracted from the available remote sensing data, the carbon stock mapping and validation had been done in a GIS environment. The calibrated NDVI and CHM had been used to compute possible carbon stock in either case of the WV-3 image and LiDAR data, respectively. A comparative discussion has been introduced to bring out the issues, especially for the developing countries, where WV-3 data could be a better solution over the hardly available LiDAR data. This study could assist city planners in understanding and deciding the applicability of remote sensing data sources based on their availability and the level of expediency, ensuring a sustainable urban green management system.


2002 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 81-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Frezzotti ◽  
Stefano Gandolfi ◽  
Floriana La Marca ◽  
Stefano Urbini

AbstractAs part of the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition project, the Italian Antarctic Programme undertook two traverses from the Terra Nova station to Talos Dome and to Dome C. Along the traverses, the party carried out several tasks (drilling, glaciological and geophysical exploration). The difference in spectral response between glazed surfaces and snow makes it simple to identify these areas on visible/near-infrared satellite images. Integration of field observation and remotely sensed data allows the description of different mega-morphologic features: wide glazed surfaces, sastrugi glazed surface fields, transverse dunes and megadunes. Topography global positioning system, ground penetrating radar and detailed snow-surface surveys have been carried out, providing new information about the formation and evolution of mega-morphologic features. The extensive presence, (up to 30%) of glazed surface caused by a long hiatus in accumulation, with an accumulation rate of nil or slightly negative, has a significant impact on the surface mass balance of a wide area of the interior part of East Antarctica. The aeolian processes creating these features have important implications for the selection of optimum sites for ice coring, because orographic variations of even a few metres per kilometre have a significant impact on the snow-accumulation process. Remote-sensing surveys of aeolian macro-morphology provide a proven, high-quality method for detailed mapping of the interior of the ice sheet’s prevalent wind direction and could provide a relative indication of wind intensity.


Drones ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Rodríguez-Puerta ◽  
Rafael Alonso Ponce ◽  
Fernando Pérez-Rodríguez ◽  
Beatriz Águeda ◽  
Saray Martín-García ◽  
...  

Controlling vegetation fuels around human settlements is a crucial strategy for reducing fire severity in forests, buildings and infrastructure, as well as protecting human lives. Each country has its own regulations in this respect, but they all have in common that by reducing fuel load, we in turn reduce the intensity and severity of the fire. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-acquired data combined with other passive and active remote sensing data has the greatest performance to planning Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fuelbreak through machine learning algorithms. Nine remote sensing data sources (active and passive) and four supervised classification algorithms (Random Forest, Linear and Radial Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Networks) were tested to classify five fuel-area types. We used very high-density Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data acquired by UAV (154 returns·m−2 and ortho-mosaic of 5-cm pixel), multispectral data from the satellites Pleiades-1B and Sentinel-2, and low-density LiDAR data acquired by Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) (0.5 returns·m−2, ortho-mosaic of 25 cm pixels). Through the Variable Selection Using Random Forest (VSURF) procedure, a pre-selection of final variables was carried out to train the model. The four algorithms were compared, and it was concluded that the differences among them in overall accuracy (OA) on training datasets were negligible. Although the highest accuracy in the training step was obtained in SVML (OA=94.46%) and in testing in ANN (OA=91.91%), Random Forest was considered to be the most reliable algorithm, since it produced more consistent predictions due to the smaller differences between training and testing performance. Using a combination of Sentinel-2 and the two LiDAR data (UAV and ALS), Random Forest obtained an OA of 90.66% in training and of 91.80% in testing datasets. The differences in accuracy between the data sources used are much greater than between algorithms. LiDAR growth metrics calculated using point clouds in different dates and multispectral information from different seasons of the year are the most important variables in the classification. Our results support the essential role of UAVs in fuelbreak planning and management and thus, in the prevention of forest fires.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaiqiu Xu ◽  
Yan Gong ◽  
Shenghui Fang ◽  
Ke Wang ◽  
Zhiheng Lin ◽  
...  

In recent years, the acquisition of high-resolution multi-spectral images by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for quantitative remote sensing research has attracted more and more attention, and radiometric calibration is the premise and key to the quantification of remote sensing information. The traditional empirical linear method independently calibrates each channel, ignoring the correlation between spectral bands. However, the correlation between spectral bands is very valuable information, which becomes more prominent as the number of spectral channels increases. Based on the empirical linear method, this paper introduces the constraint condition of spectral angle, and makes full use of the information of each band for radiometric calibration. The results show that, compared with the empirical linear method, the proposed method can effectively improve the accuracy of radiometric calibration, with the improvement range of Mean Relative Percent Error (MRPE) being more than 3% in the range of visible band and within 1% in the range of near-infrared band. Besides, the method has great advantages in agricultural remote sensing quantitative inversion.


Author(s):  
Changmiao Hu ◽  
Ping Tang

In recent years, China's demand for satellite remote sensing images increased. Thus, the country launched a series of satellites equipped with high-resolution sensors. The resolutions of these satellites range from 30 m to a few meters, and the spectral range covers the visible to the near-infrared band. These satellite images are mainly used for environmental monitoring, mapping, land surface classification and other fields. However, haze is an important factor that often affects image quality. Thus, dehazing technology is becoming a critical step in high-resolution remote sensing image processing. This paper presents a rapid algorithm for dehazing based on a semi-physical haze model. Large-scale median filtering technique is used to extract large areas of bright, low-frequency information from images to estimate the distribution and thickness of the haze. Four images from different satellites are used for experiment. Results show that the algorithm is valid, fast, and suitable for the rapid dehazing of numerous large-sized high-resolution remote sensing images in engineering applications.


Author(s):  
Adrian Banica ◽  
Chris K. Sheard ◽  
Boyd T. Tolton

Detecting natural gas leaks from the worlds nearly 5 million kilometers of underground pipelines is a difficult and costly challenge. Existing technologies are limited to ground deployment and have a number of limitations such as slow response, false leak readings and high costs. Various remote sensing solutions have been proposed in the past and a few are currently being developed. This paper starts by describing the remote sensing concept and then will focus on a new technology developed by Synodon scientists. This airborne instrument is a passive Gas Filter Correlation Radiometer (GFCR) that is tuned to measure ethane in the 3.3 microns near-infrared band. With its target natural gas column sensitivity of 50 μm, the instrument is capable of detecting very small leaks in the range of 5–10 cuft/hr in winds that exceed 6 miles/hr. The paper concludes with a description of the service which Synodon will be offering to the transmission and distribution pipeline operators using the new technology.


Author(s):  
Adrian Banica ◽  
Doug Miller ◽  
Boyd T. Tolton

Detecting natural gas leaks from the worlds nearly 5 million kilometers of underground pipelines is a difficult and costly challenge. Existing technologies are limited to ground deployment and have a number of limitations such as slow response, false leak readings and high costs. Various remote sensing solutions have been proposed in the past and a few are currently being developed. This paper starts by describing the remote sensing concept and then will focus on a new technology developed by Synodon scientists. This airborne instrument is a passive Gas Filter Correlation Radiometer (GFCR) that is tuned to measure ethane in the 3.3 microns near-infrared band. The paper will then present the results of the first airborne field tests and conclude with a description of the service which Synodon will be offering to the transmission and distribution pipeline operators using the new technology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 03020
Author(s):  
Kunlin Wang ◽  
Yi Ma ◽  
Fangrong Zhou

Tree barriers in transmission line corridors are an important safety hazard.Scientific prediction of tree height and monitoring tree height changes are essential to solve this hidden danger. In this paper, the advantages of airborne lidar and optical remote sensing data are combined to research the method of tree height inversion. Based on glas data of lidar,waveform parameters such as waveform length, waveform leading edge length and waveform trailing edge length were extracted from waveform data by gaussian decomposition method.Terrain feature parameters were extracted from aster gdem data.The tree crown information was extracted from the optical remote sensing image by means of the mean shift algorithm. Then extract the vegetation index with high correlation with tree height.Finally, the extracted waveform feature parameters, topographic feature parameters, and crown index and vegetation index with high correlation are used as model input variables. The tree height inversion model was established using four regression methods, including multiple linear regression (mlr), support vector machine (svm), random forest (rf), and bp neural network (bpnn). The accuracy evaluation was conducted, and it was concluded that the tree height inversion model based on random forest obtained the best accuracy effect.


2005 ◽  
pp. 145-148
Author(s):  
Péter Burai ◽  
János Tamás

Soil salinity is the main problem of soil degradation in the Grate Plain with cultivated area of 20% affected. Its influence is accelerated on the water managed and irrigated lands. Remote sensing can significantly contribute to detecting temporal changes of salt-related surface features. We have chosen a farm where intensive crop cultivation takes place as a test site as soil degradation can be intensive as a result of land use and irrigation. In order to evaluate soil salt content and biomass analysis, we gathered detailed data from an 100x250 m area. We analyzed the salinity property of the samples. In our research we used a TETRACAM ADC multispectral camera to take high resolution images (0,2-0,5 m) of low altitude (300-500 m). A Normalized Vegetation Index was computed from near infrared (750-950 nm) and red (620-750 nm) bands. This data was compared with the samples of investigated area. Analyzing the images, we evaluated image reliability, and the connection between the bands and the soil properties (pH, salt content). A strong correlation observed between NDVI and soil salinity (EC) makes the multispectral images suitable for construction of salinity map. A further strong correlation was determined between NDVI and yield.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document