Experiment for mapping land cover and it’s change in southeastern Sri Lanka utilizing 250 m resolution MODIS imageries

Utilizing freely available MODIS NDVI and Natural color imageries of 250 m spatial resolution produced by NASA, an experiment was made to map land-cover and its change with an emphasis on vegetation cover in southeastern Sri Lanka, which plays a vital role for control of green house gas. For the change detection purpose, 1987 land cover map made by present authors from Landsat MSS image and extensive ground truth survey data was used as the base map. The result of the experiment shows that MODIS data are useful to make a land cover map of 250 m spatial resolution for tropical areas with high cloud coverage like Sri Lanka. It was found that the forest cover decrease amounted as large as 21% in 19 years time span in southeastern Sri Lanka, the prominent forest region of the country. On the other hand homestead/vegetation and mixed vegetation/scrub dominant categories increased by 13.7% and 7.1%, respectively. These changes are considered due to a large clearance of forest areas for agriculture and building houses to accommodate increasing inhabitants.     

Some aspects of land transformation in the western mediterranean desert of egypt

The western Mediterranean desert of Egypt has a long history of land-use. With recent development activities, land transformation is progressing at a high rate. Monitoring of changes to allow for predictions of long-term effects of these activities is viewed at three levels: (a) quantities of ecosystem components; (b) detailed distribution of patterns of land-use, vegetation and physiography; and (c) general distribution of the salient features of land. This study provides estimates at the first (a) and second (b) levels of changes in this region due to the main land-use types: grazing rain-fed farming, and irrigated farming.Grazing had little effects on soil characters, but it resulted in lower soil stability and abundance of plants and above-soil invertebrates. Irrigation resulted in water-logging and salinization, formation of calcic horizons, decrease in soil organic matter and soluble nitrogen, and in increase of above-and below-soil biota.A comparison of the distribution of vegetation and land-use in one of the sectors in 1964 and 1981, using maps based on aerial photographs and ground-truth data, indicated remarkable changes in areas of rain-fed farming, and in vegetation composition due to over-grazing.     

Satellite data as a basis for planning studies of infrastructure and related rural development in Atacora Province,Benin, West Africa

Landsat satellite data has been used to provide information for integrated land resources, agriculture and rural access road planning in Atacora Province, Benin, to ensure that correct decisions are made on the location of feeder roads and best use is made of the terrain. A significant aspect of the interpretation programme involved using a method of terrain evaluation and land classification to provide a framework for planning and assessing all subsequent development projects and highway engineering activities within the Province. Use of this terrain classification, in conjunction with further sequential satellite coverage, is considered as a basis for monitoring and subsequently analysing the rleationship between feeder road construction and induced benefits within the rural agricultural development sector, and for the establishment of a system of data storage. The value of a data storage system is evaluated as a means of preventing wasteful repetition of survey effort and facilitating the transfer of relevant data on rural development to similar areas within Benin and throughout West Africa.     

Exploration of groundwater potential zones mapping for hard rock region in the Jakham river basin using geospatial techniques and aquifer parameters

Geospatial techniques are useful to understand the groundwater resources assessment, development, and management. Groundwater mapping is essential to counter the excessive withdrawal of groundwater and fulfil the need of drinking, irrigation water in hard rock areas. Currently, the main problem is facing the groundwater level is decreasing due to less rainfall, climate changes and increasing demand, which is under in the hot zones. This results can be more useful for future challenges, sustainable development and demand to Jakham river basin. The main objective of this paper to demarcated the groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) using geospatial techniques for the hard rock region with the reference of aquifer parameters. In this paper, we have used to total eight thematic layers such as geomorphology, land use, soil, topographic elevation, slope, post-monsoon groundwater level (GWL), net recharge, and transmissivity, which are prepared from satellite data and field verification. All thematic layers were integrated for assigning the weights to demarcation of the groundwater potential zones in the RS and GIS environment. The selected thematic layers and features were assigned weightage and normalized by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique. Finally, the thematic layers were systematically integrated using weighted overlay analysis within a GIS environment. We have classified into five GWPZ classes i.e. very high, high, moderate, low, and very low for basin area using GIS, and AHP methods. The study area result indicated that high and moderate zone, which is confined in the central part of the basin, covers 2.43 % and 43.88 % area, respectively. The low (49.21 %) and very low (4.25%) GW potential zone is under the confined aquifer in the high slope and rock outcrops formations near the basin boundary. The final GWPZ map was validated with groundwater level fluctuation data, which illustrates the accuracy of the adopted approach. This unique approach and conclusions of this work may also help to develop the framework and policies for swiftly analyzing groundwater recharge planning, development and locating the artificial recharge structures in the other semi-arid, arid and hard rock regions.     

Sea level trend over Malaysian seas from multi-mission satellite altimetry and vertical land motion corrected tidal data

Rise in sea levels is one of the disastrous effects of climate change. A relatively small increase in sea level could affect natural coastal systems. In a study of long-term changes in sea level and measurements of postglacial rebound, monitoring vertical land motion (VLM) is of crucial interest. This study presents an approach to estimate precise sea level trends based on a combination of multi-sensor techniques in the Malaysian region over 19?years. In this study, satellite altimeters (SALT) were used to derive absolute sea levels (ASLs). Tide gauge (TG) stations along the coast of Malaysia were utilised to derive the rate of relative sea levels using sea level changes and VLMs. To obtain ASL at TGs, VLM at these stations were computed using Global Positioning System (GPS), Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PS InSAR), and SALT minus TG. The computed VLMs mostly show similarities in signs rather than magnitude. The findings from the multi-sensor techniques showed that regional sea level trends ranged from 2.65?±?0.86?mm/yr to 6.03?±?0.79?mm/yr for chosen sub-areas, with an overall mean of 4.47?±?0.71?mm/yr and overall subsidence. This information is expected to be valuable for a wide variety of climatic applications and for studying environmental issues related to flooding and global warming in Malaysia.     

Canadian Landsat studies for monitoring resource development: A summary

This report summarizes a major paper reviewing Canadian work using Landsat imagery for monitoring the environmental effects of the development of both renewable and non-renewable resources. Landsat has definite advantages for studying resources. In particular, the data are able to show changes in surface cover indicating in many cases development or the exploitation of resources. Monitoring of areas and rates of change over time is possible. Outlined in the paper are examples related to three aspects of resource development. First is the use of Landsat for updating topographic maps for areas where recent developments have taken place. The second aspect is forestry, and examples related to the detection and measurement of clear cuts and recording of areas affected by spruce budworm are reported. Finally, studies of landscape changes produced by mining activities are presented.     

Land use/land cover classification using time series Landsat 8 images in a heavily urbanized area

It is of great significance to timely, accurately, and effectively monitor land use/cover in city regions for the reasonable development and utilization of urban land resources. The remotely sensed dynamic monitoring of Land use/land cover (LULC) in rapidly developing city regions has increasingly depended on remote-sensing data at high temporal and spatial resolutions. However, due to the influence of revisiting periods and weather, it is difficult to acquire enough time-series images with high quality at both high temporal and spatial resolution from the same sensor. In this paper we used the temporal-spatial fusion model ESTARFM (Enhanced Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model) to blend Landsat8 and MODIS data and obtain time-series Landsat8 images. Then, land cover information is extracted using an object-based classification method. In this study, the proposed method is validated by a case study of the Changsha City. The results show that the overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient were 94.38% and 0.88, respectively, and the user/producer accuracies of vegetation types were all over 85%. Our approach provides an accurate and efficient technical method for the effective extraction of land use/cover information in the highly heterogeneous regions.     

A point-wise least squares spectral analysis (LSSA) of the Caspian Sea level fluctuations,using TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 observations

The Caspian Sea has displayed considerable fluctuations in its water level during the past century. Knowledge of such fluctuation is vital for understanding the local hydrological cycles, climate of the region, and construction activities within the sea and along its shorelines. This study established a point-wise satellite altimetry approach to monitor the fluctuations of the Caspian Sea using a complete dataset of TOPEX/Poseidon for the period 1993 to the middle of 2002, and its follow-on Jason-1 for the period 2002 to August 2009. Therefore, 280 virtual time-series were constructed to monitor the fluctuations. The least squares spectral analysis (LSSA) method is, then employed to find the most significant frequencies of the time-series, while the statistical method of principle component analysis (PCA) is applied to extract the dominant variability of level variations. The study also used the observations of TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 over the Volga River along with 5 years of Volga’s water discharge to study its influence on the Caspian Sea level changes. The LSSA results indicate that the lunar semidiurnal (M2) and the Sun semidiurnal (S2) frequencies are the main tidal frequencies of the Caspian Sea with the mean amplitude of 4.2 and 2.8 cm, respectively. A statistically significant long-term frequency (12.5-years period) is also found from altimetry and tide gauge observations. A phase lag, related to the inter-annual frequencies of the Volga River was detected from the point-wise time-series showing level propagation from the northwest to the southeast of the sea. The cross-correlation between the power spectrum of Volga and that of the northern-most, middle, and southern-most points within the Caspian Sea were respectively 0.63, 0.51 and 0.4 of zero-lag correlation, corroborating the influence of the Volga River. The result of PCA also shows that different parts of the Caspian Sea exhibit different amplitudes of level variations, indicating that the point-wise approach, when employing all available satellite measurements could be a suitable method for a preliminary monitoring of this inland water resource as it gives accurate local fluctuations.     

Monitoring coastal sea level using reflected GNSS signals

A continuous monitoring of coastal sea level changes is important for human society since it is predicted that up to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas will be directly affected by flooding from sea level rise by the end of the 21st century. The traditional way to observe sea level is using tide gauges that give measurements relative to the Earth’s crust. However, in order to improve the understanding of the sea level change processes it is necessary to separate the measurements into land surface height changes and sea surface height changes. These measurements should then be relative to a global reference frame. This can be done with satellite techniques, and thus a GNSS-based tide gauge is proposed. The GNSS-based tide gauge makes use of both GNSS signals that are directly received and GNSS signals that are reflected from the sea surface. An experimental installation at the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) shows that the reflected GNSS signals have only about 3 dB less signal-to-noise-ratio than the directly received GNSS signals. Furthermore, a comparison of local sea level observations from the GNSS-based tide gauge with two stilling well gauges, located approximately 18 and 33 km away from OSO, gives a pairwise root-mean-square agreement on the order of 4 cm. This indicates that the GNSS-based tide gauge gives valuable results for sea level monitoring.     

Degradation monitoring in Silvo-pastoral systems: A case study of the Mediterranean region of Turkey

To identify policies that will promote positive effects and mitigate negative ones of grazing is a major challenge in the Silvo-pastoral system. This paper presents the role of examining land-cover change trajectories by remote sensing imagery in grazing policy monitoring. The study was conducted for Duzlercami forest ecosystem located in the Mediterranean geographical region of Turkey and administrated by the General Directorate of Forestry (GDF) of the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs. Time series land-cover datasets from Landsat images between 1988 and 2016 were collected and classified. To link the conversions among trajectories and grazing policy, class level landscape metrics derived from the classified images were used. To validate the approach, yearly grazing-plans managed by GDF and populations of livestock were used. Results of this research have indicated that even though there is a yearly grazing plan, overgrazing can happen on the pilot site, and it can be easily identified by the destruction of woody vegetation. The notable correlation (r²?=?0.89) between degraded woody vegetation and cattle population has occurred in the last 30?years in the landscape, and Landsat imagery can effectively support the grazing policy mapping and monitoring.     

Biological monitoring of radiation exposure.

Complementary to physical dosimetry, biological dosimetry systems have been developed and applied which weight the different components of environmental radiation according to their biological efficacy. They generally give a record of the accumulated exposure of individuals with high sensitivity and specificity for the toxic agent under consideration. Basically three different types of biological detecting/ monitoring systems are available: (i) intrinsic biological dosimeters that record the individual radiation exposure (humans, plants, animals) in measurable units. For monitoring ionizing radiation exposure, in situ biomarkers for genetic (e.g. chromosomal aberrations in human lymphocytes, germ line minisatellite mutation rates) or metabolic changes in serum, plasma and blood (e.g. serum lipids, lipoproteins, lipid peroxides, melatonin, antibody titer) have been used. (ii) Extrinsic biological dosimeters/indicators that record the accumulated dose in biological model systems. Their application includes long-term monitoring of changes in environmental UV radiation and its biological implications as well as dosimetry of personal UV exposure. (iii) Biological detectors/biosensors for genotoxic substances and agents such as bacterial assays (e.g. Ames test, SOS-type test) that are highly sensitive to genotoxins with high specificity. They may be applicable for different aspects in environmental monitoring including the International Space Station.     

基于保障活动流程的装备群保障规模预测模型

为解决研制阶段装备群保障规模预测的问题,建立了基于保障活动流程的装备群保障规模预测模型.模型从装备群的使用任务入手,以研制阶段保障性分析和保障系统建模数据为输入,通过分析资源在保障活动中被占用或被消耗的定量关系,从占用型资源和消耗型资源两方面分别提供了由功能分析框图中各层保障活动的流程汇总保障活动资源需求的方法,对保障资源数量进行计算,进而依据这些资源的重量与体积参数预测装备群的保障规模.给出了某型机群保障规模预测的算例,验证了模型的合理性与工程适用性,能够为研制阶段装备保障的改进、系统部署性分析提供理论指导与技术支持.      

Canadian Landsat studies for monitoring agricultural intensification and urbanization: A summary

This report summarizes a major paper reviewing the progression of work using Landsat for land use and agricultural monitoring in Canada since 1973. From the launch of Landsat to the present, the focus has moved from using simple visual techniques for interpretation of photographic products to the use of conceptually simple methods which now employ the power of special-purpose image analysis hardware and the standard geometrically corrected products available in Canada. Outlined in the major paper are studies on urban growth, large area land use mapping, crop studies (related to both crop area estimates and erosion potential), assessment of changes in vegetation vigour and clearing of land in areas which were devoted to both dry land farming and forestry. This report emphasizes developments in land use studies.     

Application of China–Brazil Earth resources satellite in China

The launch and successful operation of Chinese–Brazil Earth resources satellite (CBERS-1) in China has accelerated the application of space technology in China. These applications include agriculture, forestry, water conservation, land resources, city planning, environment protection and natural hazards monitoring and so on. The result of these applications provides a scientific basis for government decision making and has created great economic and social benefits in Chinese national economy construction. In this paper we present examples and provide auxiliary documentation of additional applications of the data from Earth resource monitoring.     

Earth Observation Technologies for Sustainable Development

The multi-platform, multi-band and multi-mode Earth Observation (EO) system has been established in China in recent years. The advanced technologies are playing more and more important role for sustainable development in whole country. This paper introduces the results and achievements of EO monitoring for agriculture, EO surveying for land resources, EO monitoring for ecological environment, EO support for national surveying and national e-government, natural disaster monitoring and emergency response. It points out that the EO technologies could contribute more to the country, including in the field of global change in the coming decade.      

Remote sensing using GNSS signals: Current status and future directions

The refracted, reflected and scattered signals of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been successfully used to remotely sense the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. It has demonstrated its potential to sense the atmosphere and ionosphere, ocean, land surfaces (including soil moisture) and the cryosphere. These new measurements, although in need of refinement and further validation in many cases, can be used to complement existing techniques and sensors, e.g., radiosonde, ionosonde, radar altimetry and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). This paper presents the current status and new developments of remote sensing using GNSS signals as well as its future directions and applications. Some notable emerging applications include monitoring sea ice, dangerous sea states, ocean eddy and storm surges. With the further improvement of the next generation multi-frequency GNSS systems and receivers and new space-based instruments utilizing GNSS reflections and refractions, new scientific applications of GNSS are expected in various environment remote sensing fields in the near future.     

Influence of land surface parameters on the spatio-seasonal land surface temperature regime in rural West Bengal,India

The magnitude and causes of changes in the land surface temperature of rural areas have not been extensively studied. The thermal band of Landsat imagery is taken to extract winter, summer, and monsoon season land surface temperature (LST) and relate it to surface parameters over a 30-year period. From the extracted parameters constructed a prospective surface temperature (PST) model using Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines. The Chandrabhaga river basin in West Bengal of the lateritic Rarh Tract at the Chota Nagpur Plateau fringe was chosen as the study area because it is far from urban influences, to avoid the well-known heat island effect. Over the study period, summer and winter average LST increased linearly by 0.085?°C/y and 0.016?°C/y respectively. These results were validated with air temperature (RMSE?=?x and y, respectively). Over time more of the area is in the higher temperature zones, e.g., in April 2011, 4% area exceeded >32°, whereas in 2015 this proportion reached 52%. PST models of all the seasons were moderate to highly correlate (0.57–0.87) with actual LST, showing the value of this model. It also revealed the relative importance of the regional factors. Based on this information factor management is a scientific step to restrict or minimize the temperature rise effect.     

Mission simulation as an approach to develop requirements for automation in Advanced Life Support Systems.

This paper examines mission simulation as an approach to develop requirements for automation and robotics for Advanced Life Support Systems (ALSS). The focus is on requirements and applications for command and control, control and monitoring, situation assessment and response, diagnosis and recovery, adaptive planning and scheduling, and other automation applications in addition to mechanized equipment and robotics applications to reduce the excessive human labor requirements to operate and maintain an ALSS. Based on principles of systems engineering, an approach is proposed to assess requirements for automation and robotics using mission simulation tools. First, the story of a simulated mission is defined in terms of processes with attendant types of resources needed, including options for use of automation and robotic systems. Next, systems dynamics models are used in simulation to reveal the implications for selected resource allocation schemes in terms of resources required to complete operational tasks. The simulations not only help establish ALSS design criteria, but also may offer guidance to ALSS research efforts by identifying gaps in knowledge about procedures and/or biophysical processes. Simulations of a planned one-year mission with 4 crewmembers in a Human Rated Test Facility are presented as an approach to evaluation of mission feasibility and definition of automation and robotics requirements.     

Physical assessment of coastal vulnerability under enhanced land subsidence in Semarang,Indonesia, using multi-sensor satellite data

Research has been conducted in Semarang, Indonesia, to assess coastal vulnerability under enhanced land subsidence using multi-sensor satellite data, including the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array type L-band SAR (PALSAR), Landsat TM, IKONOS, and TOPEX/Poseidon. A coastal vulnerability index (CVI) was constructed to estimate the level of vulnerability of a coastline approximately 48.68?km in length using seven physical variables, namely, land subsidence, relative sea level change, coastal geomorphology, coastal slope, shoreline change, mean tidal range, and significant wave height. A comparison was also performed between a CVI calculated using seven parameters and a CVI using six parameters, the latter of which excludes the land subsidence parameter, to determine the effects of land subsidence during the coastal vulnerability assessment. This study showed that the accuracy of coastal vulnerability was increased 40% by adding the land subsidence factor (i.e., CVI 6 parameters?=?53%, CVI 7 parameters?=?93%). Moreover, Kappa coefficient indicated very good agreement (0.90) for CVI 7 parameters and fair agreement (0.3) for CVI 6 parameters. The results indicate that the area of very high vulnerability increased by 7% when land subsidence was added. Hence, using the CVI calculation including land subsidence parameters, the very high vulnerability area is determined to be 20% of the total coastline or 9.7?km of the total 48.7?km of coastline. This study proved that land subsidence has significant influence on coastal vulnerability in Semarang.     

Deformation monitoring using GNSS-R technology

GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) has been widely studied in recent years for various applications, such as soil moisture monitoring, biomass analysis, and sea state monitoring. This paper presents the concept of a novel application of using GNSS-R technology for deformation monitoring. Instead of installing GNSS on the deformation body to sense the movement, GNSS-R deformation monitoring system estimates the deformation from receiving GNSS signal reflected by the deformation body remotely. A prototype of GNSS-R deformation monitoring system has been developed based on GNSS software receiver technology. A 3D geometrical model of GNSS signal reflection has been used to reveal the relationship between the change of carrier phase difference and deformation. After compensating the propagation path delay changes caused by satellite movement, the changes in the remaining carrier phase difference are linked to the deformation. Field tests have been carried using the GNSS-R system developed and the results show sub-centimeter level deformation can be observed with the new technology. Unlike other GNSS deformation monitoring methods, GNSS-R receivers are not installed on the slope which makes this new technology more attractive.