Sentinel-1 InSAR coherence for land cover mapping: a comparison of multiple feature-based classifiers

This article investigates and demonstrates the suitability of the Sentinel-1 interferometric coherence for land cover and vegetation mapping. In addition, this study analyzes the performance of this feature along with polarization and intensity products according to different classification strategies and algorithms. Seven different classification workflows were evaluated, covering pixel- and object-based analyses, unsupervised and supervised classification, different machine-learning classifiers, and the various effects of distinct input features in the SAR domain—interferometric coherence, backscattered intensities, and polarization. All classifications followed the Corine land cover nomenclature. Three different study areas in Europe were selected during 2015 and 2016 campaigns to maximize diversity of land cover. Overall accuracies (OA), ranging from 70% to 90%, were achieved depending on the study area and methodology, considering between 9 and 15 classes. The best results were achieved in the rather flat area of Doñana wetlands National Park in Spain (OA 90%), but even the challenging alpine terrain around the city of Merano in northern Italy (OA 77%) obtained promising results. The overall potential of Sentinel-1 interferometric coherence for land cover mapping was evaluated as very good. In all cases, coherence-based results provided higher accuracies than intensity-based strategies, considering 12 days of temporal sampling of the Sentinel-1 A stack. Both coherence and intensity prove to be complementary observables, increasing the overall accuracies in a combined strategy. The accuracy is expected to increase when Sentinel-1 A/B stacks, i.e., six-day sampling, are considered.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Temporal Characteristics of Boreal Forest Radar Measurements

Radar observations of forests are sensitive to seasonal changes, meteorological variables and variations in soil and tree water content. These phenomena cause temporal variations in radar measurements, limiting the accuracy of tree height and biomass estimates using radar data. The temporal characteristics of radar measurements of forests, especially boreal forests, are not well understood. To fill this knowledge gap, a tower-based radar experiment was established for studying temporal variations in radar measurements of a boreal forest site in southern Sweden. The work in this thesis involves the design and implementation of the experiment and the analysis of data acquired. The instrument allowed radar signatures from the forest to be monitored over timescales ranging from less than a second to years. A purpose-built, 50 m high tower was equipped with 30 antennas for tomographic imaging at microwave frequencies of P-band (420-450 MHz), L-band (1240-1375 MHz) and C-band (5250-5570 MHz) for multiple polarisation combinations. Parallel measurements using a 20-port vector network analyser resulted in significantly shorter measurement times and better tomographic image quality than previous tower-based radars. A new method was developed for suppressing mutual antenna coupling without affecting the range resolution. Algorithms were developed for compensating for phase errors using an array radar and for correcting for pixel-variant impulse responses in tomographic images. Time series results showed large freeze/thaw backscatter variations due to freezing moisture in trees. P-band canopy backscatter variations of up to 10 dB occurred near instantaneously as the air temperature crossed 0⁰C, with ground backscatter responding over longer timescales. During nonfrozen conditions, the canopy backscatter was very stable with time. Evidence of backscatter variations due to tree water content were observed during hot summer periods only. A high vapour pressure deficit and strong winds increased the rate of transpiration fast enough to reduce the tree water content, which was visible as 0.5-2 dB backscatter drops during the day. Ground backscatter for cross-polarised observations increased during strong winds due to bending tree stems. Significant temporal decorrelation was only seen at P-band during freezing, thawing and strong winds. Suitable conditions for repeat-pass L-band interferometry were only seen during the summer. C-band temporal coherence was high over timescales of seconds and occasionally for several hours for night-time observations during the summer. Decorrelation coinciding with high transpiration rates was observed at L- and C-band, suggesting sensitivity to tree water dynamics.The observations from this experiment are important for understanding, modelling and mitigating temporal variations in radar observables in forest parameter estimation algorithms. The results also are also useful in the design of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar missions with interferometric and tomographic capabilities. The results motivate the implementation of single-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radars for forest applications at P-, L- and C-band

Earth resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes (issue 62)

This bibliography lists 544 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between April 1 and June 30, 1989. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economic analysis

A Deep Learning Framework in Selected Remote Sensing Applications

The main research topic is designing and implementing a deep learning framework applied to remote sensing. Remote sensing techniques and applications play a crucial role in observing the Earth evolution, especially nowadays, where the effects of climate change on our life is more and more evident. A considerable amount of data are daily acquired all over the Earth. Effective exploitation of this information requires the robustness, velocity and accuracy of deep learning. This emerging need inspired the choice of this topic. The conducted studies mainly focus on two European Space Agency (ESA) missions: Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2. Images provided by the ESA Sentinel-2 mission are rapidly becoming the main source of information for the entire remote sensing community, thanks to their unprecedented combination of spatial, spectral and temporal resolution, as well as their open access policy. The increasing interest gained by these satellites in the research laboratory and applicative scenarios pushed us to utilize them in the considered framework. The combined use of Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 is crucial and very prominent in different contexts and different kinds of monitoring when the growing (or changing) dynamics are very rapid. Starting from this general framework, two specific research activities were identified and investigated, leading to the results presented in this dissertation. Both these studies can be placed in the context of data fusion. The first activity deals with a super-resolution framework to improve Sentinel 2 bands supplied at 20 meters up to 10 meters. Increasing the spatial resolution of these bands is of great interest in many remote sensing applications, particularly in monitoring vegetation, rivers, forests, and so on. The second topic of the deep learning framework has been applied to the multispectral Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) extraction, and the semantic segmentation obtained fusing Sentinel 1 and S2 data. The S1 SAR data is of great importance for the quantity of information extracted in the context of monitoring wetlands, rivers and forests, and many other contexts. In both cases, the problem was addressed with deep learning techniques, and in both cases, very lean architectures were used, demonstrating that even without the availability of computing power, it is possible to obtain high-level results. The core of this framework is a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). {CNNs have been successfully applied to many image processing problems, like super-resolution, pansharpening, classification, and others, because of several advantages such as (i) the capability to approximate complex non-linear functions, (ii) the ease of training that allows to avoid time-consuming handcraft filter design, (iii) the parallel computational architecture. Even if a large amount of "labelled" data is required for training, the CNN performances pushed me to this architectural choice.} In our S1 and S2 integration task, we have faced and overcome the problem of manually labelled data with an approach based on integrating these two different sensors. Therefore, apart from the investigation in Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 integration, the main contribution in both cases of these works is, in particular, the possibility of designing a CNN-based solution that can be distinguished by its lightness from a computational point of view and consequent substantial saving of time compared to more complex deep learning state-of-the-art solutions

Semantic location extraction from crowdsourced data

Crowdsourced Data (CSD) has recently received increased attention in many application areas including disaster management. Convenience of production and use, data currency and abundancy are some of the key reasons for attracting this high interest. Conversely, quality issues like incompleteness, credibility and relevancy prevent the direct use of such data in important applications like disaster management. Moreover, location information availability of CSD is problematic as it remains very low in many crowd sourced platforms such as Twitter. Also, this recorded location is mostly related to the mobile device or user location and often does not represent the event location. In CSD, event location is discussed descriptively in the comments in addition to the recorded location (which is generated by means of mobile device's GPS or mobile communication network). This study attempts to semantically extract the CSD location information with the help of an ontological Gazetteer and other available resources. 2011 Queensland flood tweets and Ushahidi Crowd Map data were semantically analysed to extract the location information with the support of Queensland Gazetteer which is converted to an ontological gazetteer and a global gazetteer. Some preliminary results show that the use of ontologies and semantics can improve the accuracy of place name identification of CSD and the process of location information extraction

Artificial Neural Networks in Agriculture

Modern agriculture needs to have high production efficiency combined with a high quality of obtained products. This applies to both crop and livestock production. To meet these requirements, advanced methods of data analysis are more and more frequently used, including those derived from artificial intelligence methods. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are one of the most popular tools of this kind. They are widely used in solving various classification and prediction tasks, for some time also in the broadly defined field of agriculture. They can form part of precision farming and decision support systems. Artificial neural networks can replace the classical methods of modelling many issues, and are one of the main alternatives to classical mathematical models. The spectrum of applications of artificial neural networks is very wide. For a long time now, researchers from all over the world have been using these tools to support agricultural production, making it more efficient and providing the highest-quality products possible

Earth resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes (issue 61)

This bibliography lists 606 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1 and March 31, 1989. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, oceanography and marine resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, and instrumentation and sensors, and economic analysis

Deep Learning based data-fusion methods for remote sensing applications

In the last years, an increasing number of remote sensing sensors have been launched to orbit around the Earth, with a continuously growing production of massive data, that are useful for a large number of monitoring applications, especially for the monitoring task. Despite modern optical sensors provide rich spectral information about Earth's surface, at very high resolution, they are weather-sensitive. On the other hand, SAR images are always available also in presence of clouds and are almost weather-insensitive, as well as daynight available, but they do not provide a rich spectral information and are severely affected by speckle "noise" that make difficult the information extraction. For the above reasons it is worth and challenging to fuse data provided by different sources and/or acquired at different times, in order to leverage on their diversity and complementarity to retrieve the target information. Motivated by the success of the employment of Deep Learning methods in many image processing tasks, in this thesis it has been faced different typical remote sensing data-fusion problems by means of suitably designed Convolutional Neural Networks

Topics in environmental and physical geodesy

A compilation of mathematical techniques and physical basic knowledge in order to prepare the post graduate students of the subjects of physical geodesy, environmental physics and the visiting students of Erasmus-Socrates projects of the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography of Toulon and the Campus Universitari de la Mediterrania in Vilanova i la Geltru, Barcelona.Postprint (published version

Earth resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes (issue 58)

This bibliography lists 500 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between April 1 and June 30, 1988. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economic analysis