Hydrometeorological Extremes and Its Local Impacts on Human-Environmental Systems

This Special Issue of Atmosphere focuses on hydrometeorological extremes and their local impacts on human–environment systems. Particularly, we accepted submissions on the topics of observational and model-based studies that could provide useful information for infrastructure design, decision making, and policy making to achieve our goals of enhancing the resilience of human–environment systems to climate change and increased variability

Sustainable Agriculture and Advances of Remote Sensing (Volume 1)

Agriculture, as the main source of alimentation and the most important economic activity globally, is being affected by the impacts of climate change. To maintain and increase our global food system production, to reduce biodiversity loss and preserve our natural ecosystem, new practices and technologies are required. This book focuses on the latest advances in remote sensing technology and agricultural engineering leading to the sustainable agriculture practices. Earth observation data, in situ and proxy-remote sensing data are the main source of information for monitoring and analyzing agriculture activities. Particular attention is given to earth observation satellites and the Internet of Things for data collection, to multispectral and hyperspectral data analysis using machine learning and deep learning, to WebGIS and the Internet of Things for sharing and publishing the results, among others

Deep learning in remote sensing: a review

Standing at the paradigm shift towards data-intensive science, machine learning techniques are becoming increasingly important. In particular, as a major breakthrough in the field, deep learning has proven as an extremely powerful tool in many fields. Shall we embrace deep learning as the key to all? Or, should we resist a 'black-box' solution? There are controversial opinions in the remote sensing community. In this article, we analyze the challenges of using deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, review the recent advances, and provide resources to make deep learning in remote sensing ridiculously simple to start with. More importantly, we advocate remote sensing scientists to bring their expertise into deep learning, and use it as an implicit general model to tackle unprecedented large-scale influential challenges, such as climate change and urbanization.Comment: Accepted for publication IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazin

Análise de inundações e classificação da cobertura vegetal no bioma amazônico usando séries temporais sentinel-1 SAR e técnicas de deep learning

Tese (doutorado) — Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Humanas, Departamento de Geografia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geografia, 2022.Os recursos hídricos e os estudos fenológicos florestais são extremamente importantes para a compreensão de diversos fenômenos naturais como as mudanças climáticas, dinâmica hidrogeomorfológica, condicionamento ambiental e gestão dos recursos. Inserida na dinâmica hídrica, estão presentes as áres inundáveis que estão intrinsecamente ligadas à manuntenção da biota e da fauna nos biomas brasileiros. Nesse contexto, os produtos derivados de sensoriamento remoto têm sido bastante utilizados para a análise e monitoramento de áreas inundáveis, mapeamento de uso e ocupação da terra e dinâmica fenológica devido à sua importância ambiental. As imagens de radar de abertura sintética (SAR) são produtos potenciais por não apresentar interferências atmosféricas, entretanto, necessitam de diversos tratamentos iniciais, definidos de pré-processamento para assim ser possível obter uma melhor extração de informações de uma determinada área. Nesse sentido, essa pesquisa teve como objetivo aplicar as técnicas de deep learning utilizando algoritmos de processamento de séries temporais de imagens de satélite baseados em redes neurais para extração e identificação de áreas inundáveis, corpos hídricos e fenologias florestais em áreas de cerrado, floresta amazônica, mangues, cultivos agrícolas e várzea. O presente estudo foi dividido em três capítulos principais: (a) análises métricas e estatísticas de filtragens espaciais em imagem Sentinel-1 SAR da Amazônia Central, Brasil; (b) análise de série temporal Sentinel-1 SAR em inundações na Amazônia Central; e (c) classificação fenológica de floresta, mangues, cerrado e vegetação alagada do bioma Amazônia por meio de comparação dos modelos LSTM, Bi-LSTM, GRU, Bi-GRU e modelos de aprendizagem de máquina baseados em séries temporais do satélite Sentinel-1. As etapas metodológicas foram distintas para cada capítulo e todos apresentaram precisão e altos valores métricos para mensuração e análise dos corpos hídricos, inundação e fenologias florestais. Dentre os métodos de filtragem analisados na imagem SAR, o filtro Lee com janela 3 × 3 apresentou os melhores desempenhos na redução do ruído speckle (MSE igual a 1,88 e MAE igual a 1,638) e baixo valor de distorção de contraste na polarização VH. Entretanto, para a polarização VV, mensuraram-se diferentes resultados para análise da redução do ruído speckle, onde o filtro Frost com janela 3 × 3 apresentou o melhor desempenho, com baixo valor para as métricas em geral (MSE igual a 1,2 e MAE igual a 6,28) e também um baixo valor de distorção de contraste. Por apresentar os melhores valores estatísticos, o filtro de mediana com janela 11 × 11 nas polarizações VH e VV pode ser utilizado como uma técnica de filtragem alternativa na imagem Sentinel-1 nas duas polarizações. As áreas de inundação mensuradas nas polarizações VH e VV apresentaram uma forte correlação e sem significância estatística entre as amostras, presumindo que se pode utilizar as duas polarizações para obtenção do pulso de inundação e mapeamento da dinâmica das áreas inundáveis na região. Pelo fato de não haver imagens Sentinel-1 anteriores ao ano de 2016, quando os eventos extremos de LMEO foram superiores a 100%, não foi possível delimitar a LMEO por meio de dados SAR. Algumas áreas ao longo da costa e rios apresentam assinaturas temporais de retroespalhamento que evidenciam transições entre ambientes terrestres e áreas cobertas por água. A variação temporal do retroespalhamento de valores mais altos para mais baixos indica erosão e inundação progressiva, enquanto o inverso indica aumento terrestre. O modelo Bi-GRU apresentou a maior acurácia geral, precisão, recall e F-score tanto na polarização individual como na polarização combinada VV+VH. A combinação entre as polarizações forneceu os melhores resultados na classificação e a polarização VH obteve melhores resultados quando comparado à polarização VV. O presente estudo atestou o procedimento metodológico adequado para mensurar as áreas de corpos hídricos e seu pulso de inundação como também obteve a classificação de fenologias com alta precisão na Amazônia Central por meio de deep learning advindas de série temporal de imagens Sentinel-1 SAR.Water resources and forest phenological studies are extremely important for the understanding of various natural phenomena, such as climate variation, hydrogeomorphological dynamics, environmental conditioning, and resource management. In this context, products derived from remote sensing have been widely used for the analysis and monitoring of flooding areas, land use and occupation mapping, and phenological dynamics due to their environmental importance. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images are potential products as they do not present atmospheric interference, however, they require several initial treatments, defined as pre-processing, so that it is possible to obtain a better extraction of information from a certain area. In this sense, this research aimed to apply deep learning techniques using algorithms based on neural networks for the extraction and identification of flooding areas, water bodies, and forest phenologies such as cerrado, Amazon forest, mangroves, agricultural crops, and floodplain through time series of remote sensing images. This study was divided into three main chapters: (a) metric and statistical analysis of spatial filtering in Sentinel-1 SAR images of Central Amazonia, Brazil; (b) Sentinel-1 SAR time series analysis in flooding areas of Central Amazon; and (c) phenological classification of forest, mangroves, savannas, and two flooded vegetation of the Amazon biome by comparing LSTM, Bi-LSTM, GRU, Bi-GRU, and machine learning models from Sentinel-1 time series. The methodological steps were different for each chapter and all presented precision and high metric values for measurement and analysis of water bodies, flooding and forest phenologies. Among the filtering methods analyzed in the SAR image, the Lee filter with 3 × 3 window presented the best performance in reducing speckle noise (MSE of 1.88 and MAE of 1.638) and low value of contrast distortion in the VH polarization. However, for the VV polarization, different results were measured for the analysis of the sepeckle noise reduction, where the Frost filter with 3 × 3 window presented the best performance, with a low value for the metrics in general (MSE of 1.2 and MAE of 6.28) and also a low contrast distortion value. Statistical values derived from the median filter with 11 × 11 window in the VH and VV polarizations can be used as an alternative filtering technique in the Sentinel-1 SAR image in both polarizations. The flooding areas measured in the VH and VV polarizations showed a strong correlation and no statistical significance between the samples, assuming that both polarizations can be used to obtain the flood pulse and mapping the dynamics of the flooded areas in the region. Because there are no Sentinel1 SAR images prior to 2016 when extreme LMEO events were greater than 100%, it was not possible to delimit the LMEO through SAR data. Some areas along the coast and rivers show temporal backscatter signatures with transitions between terrestrial environments and areas covered by water. The temporal variation of backscatter from higher to lower values indicates erosion and progressive flooding, while the inverse indicates terrestrial increase. The Bi-GRU model showed the highest overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F-score in both separate polarization and combined VV+VH polarization. The combination between the polarizations provided the best results in the classification and the VH polarization obtained better results when compared to the VV polarization. This study attested an adequate methodological procedure to measure the areas of water bodies and their flood pulse, as well as obtaining the classification of phenologies with high precision in the Central Amazon by means of deep learning applied to the time series of Sentinel-1 SAR images

Machine learning-based algorithms to knowledge extraction from time series data: A review

To predict the future behavior of a system, we can exploit the information collected in the past, trying to identify recurring structures in what happened to predict what could happen, if the same structures repeat themselves in the future as well. A time series represents a time sequence of numerical values observed in the past at a measurable variable. The values are sampled at equidistant time intervals, according to an appropriate granular frequency, such as the day, week, or month, and measured according to physical units of measurement. In machine learning-based algorithms, the information underlying the knowledge is extracted from the data themselves, which are explored and analyzed in search of recurring patterns or to discover hidden causal associations or relationships. The prediction model extracts knowledge through an inductive process: the input is the data and, possibly, a first example of the expected output, the machine will then learn the algorithm to follow to obtain the same result. This paper reviews the most recent work that has used machine learning-based techniques to extract knowledge from time series data

Spatial-Temporal Data Mining for Ocean Science: Data, Methodologies, and Opportunities

With the increasing amount of spatial-temporal~(ST) ocean data, numerous spatial-temporal data mining (STDM) studies have been conducted to address various oceanic issues, e.g., climate forecasting and disaster warning. Compared with typical ST data (e.g., traffic data), ST ocean data is more complicated with some unique characteristics, e.g., diverse regionality and high sparsity. These characteristics make it difficult to design and train STDM models. Unfortunately, an overview of these studies is still missing, hindering computer scientists to identify the research issues in ocean while discouraging researchers in ocean science from applying advanced STDM techniques. To remedy this situation, we provide a comprehensive survey to summarize existing STDM studies in ocean. Concretely, we first summarize the widely-used ST ocean datasets and identify their unique characteristics. Then, typical ST ocean data quality enhancement techniques are discussed. Next, we classify existing STDM studies for ocean into four types of tasks, i.e., prediction, event detection, pattern mining, and anomaly detection, and elaborate the techniques for these tasks. Finally, promising research opportunities are highlighted. This survey will help scientists from the fields of both computer science and ocean science have a better understanding of the fundamental concepts, key techniques, and open challenges of STDM in ocean

Deep learning for the early detection of harmful algal blooms and improving water quality monitoring

Climate change will affect how water sources are managed and monitored. The frequency of algal blooms will increase with climate change as it presents favourable conditions for the reproduction of phytoplankton. During monitoring, possible sensory failures in monitoring systems result in partially filled data which may affect critical systems. Therefore, imputation becomes necessary to decrease error and increase data quality. This work investigates two issues in water quality data analysis: improving data quality and anomaly detection. It consists of three main topics: data imputation, early algal bloom detection using in-situ data and early algal bloom detection using multiple modalities.The data imputation problem is addressed by experimenting with various methods with a water quality dataset that includes four locations around the North Sea and the Irish Sea with different characteristics and high miss rates, testing model generalisability. A novel neural network architecture with self-attention is proposed in which imputation is done in a single pass, reducing execution time. The self-attention components increase the interpretability of the imputation process at each stage of the network, providing knowledge to domain experts.After data curation, algal activity is predicted using transformer networks, between 1 to 7 days ahead, and the importance of the input with regard to the output of the prediction model is explained using SHAP, aiming to explain model behaviour to domain experts which is overlooked in previous approaches. The prediction model improves bloom detection performance by 5% on average and the explanation summarizes the complex structure of the model to input-output relationships. Performance improvements on the initial unimodal bloom detection model are made by incorporating multiple modalities into the detection process which were only used for validation purposes previously. The problem of missing data is also tackled by using coordinated representations, replacing low quality in-situ data with satellite data and vice versa, instead of imputation which may result in biased results

Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability-Volume 2

Our world is facing many challenges, such as poverty, hunger, resource shortage, environmental degradation, climate change, and increased inequalities and conflicts. To address such challenges, the United Nations proposed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), consisting of 17 interlinked global goals, as the strategic blueprint of world sustainable development. Nevertheless, the implementation of the SDG framework has been very challenging and the COVID-19 pandemic has further impeded the SDG implementation progress. Accelerated efforts are needed to enable all stakeholders, ranging from national and local governments, civil society, private sector, academia and youth, to contribute to addressing this dilemma. This volume of the Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability book series aims to offer inspiration and creativity on approaches to sustainable development. Among other things, it covers topics of COVID-19 and sustainability, environmental pollution, food production, clean energy, low-carbon transport promotion, and strategic governance for sustainable initiatives. This book can reveal facts about the challenges we are facing on the one hand and provide a better understanding of drivers, barriers, and motivations to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all on the other. Research presented in this volume can provide different stakeholders, including planners and policy makers, with better solutions for the implementation of SDGs. Prof. Bao-Jie He acknowledges the Project NO. 2021CDJQY-004 supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. We appreciate the assistance from Mr. Lifeng Xiong, Mr. Wei Wang, Ms. Xueke Chen and Ms. Anxian Chen at School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, China