scholarly journals Landsat and Sentinel-2 Based Burned Area Mapping Tools in Google Earth Engine

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 816
Author(s):  
Ekhi Roteta ◽  
Aitor Bastarrika ◽  
Magí Franquesa ◽  
Emilio Chuvieco

Four burned area tools were implemented in Google Earth Engine (GEE), to obtain regular processes related to burned area (BA) mapping, using medium spatial resolution sensors (Landsat and Sentinel-2). The four tools are (i) the BA Cartography tool for supervised burned area over the user-selected extent and period, (ii) two tools implementing a BA stratified random sampling to select the scenes and dates for validation, and (iii) the BA Reference Perimeter tool to obtain highly accurate BA maps that focus on validating coarser BA products. Burned Area Mapping Tools (BAMTs) go beyond the previously implemented Burned Area Mapping Software (BAMS) because of GEE parallel processing capabilities and preloaded geospatial datasets. BAMT also allows temporal image composites to be exploited in order to obtain BA maps over a larger extent and longer temporal periods. The tools consist of four scripts executable from the GEE Code Editor. The tools’ performance was discussed in two case studies: in the 2019/2020 fire season in Southeast Australia, where the BA cartography detected more than 50,000 km2, using Landsat data with commission and omission errors below 12% when compared to Sentinel-2 imagery; and in the 2018 summer wildfires in Canada, where it was found that around 16,000 km2 had burned.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tengfei Long ◽  
Zhaoming Zhang ◽  
Guojin He ◽  
Weili Jiao ◽  
Chao Tang ◽  
...  

Heretofore, global Burned Area (BA) products have only been available at coarse spatial resolution, since most of the current global BA products are produced with the help of active fire detection or dense time-series change analysis, which requires very high temporal resolution. In this study, however, we focus on an automated global burned area mapping approach based on Landsat images. By utilizing the huge catalog of satellite imagery, as well as the high-performance computing capacity of Google Earth Engine, we propose an automated pipeline for generating 30-m resolution global-scale annual burned area maps from time-series of Landsat images, and a novel 30-m resolution Global annual Burned Area Map of 2015 (GABAM 2015) was released. All the available Landsat-8 images during 2014–2015 and various spectral indices were utilized to calculate the burned probability of each pixel using random decision forests, which were globally trained with stratified (considering both fire frequency and type of land cover) samples, and a seed-growing approach was conducted to shape the final burned areas after several carefully-designed logical filters (NDVI filter, Normalized Burned Ratio (NBR) filter, and temporal filter). GABAM 2015 consists of spatial extent of fires that occurred during 2015 and not of fires that occurred in previous years. Cross-comparison with the recent Fire_cci Version 5.0 BA product found a similar spatial distribution and a strong correlation ( R 2 = 0.74) between the burned areas from the two products, although differences were found in specific land cover categories (particularly in agriculture land). Preliminary global validation showed the commission and omission errors of GABAM 2015 to be 13.17% and 30.13%, respectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 3294
Author(s):  
Leonel Enrique Sánchez ◽  
Joselisa Maria Chaves ◽  
Washington J.S. Franca Rocha ◽  
Jocimara S. B. Lobão ◽  
Plínio Martins Falcão

As dunas correspondem a processos de sedimentação eólica, que podem estar tanto nas áreas costeiras marinhas, como no interior do continente com algumas diferenças na modelagem. No Sul do deserto do Atacama, no Norte do Chile, há um conjunto de seis campos de dunas intermontanhas chamadas Mar de Dunas do Atacama, as quais têm tipologias complexas de dunas do deserto, que podem ser ativas, semiativas ou estabilizadas. O seu monitoramento é conveniente para conhecer detalhes sobre a possível invasão de areias das dunas ao sul do rio Copiapó. Dessa forma, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo avaliar os métodos de classificação supervisionada Random Forest, CART e SmileCART através de duas metodologias de amostragens, aleatória e estratificada, numa imagem Landsat 5 na plataforma em nuvem Google Earth Engine, a fim de verificar qual método oferece o melhor resultado para o mapeamento do Mar de Dunas do Atacama. Para conseguir este objetivo, foram criados polígonos de classes para a realização da amostragem aleatória estratificada e chave de interpretação para amostragem aleatória simples. O processo de avaliação da acurácia foi feito através de imagem Sentinel 2 com a aplicação dos índices de Simultaneidade Geográfica, Erros de Comissão e Omissão, e Exatidão Global. Observou-se como resultados para os algoritmos testados, que os três algoritmos foram eficientes para o mapeamento das Dunas do Atacama, entretanto, a técnica de classificação supervisionada por CART, com a metodologia da amostragem aleatória simples, representou o melhor desempenho.      Identification of the Atacama Dunes (Northern Chile) from the evaluation of three algorithms on Google Earth EngineA B S T R A C TThe dunes correspond to wind sedimentation processes, which can be found both in marine coastal areas and in the interior of the continent with some differences in modeling. In the south of the Atacama desert, in northern Chile, there are a set of six inter-mountain dune fields called Mar de Dunas do Atacama, which have complex types of desert dunes, which can be active, semi-active or stabilized. Its monitoring is convenient to know details about the possible invasion of sand from the dunes south of the Copiapó River. Thus, this research aims to evaluate the supervised classification methods Random Forest, CART and SmileCART through two sampling methodologies, random and stratified, in a Landsat 5 image on the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, in order to verify which method offers the best result for mapping the Atacama Dunes Sea. In order to achieve this objective, class polygons were created to perform stratified random sampling and the interpretation key for simple random sampling. The accuracy assessment process was performed using a Sentinel 2 image with the application of the Geographic Simultaneity indices and the Commission and Omission Errors. It was observed as results for the tested algorithms, that the three algorithms were efficient for mapping the Atacama Dunes, however, the CART supervised classification technique, with the simple random sampling methodology, represents the best performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Seyd Teymoor Seydi ◽  
Mehdi Akhoondzadeh ◽  
Meisam Amani ◽  
Sahel Mahdavi

Wildfires are major natural disasters negatively affecting human safety, natural ecosystems, and wildlife. Timely and accurate estimation of wildfire burn areas is particularly important for post-fire management and decision making. In this regard, Remote Sensing (RS) images are great resources due to their wide coverage, high spatial and temporal resolution, and low cost. In this study, Australian areas affected by wildfire were estimated using Sentinel-2 imagery and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform. To this end, a framework based on change analysis was implemented in two main phases: (1) producing the binary map of burned areas (i.e., burned vs. unburned); (2) estimating burned areas of different Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) types. The first phase was implemented in five main steps: (i) preprocessing, (ii) spectral and spatial feature extraction for pre-fire and post-fire analyses; (iii) prediction of burned areas based on a change detection by differencing the pre-fire and post-fire datasets; (iv) feature selection; and (v) binary mapping of burned areas based on the selected features by the classifiers. The second phase was defining the types of LULC classes over the burned areas using the global MODIS land cover product (MCD12Q1). Based on the test datasets, the proposed framework showed high potential in detecting burned areas with an overall accuracy (OA) and kappa coefficient (KC) of 91.02% and 0.82, respectively. It was also observed that the greatest burned area among different LULC classes was related to evergreen needle leaf forests with burning rate of over 25 (%). Finally, the results of this study were in good agreement with the Landsat burned products.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Subhajit Bandopadhyay ◽  
Dany A. Cotrina Sánchez

An unprecedented number of wildfire events during 2019 throughout the Brazilian Amazon caught global attention, due to their massive extent and the associated loss in the Amazonian forest—an ecosystem on which the whole world depends. Such devastating wildfires in the Amazon has strongly hampered the global carbon cycle and significantly reduced forest productivity. In this study, we have quantified such loss of forest productivity in terms of gross primary productivity (GPP), applying a comparative approach using Google Earth Engine. A total of 12 wildfire spots have been identified based on the fire’s extension over the Brazilian Amazon, and we quantified the loss in productivity between 2018 and 2019. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) GPP and MODIS burned area satellite imageries, with a revisit time of 8 days and 30 days, respectively, have been used for this study. We have observed that compared to 2018, the number of wildfire events increased during 2019. But such wildfire events did not hamper the natural annual trend of GPP of the Amazonian ecosystem. However, a significant drop in forest productivity in terms of GPP has been observed. Among all 11 observational sites were recorded with GPP loss, ranging from −18.88 gC m−2 yr−1 to −120.11 gC m−2 yr−1, except site number 3. Such drastic loss in GPP indicates that during 2019 fire events, all of these sites acted as carbon sources rather than carbon sink sites, which may hamper the global carbon cycle and terrestrial CO2 fluxes. Therefore, it is assumed that these findings will also fit for the other Amazonian wildfire sites, as well as for the tropical forest ecosystem as a whole. We hope this study will provide a significant contribution to global carbon cycle research, terrestrial ecosystem studies, sustainable forest management, and climate change in contemporary environmental sciences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 4258
Author(s):  
Jordan R. Cissell ◽  
Steven W. J. Canty ◽  
Michael K. Steinberg ◽  
Loraé T. Simpson

In this paper, we present the highest-resolution-available (10 m) national map of the mangrove ecosystems of Belize. These important ecosystems are increasingly threatened by human activities and climate change, support both marine and terrestrial biodiversity, and provide critical ecosystem services to coastal communities in Belize and throughout the Mesoamerican Reef ecoregion. Previous national- and international-level inventories document Belizean mangrove forests at spatial resolutions of 30 m or coarser, but many mangrove patches and loss events may be too small to be accurately mapped at these resolutions. Our 10 m map addresses this need for a finer-scale national mangrove inventory. We mapped mangrove ecosystems in Belize as of 2020 by performing a random forest classification of Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument imagery in Google Earth Engine. We mapped a total mangrove area of 578.54 km2 in 2020, with 372.04 km2 located on the mainland and 206.50 km2 distributed throughout the country’s islands and cayes. Our findings are substantially different from previous, coarser-resolution national mangrove inventories of Belize, which emphasizes the importance of high-resolution mapping efforts for ongoing conservation efforts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 777
Author(s):  
Andi Tenri Waru ◽  
Athar Abdurrahman Bayanuddin ◽  
Ferman Setia Nugroho ◽  
Nita Rukminasari

Pulau Tanakeke merupakan salah satu pulau dengan hutan mangrove yang luas di pesisir Sulawesi Selatan. Hutan mangrove ini menjadi ekosistem penting bagi masyarakat sekitar karena nilai ekologi maupun ekonominya. Namun, dalam kurun waktu sekitar tahun 1980-2000, keberadaan mangrove tersebut terancam oleh perubahan penggunaan lahan dan juga pemanfaatan yang berlebihan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis perubahan temporal luas dan tingkat kerapatan hutan mangrove di Pulau Tanakeke antara tahun 2016 dan 2019. Metode analisis perubahan luasan hutan mangrove menggunakan data citra satelit Sentinel-2 multi temporal berdasarkan hasil klasifikasi hutan mangrove dengan menggunakan random forest pada platform Google Earth Engine. Akurasi keseluruhan hasil klasifikasi hutan mangrove tahun 2016 dan 2019 sebesar 91% dan 98%. Berdasarkan hasil analisis spasial diperoleh perubahan penurunan luasan mangrove yang signifikan dari 800,21 ha menjadi 640,15 ha. Kerapatan mangrove di Pulau Tanakeke sebagian besar tergolong kategori dalam kerapatan tinggi.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali Hemati ◽  
Mahdi Hasanlau ◽  
Masaud Mahdianpari ◽  
Fariba Mohammadimanesh

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