scholarly journals A Review of Remote Sensing of Submerged Aquatic Vegetation for Non-Specialists

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 623
Author(s):  
Gillian S. L. Rowan ◽  
Margaret Kalacska

Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) is a critical component of aquatic ecosystems. It is however understudied and rapidly changing due to global climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Remote sensing (RS) can provide the efficient, accurate and large-scale monitoring needed for proper SAV management and has been shown to produce accurate results when properly implemented. Our objective is to introduce RS to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology. Applying RS to underwater ecosystems is complicated by the water column as water, and dissolved or suspended particulate matter, interacts with the same energy that is reflected or emitted by the target. This is addressed using theoretical or empiric models to remove the water column effect, though no model is appropriate for all aquatic conditions. The suitability of various sensors and platforms to aquatic research is discussed in relation to both SAV as the subject and to project aims and resources. An overview of the required corrections, processing and analysis methods for passive optical imagery is presented and discussed. Previous applications of remote sensing to identify and detect SAV are briefly presented and notable results and lessons are discussed. The success of previous work generally depended on the variability in, and suitability of, the available training data, the data’s spatial and spectral resolutions, the quality of the water column corrections and the level to which the SAV was being investigated (i.e., community versus species.)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Rowan ◽  
Margaret Kalacska

Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) is a critical component of aquatic ecosystems. It is however understudied and rapidly changing due to global climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Remote sensing can provide the efficient, accurate and large-scale monitoring needed to ensure proper SAV management. Our objective is to introduce remote sensing to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology. Applying remote sensing to the underwater environment is more complex in comparison to terrestrial studies due to the water column. A wide range of sensors and platforms from remotely operated vehicles to satellites are available for use in the underwater environment, a sample of which being presented herein. The utility of any sensor/platform combination varies depending on the aquatic conditions being observed. An overview of the required corrections, processing, and analysis methods for passive optical imagery is presented and discussed. Previous applications of remote sensing to identify and detecting SAV are briefly presented and notable results and lessons are discussed.


Author(s):  
Silvia Huber ◽  
Lars B. Hansen ◽  
Lisbeth T. Nielsen ◽  
Mikkel L. Rasmussen ◽  
Jonas Sølvsteen ◽  
...  

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 3232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Liu ◽  
Qirui Ren ◽  
Jiahui Geng ◽  
Meng Ding ◽  
Jiangyun Li

Efficient and accurate semantic segmentation is the key technique for automatic remote sensing image analysis. While there have been many segmentation methods based on traditional hand-craft feature extractors, it is still challenging to process high-resolution and large-scale remote sensing images. In this work, a novel patch-wise semantic segmentation method with a new training strategy based on fully convolutional networks is presented to segment common land resources. First, to handle the high-resolution image, the images are split as local patches and then a patch-wise network is built. Second, training data is preprocessed in several ways to meet the specific characteristics of remote sensing images, i.e., color imbalance, object rotation variations and lens distortion. Third, a multi-scale training strategy is developed to solve the severe scale variation problem. In addition, the impact of conditional random field (CRF) is studied to improve the precision. The proposed method was evaluated on a dataset collected from a capital city in West China with the Gaofen-2 satellite. The dataset contains ten common land resources (Grassland, Road, etc.). The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves 54.96% in terms of mean intersection over union (MIoU) and outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in remote sensing image segmentation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarandeep S. Kalra ◽  
Neil K. Ganju ◽  
Jeremy M. Testa

Abstract. The coupled biophysical interactions between submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), hydrodynamics (currents and waves), sediment dynamics, and nutrient cycling have long been of interest in estuarine environments. Recent observational studies have addressed feedbacks between SAV meadows, current velocity, sedimentation, and nutrient cycling and suggest SAV are ecosystem engineers whose growth can be self-reinforcing. To represent these dynamic processes in a numerical model, the presence of SAV and its effect on hydrodynamics (currents and waves) and sediment dynamics was incorporated into the open source model COAWST. In this study, we extend the COAWST modelling framework to account for dynamic changes of SAV and associated epiphyte biomass. Modelled SAV biomass is represented as a function of temperature, light, and nutrient availability and exchanges nutrients, detritus, dissolved inorganic carbon, and dissolved oxygen with the water-column biogeochemistry model. The dynamic simulation of SAV biomass allows the plants to both respond to and cause changes in water column and sediment bed properties, hydrodynamics, and sediment transport (i.e., a two-way feedback). We demonstrate the behavior of these modelled processes through application to an idealized domain, then apply the model to a eutrophic harbour where SAV dieback is a result of anthropogenic nitrate loading and eutrophication. These cases demonstrate an advance in the deterministic modelling of coupled bio-physical processes and will further our understanding of future ecosystem change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milad Niroumand-Jadidi ◽  
Nima Pahlevan ◽  
Alfonso Vitti

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.


Author(s):  
F. Dadras Javan ◽  
F. Samadzadegan ◽  
S. Mehravar ◽  
A. Toosi

Abstract. Nowadays, high-resolution fused satellite imagery is widely used in multiple remote sensing applications. Although the spectral quality of pan-sharpened images plays an important role in many applications, spatial quality becomes more important in numerous cases. The high spatial quality of the fused image is essential for extraction, identification and reconstruction of significant image objects, and will result in producing high-quality large scale maps especially in the urban areas. This paper introduces the most sensitive and effective methods in detecting the spatial distortion of fused images by implementing a number of spatial quality assessment indices that are utilized in the field of remote sensing and image processing. In this regard, in order to recognize the ability of quality assessment indices for detecting the spatial distortion quantity of fused images, input images of the fusion process are affected by some intentional spatial distortions based on non-registration error. The capabilities of the investigated metrics are evaluated on four different fused images derived from Ikonos and WorldView-2 initial images. Achieved results obviously explicate that two methods namely Edge Variance Distortion and the spatial component of QNR metric called Ds are more sensitive and responsive to the imported errors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5211-5228
Author(s):  
Tarandeep S. Kalra ◽  
Neil K. Ganju ◽  
Jeremy M. Testa

Abstract. The coupled biophysical interactions between submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), hydrodynamics (currents and waves), sediment dynamics, and nutrient cycling have long been of interest in estuarine environments. Recent observational studies have addressed feedbacks between SAV meadows and their role in modifying current velocity, sedimentation, and nutrient cycling. To represent these dynamic processes in a numerical model, the presence of SAV and its effect on hydrodynamics (currents and waves) and sediment dynamics was incorporated into the open-source Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment Transport (COAWST) model. In this study, we extend the COAWST modeling framework to account for dynamic changes of SAV and associated epiphyte biomass. Modeled SAV biomass is represented as a function of temperature, light, and nutrient availability. The modeled SAV community exchanges nutrients, detritus, dissolved inorganic carbon, and dissolved oxygen with the water-column biogeochemistry model. The dynamic simulation of SAV biomass allows the plants to both respond to and cause changes in the water column and sediment bed properties, hydrodynamics, and sediment transport (i.e., a two-way feedback). We demonstrate the behavior of these modeled processes through application to an idealized domain and then apply the model to a eutrophic harbor where SAV dieback is a result of anthropogenic nitrate loading and eutrophication. These cases demonstrate an advance in the deterministic modeling of coupled biophysical processes and will further our understanding of future ecosystem change.


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