Satellite Remote Sensing contributions to Wildland Fire Science and Management

No funding was received for this particular review, but support research was funded by the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative Programme to Dr. Chuvieco.This paper reviews the most recent literature related to the use of remote sensing (RS) data in wildland fire management. Recent Findings Studies dealing with pre-fire assessment, active fire detection, and fire effect monitoring are reviewed in this paper. The analysis follows the different fire management categories: fire prevention, detection, and post-fire assessment. Extracting the main trends from each of these temporal sections, recent RS literature shows growing support of the combined use of different sensors, particularly optical and radar data and lidar and optical passive images. Dedicated fire sensors have been developed in the last years, but still, most fire products are derived from sensors that were designed for other purposes. Therefore, the needs of fire managers are not always met, both in terms of spatial and temporal scales, favouring global over local scales because of the spatial resolution of existing sensors. Lidar use on fuel types and post-fire regeneration is more local, and mostly not operational, but future satellite lidar systems may help to obtain operational products. Regional and global scales are also combined in the last years, emphasizing the needs of using upscaling and merging methods to reduce uncertainties of global products. Validation is indicated as a critical phase of any new RS-based product. It should be based on the independent reference information acquired from statistically derived samples. The main challenges of using RS for fire management rely on the need to improve the integration of sensors and methods to meet user requirements, uncertainty characterization of products, and greater efforts on statistical validation approaches.European Space Agenc

접근불가지역인 북한의 시계열 토지피복도 매핑 및 산림 변화 동향 분석

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 농업생명과학대학 생태조경·지역시스템공학부(생태조경학), 2021.8. 이동근.North Korea, as an inaccessible area, has little research on land cover change, but it is very important to understand the changing trend of LULCC and provide information previously unknown to North Korea. This study therefore aimed to construct and analyze a 30-m resolution modern time-series land use land cover (LULC) map to identify the LULCCs over long time periods across North Korea and understand the forest change trends. A land use and land cover (LULC) map of North Korea from 2001 to 2018 was constructed herein using semi-permanent point classification and machine learning techniques on satellite image time-series data. The resultant relationship between cropland and forest cover, and the LULC changes were examined. The classification results show the effectiveness of the methods used in classifying the time series of Landsat images for LULC, wherein the overall accuracy of the LULC classification results was 97.5% ± 0.9%, and the Kappa coefficient was 0.94 ± 0.02. Using LULC change detection, our research effectively explains the change trajectory of North Korea’s current LULC, providing new insights into the change characteristics of North Korea’s croplands and forests. Further, our results show that North Korea’s urban area has increased significantly, its forest cover has increased slightly, and its cropland cover has decreased. We determined that North Korea’s Forest protection policies have led to the forest restoration. Thus, as agriculture is one of North Korea’s main economic contributors, croplands have been forced to relocate, expanding to other regions to compensate for the land loss caused by forest restoration.북한은 세계에서 가장 심각하게 황폐화된 산림 중 하나를 포함하고 있지만 최근에는 산림 복원을 강조하고 있다. 산림 복원이 일어나는 정도를 이해하기 위해서는 토지 이용과 토지 피복 변화 경향 (LULCC)을 이해해야 한다. 따라서 본 연구는 30m 해상도의 현대 시계열 토지 이용 토지 피복 (LULC)지도를 구성 및 분석하여 북한 전역의 장기 LULCC를 식별하고 산림 변화 추세를 이해하는 것을 목표로 한다. 2001 - 2018 년 기간 동안 국가의 LULC지도는 30m 해상도 위성 이미지 시계열 데이터를 기반으로 반영구적 포인트 분류 및 기계 학습을 사용하여 구성되었으며, 이는 GEE (Google Earth Engine)에서 수집 한 현상 학적 정보와 함께 사용되고 있다. 또한 LULCC 탐지기 법과 경작지 변화와 고도의 관계를 고려하여 2001 - 2018 년 북한의 산림 변화를 평가하였다. LULC 맵 결과의 전체 분류 정확도는 97.5 % ± 0.9 %이고, Kappa 계수는 0.94 ± 0.02 이다. LULCC 탐지는 또한 2001 - 2018 년에 북한의 산림 면적이 약간 증가한 것으로 나타났다. 일반적으로 산림 피복 면적은 크게 변하지 않았으나 남부와 중부 지역의 산림 복원과 북부와 서부의 경작지 상대적 증가 측면에서 뚜렷한 공간적 변화가 관찰되었다. 북한의 특성과 산림 정책 문서를 검토 한 결과 북한 근대 산림의 일부 지역이 복원되고 있음을 확인하였다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Study Area 7 Chapter 3. Materials and Methods 8 3.1. Study overview 8 3.2. Data Collection 9 3.3. Data Processing 11 3.4. Classification Process 12 3.5. LULCC Analysis 14 3.6. Reference Data Collection and Classification Accuracy Validation 15 Chapter 4. Results 17 4.1. LULC Classification Accuracy Assessment 17 4.2. LULC Classification Results 20 4.3. LULC Change Detection 22 4.4. Relation with mountainous cropland and elevation 26 Chapter 5. Discussion 28 5.1. Interpretation and explanation of the forest change in North Korea 28 5.2. Importance of spatial analysis and future research directions 30 5.3. Limits and Advantages 32 Chapter 6. Conclusion 34 Bibliography 36 Appendix 44 Abstract in Korean 51석

Improving the estimation of fire danger, fire propagation and fire monitoring : new insights using remote sensing data and statistical methods

This thesis covers three major topics related to wildfires, remote sensing and meteorology: (i) quantifying and forecasting fire danger combining numerical weather forecasts and satellite observations of fire intensity; (ii) mapping burned areas from satellite observations with multiple spatial and spectral resolution; and (iii) modelling fire progression taking into account weather conditions and fuel (vegetation) availability. Regarding the first topic, an enhanced Fire Weather Index (FWI) is proposed by using statistical methods to combine the classical FWI with an atmospheric instability index with the aim of better forecasting the fire danger conditions favourable to the development of convective fires. Furthermore, the daily definition of the classical FWI was extended to an hourly timescale, allowing for assessment of the variability of the fire danger conditions throughout the day. For the second topic, a method is proposed to map and date burned areas using sequences of daily satellite data. This method, tested over several regions around the globe, provide burned area maps that outperform other existing methods for the task, particularly regarding the consistency and accuracy of the date of burning. Furthermore, a method is proposed for fast assessment of burned areas using 10-meter resolution satellite data and making use of Google Earth Engine (GEE) as a tool for preprocessing and downloading of data that is then used as input to a deep learning model that combines a coarse burned area map with the medium resolution data to provide a refined burned area map with 10-meter resolution at event level and with low computational requirements. Finally, for the third topic, a method is proposed to estimate the fire progression over a 12-hour period with resource to an ensemble of models trained based on the reconstruction of past events. Overall, I am confident that the results obtained and presented in this thesis provide a significant contribution to the remote sensing and wildfires scientific community while opening interesting paths for future research on the topics described

Remote Sensing of Natural Hazards

Each year, natural hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, flooding, landslides, wildfires, avalanches, volcanic eruption, extreme temperatures, storm surges, drought, etc., result in widespread loss of life, livelihood, and critical infrastructure globally. With the unprecedented growth of the human population, largescale development activities, and changes to the natural environment, the frequency and intensity of extreme natural events and consequent impacts are expected to increase in the future.Technological interventions provide essential provisions for the prevention and mitigation of natural hazards. The data obtained through remote sensing systems with varied spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions particularly provide prospects for furthering knowledge on spatiotemporal patterns and forecasting of natural hazards. The collection of data using earth observation systems has been valuable for alleviating the adverse effects of natural hazards, especially with their near real-time capabilities for tracking extreme natural events. Remote sensing systems from different platforms also serve as an important decision-support tool for devising response strategies, coordinating rescue operations, and making damage and loss estimations.With these in mind, this book seeks original contributions to the advanced applications of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques in understanding various dimensions of natural hazards through new theory, data products, and robust approaches

Synergistic Use of Remote Sensing and Modeling for Estimating Net Primary Productivity in the Red Sea With VGPM, Eppley-VGPM, and CbPM Models Intercomparison

Primary productivity (PP) has been recently investigated using remote sensing-based models over quite limited geographical areas of the Red Sea. This work sheds light on how phytoplankton and primary production would react to the effects of global warming in the extreme environment of the Red Sea and, hence, illuminates how similar regions may behave in the context of climate variability. study focuses on using satellite observations to conduct an intercomparison of three net primary production (NPP) models--the vertically generalized production model (VGPM), the Eppley-VGPM, and the carbon-based production model (CbPM)--produced over the Red Sea domain for the 1998-2018 time period. A detailed investigation is conducted using multilinear regression analysis, multivariate visualization, and moving averages correlative analysis to uncover the models\u27 responses to various climate factors. Here, we use the models\u27 eight-day composite and monthly averages compared with satellite-based variables, including chlorophyll-a (Chla), mixed layer depth (MLD), and sea-surface temperature (SST). Seasonal anomalies of NPP are analyzed against different climate indices, namely, the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO), the multivariate ENSO Index (MEI), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the Dipole Mode Index (DMI). In our study, only the CbPM showed significant correlations with NPGO, MEI, and PDO, with disagreements relative to the other two NPP models. This can be attributed to the models\u27 connection to oceanographic and atmospheric parameters, as well as the trends in the southern Red Sea, thus calling for further validation efforts

CIRA annual report FY 2016/2017

Reporting period April 1, 2016-March 31, 2017

CIRA annual report FY 2014/2015

Reporting period July 1, 2014-March 31, 2015

Burned area mapping in the brazilian savanna using a one-class support vector machine trained by active fires

We used the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) active fire data (375 m spatial resolution) to automatically extract multispectral samples and train a One-Class Support Vector Machine for burned area mapping, and applied the resulting classification algorithm to 300-m spatial resolution imagery from the Project for On-Board Autonomy-Vegetation (PROBA-V). The active fire data were screened to prevent extraction of unrepresentative burned area samples and combined with surface reflectance bi-weekly composites to produce burned area maps. The procedure was applied over the Brazilian Cerrado savanna, validated with reference maps obtained from Landsat images and compared with the Collection 6 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Burned Area product (MCD64A1) Results show that the algorithm developed improved the detection of small-sized scars and displayed results more similar to the reference data than MCD64A1. Unlike active fire-based region growing algorithms, the proposed approach allows for the detection and mapping of burn scars without active fires, thus eliminating a potential source of omission error. The burned area mapping approach presented here should facilitate the development of operational-automated burned area algorithms, and is very straightforward for implementation with other sensorsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio