Stacked spectral feature space patch: An advanced spectral representation for precise crop classification based on convolutional neural network

Spectral and spatial features in remotely sensed data play an irreplaceable role in classifying crop types for precision agriculture. Despite the thriving establishment of the handcrafted features, designing or selecting such features valid for specific crop types requires prior knowledge and thus remains an open challenge. Convolutional neural networks(CNNs) can effectively overcome this issue with their advanced ability to generate high-level features automatically but are still inadequate in mining spectral features compared to mining spatial features. This study proposed an enhanced spectral feature called Stacked Spectral Feature Space Patch(SSFSP) for CNN-based crop classification. SSFSP is a stack of twodimensional(2 D) gridded spectral feature images that record various crop types’ spatial and intensity distribution characteristics in a 2 D feature space consisting of two spectral bands. SSFSP can be input into2 D-CNNs to support the simultaneous mining of spectral and spatial features, as the spectral features are successfully converted to 2 D images that can be processed by CNN. We tested the performance of SSFSP by using it as the input to seven CNN models and one multilayer perceptron model for crop type classification compared to using conventional spectral features as input. Using high spatial resolution hyperspectral datasets at three sites, the comparative study demonstrated that SSFSP outperforms conventional spectral features regarding classification accuracy, robustness, and training efficiency. The theoretical analysis summarizes three reasons for its excellent performance. First, SSFSP mines the spectral interrelationship with feature generality, which reduces the required number of training samples.Second, the intra-class variance can be largely reduced by grid partitioning. Third, SSFSP is a highly sparse feature, which reduces the dependence on the CNN model structure and enables early and fast convergence in model training. In conclusion, SSFSP has great potential for practical crop classification in precision agriculture.

Coordination Skills during Vitrectomy in Treatment of Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy

Purpose: To discuss effective nursing and coordination skills for vitrectomy in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy.Methods: Fifty patients(51 eyes) with diabetic retinopathy required vitrectomy were enrolled in this study. Individual nursing service was delivered by strengthening preoperative preparation, providing psychological nursing, and intraoperative observation of the severity of diseases by circulating nurses; meticulous nursing was given postoperatively.Results: All 50 patients underwent surgery successfully. Intraoperatively, patients had stable physical signs. Five patients had postoperative visual acuity<0.05, 14 with 0.05 to 0.1, 20with 0.1 to 0.3 and 16 with >0.3. No complicated infection was seen.Conclusion: For patients diagnosed with proliferative diabetic retinopathy requiring vitrectomy, full preparations should be made and psychological nursing should be delivered preoperatively, the severity of diseases and clinical reactions should be closely observed intraoperatively, and proper processing and nursing measures should be taken postoperatively, which collectively enhance surgical success rate, decrease surgical complications, and attain favorable treatment efficacy.

Long-term(2013-2022)mapping of winter wheat in the North China Plain using Landsat data:classification with optimal zoning strategy

security and formulating agricultural policies.Landsat data are the only available source for long-term winter wheat mapping in the North China Plain due to the fragmented landscape in this area.Although various methods,such as index-based methods,curve similarity-based methods and machine learning-based methods,have been developed for winter wheat mapping based on remote sensing,the former two often require satellite data with high temporal resolution,which are unsuitable for Landsat data with sparse time-series.Machine learning is an effective method for crop classification using Landsat data.Yet,applying machine learn-ing for winter wheat mapping in the North China Plain encounters two main issues:1)the lack of adequate and accurate samples for classifier training;and 2)the difficulty of training a single classifier to accomplish the large-scale crop mapping due to the high spatial heterogeneity in this area.To address these two issues,we first designed a sample selection rule to build a large sample set based on several existing crop maps derived from recent Sentinel data,with specific consideration of the confusion error between winter wheat and winter rapeseed in the available crop maps.Then,we developed an optimal zoning method based on the quadtree region splitting algorithm with classification feature consistency criterion,which divided the study area into six subzones with uni-form classification features.For each subzone,a specific random forest classifier was trained and used to generate annual winter wheat maps from 2013 to 2022 using Landsat 8 OLI data.Field sample validation confirmed the high accuracy of the produced maps,with an average overall accuracy of 91.1%and an average kappa coefficient of 0.810 across different years.The derived winter wheat area also has a good correlation(R2=0.949)with census area at the provincial level.The results underscore the reliability of the produced annual winter wheat maps.Additional experiments demonstrate that our proposed optimal zoning method outper-forms other zoning methods,including Köppen climate zoning,wheat planting zoning and non-zoning methods,in enhancing wheat mapping accuracy.It indicates that the proposed zoning is capable of generating more reasonable subzones for large-scale crop mapping.

Integrated safety and security enhancement of connected automated vehicles using DHR architecture

Safety and security are interrelated and both essential for connected automated vehicles(CAVs).They are usually investigated independently,followed by standards ISO 26262 and ISO/SAE 21434,respectively.However,more functional safety and security fea-tures of in-vehicle components make existing safety mechanisms weaken security mechanisms and vice versa.This results in a dilemma that the safety-critical and security-critical in-vehicle components cannot be protected.In this paper,we propose a dynamic heterogeneous redundancy(DHR)architecture to enhance the safety and security of CAVs simultaneously.We first investigate the current status of integrated safety and security analysis and explore the relationship between safety and security.Then,we propose a new taxonomy of in-vehicle components based on safety and security features.Finally,a dynamic heterogeneous redun-dancy(DHR)architecture is proposed to guarantee integrated functional safety and cyber security of connected vehicles for the first time.A case study on an automated bus shows that DHR architecture can not only detect unknown failures and ensure functional safety but also detect unknown attacks to protect cyber security.Furthermore,we provide an in-depth analysis of quantification for CAVs performance using DHR architecture and identify chal-lenges and future research directions.Overall,integrated safety and security enhancement is an emerging research direction.

Measurement of soil water content using ground-penetrating radar: a review of current methods

Soil water content(SWC)is a crucial parameter in ecology,agriculture,hydrology,and engineering studies.Research on non-invasive monitoring of SWC has been a long-lasting topic in these fields.Ground penetrating radar(GPR),a non-destructive geophysical technique,has the advantages of high resolution,deep detection depth,and high efficiency in SWC measurements at medium scale.It has been successfully applied in field investigations.This paper summarizes the recent progress in developing GPR-based SWC measurement methods,including reflected wave,ground wave,surface reflection,borehole GPR,full waveform inversion,average envelope amplitude,and frequency shift methods.The principles,advantages,limitations,and applications of these methods are described in detail.A comprehensive technical framework,which comprises the seven methods,is proposed to understand their principles and applicability.Two key procedures,namely,data acquisition and data processing,are emphasized as crucial to method applications.The suitable methods that will satisfy diverse application demands and field conditions are recommended.Future development,potential applications,and advances in hardware and data processing techniques are also highlighted.

Mechanisms,monitoring and modeling of shrub encroachment into grassland:a review

Shrub encroachment into arid and semi-arid grasslands has elicited extensive research attention worldwide under the background of climate change and increasing anthropogenic activities.Shrub encroachment may considerably impact local ecosystems and economies,including the conversion of the structure and function of ecosystems,the shift in ambient conditions,and the weakness of local stock farming capacity.This article reviews recent research progresses on the shrub encroachment process and mechanism,shrub identification and dynamic monitoring using remote sensing,and modeling and simulation of the shrub encroachment process and dynamics.These studies can help to evaluate the ecological effect of shrub encroachment,and thus,practically manage and recover the ecological environment of degraded areas.However,the lack of effective measures and data for monitoring shrub encroachment at a large spatial scale severely limits research on the mechanism,modeling,and simulation of shrub encroachment,and the shrub encroachment stages can hardly be quantitatively defined,resulting in insufficient analysis and simulation of shrub encroachment for different spatiotemporal scales and stages shift.Improvement in remote sensingbased shrub encroachment dynamic monitoring might be crucial for analyzing and understanding the process and mechanism of shrub encroachment,and multi-disciplinary and multi-partnerships are required in the shrub encroachment studies.

A simple error estimation method for linear-regression-based thermal sharpening techniques with the consideration of scale difference

Thermal remote sensing imagery is helpful for land cover classification and related analysis.Unfortunately,the spatial resolution of thermal infrared(TIR)band is generally coarser than that of visual near-infrared band,which limits its more precise applications.Various thermal sharpening(TSP)techniques have been developed for improving the spatial resolution of the imagery of TIR band or land surface temperature(LST).However,there is no research on the theoretical estimation of TSP error till now,which implies that the error in sharpened LST imagery is unknown and the further analysis might be not reliable.In this paper,an error estimation method based on classical linear regression theory for the linear-regression-based TSP techniques was firstly introduced.However,the scale difference between the coarse resolution and fine resolution is not considered in this method.Therefore,we further developed an improved error estimation method with the consideration of the scale difference,which employs a novel term named equivalent random sample size to reflect the scale difference.A simulation study of modified TsHARP(a typical TSP technique)shows that the improved method estimated the TSP error more accurately than classical regression theory.Especially,the phenomena that TSP error increases with the increasing resolution gap between the initial and target resolutions can be successfully predicted by the proposed method.

Modeling three-dimensional forest structures to drive canopy radiative transfer simulations of bidirectional reflectance factor

Three-dimensional(3-D)Monte Carlo-based radiative transfer(MCRT)models are usually used for benchmarking in intercomparisons of the canopy radiative transfer(RT)simulations.However,the 3-D MCRT models are rarely applied to develop remote sensing algorithms to estimate essential climate variables of forests,due mainly to the difficulties in obtaining realistic stand structures for different forest biomes over regional to global scales.Fortunately,some of important tree structure parameters such as canopy height and tree density distribution have been available globally.This enables to run the intermediate complexities of the 3-D MCRT models.We consequently developed a statistical approach to generate forest structures with intermediate complexities depending on the inputs of canopy height and tree density.It aims at facilitating applications of the 3-D MCRT models to develop remote sensing retrieval algorithms.The proposed approach was evaluated using field measurements of two boreal forest stands at Estonia and USA,respectively.Results demonstrated that the simulations of bidirectional reflectance factor(BRF)based on the measured forest structures agreed well with the BRF based on the generated structures from the proposed approach with the root mean square error(RMSE)and relative RMSE(rRMSE)ranging from 0.002 to 0.006 and from 0.7%to 19.8%,respectively.Comparison of the computed BRF with corresponding MODIS reflectance data yielded RMSE and rRMSE lower than 0.03 and 20%,respectively.Although the results from the current study are limited in two boreal forest stands,our approach has the potential to generate stand structures for different forest biomes.