Satellite Multi-Temporal Data and Cropping Pattern Approach for Green Gram Crop Management in the Lower Midland Zone IV and V in Kenya

Creation of a spectral signature reflectance data, which aids in the identification of the crops is important in determining size and location crop fields. Therefore, we developed a spectral signature reflectance for the vegetative stage of the green gram (Vigna. radiata L.) over 5 years (2020, 2018, 2017, 2015, and 2013) for agroecological zone IV and V in Kenya. The years chosen were those whose satellite resolution data was available for the vegetative stage of crop growth in the short rain season (October, November, December (OND)). We used Landsat 8 OLI satellite imagery in this study. Cropping pattern data for the study area were evaluated by calculating the Top of Atmosphere reflectance. Farms geo-referencing, along with field data collection, was undertaken to extract Top of Atmosphere reflectance for bands 2, 3, 4 and 7. We also carried a spectral similarity assessment on the various cropping patterns. The spectral reflectance ranged from 0.07696 - 0.09632, 0.07466 - 0.09467, 0.0704047 - 0.12188,0.19822 - 0.24387, 0.19269 - 0.26900, and 0.11354 - 0.20815 for bands 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for green gram, respectively. The results showed a dissimilarity among the various cropping patterns. The lowest dissimilarity index was 0.027 for the maize (Zea mays L.) bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) versus the maize-pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) crop, while the highest dissimilarity index was 0.443 for the maize bean versus the maize bean and cowpea cropping patterns. High crop dissimilarities experienced across the cropping pattern through these spectral reflectance values confirm that the green gram was potentially identifiable. The results can be used in crop type identification in agroecological lower midland zone IV and V for mung bean management. This study therefore suggests that use of reflectance data in remote sensing of agricultural ecosystems would aid in planning, management, and crop allocation to different ecozones.

Improved Yield Prediction of Ratoon Rice Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Multi-Temporal Feature Method

Pre-harvest yield prediction of ratoon rice is critical for guiding crop interventions in precision agriculture.However,the unique agronomic practice(i.e.,varied stubble height treatment)in rice ratooning could lead to inconsistent rice phenology,which had a significant impact on yield prediction of ratoon rice.Multi-temporal unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-based remote sensing can likely monitor ratoon rice productivity and reflect maximum yield potential across growing seasons for improving the yield prediction compared with previous methods.Thus,in this study,we explored the performance of combination of agronomic practice information(API)and single-phase,multi-spectral features[vegetation indices(VIs)and texture(Tex)features]in predicting ratoon rice yield,and developed a new UAV-based method to retrieve yield formation process by using multi-temporal features which were effective in improving yield forecasting accuracy of ratoon rice.The results showed that the integrated use of VIs,Tex and API(VIs&Tex+API)improved the accuracy of yield prediction than single-phase UAV imagery-based feature,with the panicle initiation stage being the best period for yield prediction(R^(2) as 0.732,RMSE as 0.406,RRMSE as 0.101).More importantly,compared with previous multi-temporal UAV-based methods,our proposed multi-temporal method(multi-temporal model VIs&Tex:R^(2) as 0.795,RMSE as 0.298,RRMSE as 0.072)can increase R^(2) by 0.020-0.111 and decrease RMSE by 0.020-0.080 in crop yield forecasting.This study provides an effective method for accurate pre-harvest yield prediction of ratoon rice in precision agriculture,which is of great significance to take timely means for ensuring ratoon rice production and food security.

An Edge-assisted, Object-oriented Random Forest Approach for Refined Extraction of Tea Plantations Using Multi-temporal Sentinel-2 and High-resolution Gaofen-2 Imagery

As a consumed and influential natural plant beverage,tea is widely planted in subtropical and tropical areas all over the world.Affected by(sub)tropical climate characteristics,the underlying surface of the tea distribution area is extremely complex,with a variety of vegetation types.In addition,tea distribution is scattered and fragmentized in most of China.Therefore,it is difficult to obtain accurate tea information based on coarse resolution remote sensing data and existing feature extraction methods.This study proposed a boundary-enhanced,object-oriented random forest method on the basis of high-resolution GF-2 and multi-temporal Sentinel-2 data.This method uses multispectral indexes,textures,vegetable indices,and variation characteristics of time-series NDVI from the multi-temporal Sentinel-2 imageries to obtain abundant features related to the growth of tea plantations.To reduce feature redundancy and computation time,the feature elimination algorithm based on Mean Decrease Accuracy(MDA)was used to generate the optimal feature set.Considering the serious boundary inconsistency problem caused by the complex and fragmented land cover types,high resolution GF-2 image was segmented based on the MultiResolution Segmentation(MRS)algorithm to assist the segmentation of Sentinel-2,which contributes to delineating meaningful objects and enhancing the reliability of the boundary for tea plantations.Finally,the object-oriented random forest method was utilized to extract the tea information based on the optimal feature combination in the Jingmai Mountain,Yunnan Province.The resulting tea plantation map had high accuracy,with a 95.38%overall accuracy and 0.91 kappa coefficient.We conclude that the proposed method is effective for mapping tea plantations in high heterogeneity mountainous areas and has the potential for mapping tea plantations in large areas.

The Glacier Area Changes in the Qangtang Plateau Based on the Multi-temporal Grid Method and its Sensitivity to Climate Change

Glacier area changes in the Qangtang Plateau are analyzed during 1970-2000 using air photos,relevant photogrammetric maps and satellite images based on the multi-temporal grid method.The results indicate that the melting of glaciers accelerated,only a few of glaciers in an advancing state during 1970-2000 in the whole Qangtang Plateau.However,the glaciers seemed still more stable in the study area than in most areas of western China.We estimate that glacier retreat was likely due to air temperature warming during 1970-2000 in the Qangtang Plateau.Furthermore,the functional model of glacier system is applied to study climate sensitivity of glacier area changes,which indicates that glacier lifespan mainly depends on the heating rate,secondly the precipitation,and precipitation increasing can slow down glacier retreat and make glacier lifespan prolonged.

Estimating Wheat Grain Protein Content Using Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Data Based on Partial Least Squares Regression

Estimating wheat grain protein content by remote sensing is important for assessing wheat quality at maturity and making grains harvest and purchase policies. However, spatial variability of soil condition, temperature, and precipitation will affect grain protein contents and these factors usually cannot be monitored accurately by remote sensing data from single image. In this research, the relationships between wheat protein content at maturity and wheat agronomic parameters at different growing stages were analyzed and multi-temporal images of Landsat TM were used to estimate grain protein content by partial least squares regression. Experiment data were acquired in the suburb of Beijing during a 2-yr experiment in the period from 2003 to 2004. Determination coefficient, average deviation of self-modeling, and deviation of cross- validation were employed to assess the estimation accuracy of wheat grain protein content. Their values were 0.88, 1.30%, 3.81% and 0.72, 5.22%, 12.36% for 2003 and 2004, respectively. The research laid an agronomic foundation for GPC （grain protein content） estimation by multi-temporal remote sensing. The results showed that it is feasible to estimate GPC of wheat from multi-temporal remote sensing data in large area.

Research and application of real-time monitoring and early warning thresholds for multi-temporal agricultural products information

Monitoring and early warning is an important means to effectively prevent risks in agricultural production,consumption and price.In particular,with the change of modes of national administration against the background of big data,improving the capacity to monitor agricultural products is of great significance for macroeconomic decision-making.Agricultural product information early warning thresholds are the core of agricultural product monitoring and early warning.How to appropriately determine the early warning thresholds of multi-temporal agricultural product information is a key question to realize real-time and dynamic monitoring and early warning.Based on the theory of abnormal fluctuation of agricultural product information and the research of substantive impact on the society,this paper comprehensively discussed the methods to determine the thresholds of agricultural product information fluctuation in different time dimensions.Based on the data of the National Bureau of Statistics of China(NBSC)and survey data,this paper used a variety of statistical methods to determine the early warning thresholds of the production,consumption and prices of agricultural products.Combined with Delphi expert judgment correction method,it finally determined the early warning thresholds of agricultural product information in multiple time,and carried out early warning analysis on the fluctuation of agricultural product monitoring information in 2018.The results show that:(1)the daily,weekly and monthly monitoring and early warning thresholds of agricultural products play an important early warning role in monitoring abnormal fluctuations with agricultural products;(2)the multitemporal monitoring and early warning thresholds of agricultural product information identified by the research institute can provide effective early warning on current abnormal fluctuation of agricultural product information,provide a benchmarking standard for China's agricultural production,consumption and price monitoring and early warning at the national macro level,and further improve the application of China's agricultural product monitoring and early warning.

Multi-temporal InSAR for Urban Deformation Monitoring:Progress and Challenges

Multi-temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar(MT-InSAR) is one of the most powerful Earth observation techniques, especially useful for measuring highly detailed ground deformation over large ground areas. Much research has been carried out to apply MT-InSAR to monitor ground and infrastructure deformation in urban areas related to land reclamation, underground construction and groundwater extraction.This paper reviews the progress in the research and identifies challenges in applying the technology, including the inconsistency in coherent point identification when different approaches are used, the reliability issue in parameter estimation, difficulty in accurate geolocation of measured points, the one-dimensional line-of-sight nature of InSAR measurements, the inability of making complete measurements over an area due to geometric distortions, especially the shadowing effects, the challenges in processing large SAR datasets, the decrease of the number of coherent points with the increase of the length of SAR time series, and the difficulty in quality control of MT-InSAR results.

Characterization of land cover types in Xilin River Basin using multi-temporal Landsat images

This study conducted computer-aided image analysis of land use and land cover in Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia, using 4 sets of Landsat TM/ETM+ images acquired on July 31, 1987, August 11, 1991, September 27, 1997 and May 23, 2000, respectively. Primarily, 17 sub-class land cover types were recognized, including nine grassland types at community level: F.sibiricum steppe, S.baicalensis steppe, A.chinensis+ forbs steppe, A.chinensis+ bunchgrass steppe, A.chinensis+ Ar.frigida steppe, S.grandis+ A.chinensis steppe, S.grandis+ bunchgrass steppe, S.krylavii steppe, Ar.frigida steppe and eight non-grassland types: active cropland, harvested cropland, urban area, wetland, desertified land, saline and alkaline land, cloud, water body + cloud shadow. To eliminate the classification error existing among different sub-types of the same gross type, the 17 sub-class land cover types were grouped into five gross types: meadow grassland, temperate grassland, desert grassland, cropland and non-grassland. The overall classification accuracy of the five land cover types was 81.0% for 1987, 81.7% for 1991, 80.1% for 1997 and 78.2% for 2000.

Detecting land subsidence near metro lines in the Baoshan district of Shanghai with multi-temporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar

Land subsidence is a major factor that affects metro line （ML） stability. In this study, an improved multi- temporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar （InSAR） （MTI） method to detect land subsidence near MLs is presented. In particular, our multi-temporal InSAR method provides surface subsidence measurements with high observation density. The MTI method tracks both point-like targets and distributed targets with temporal radar back- scattering steadiness. First, subsidence rates at the point targets with low-amplitude dispersion index （ADI） values are extracted by applying a least-squared estimator on an optimized freely connected network. Second, to reduce error propagation, the pixels with high-ADI values are classified into several groups according to ADI intervals and processed using a Pearson correlation coefficient and hierarchical analysis strategy to obtain the distributed targets. Then, nonlinear subsidence components at all point-like and distributed targets are estimated using phase unwrapping and spatiotemporal filtering on the phase residuals. The proposed MTI method was applied to detect land subsidence near MLs of No. 1 and 3 in the Baoshan district of Shanghai using 18 TerraSAR-X images acquired between April 21, 2008 and October 30, 2010. The results show that the mean subsidence rates of the stations distributed along the two MLs are -12.9 and -14.0 ram/year. Furthermore, three subsidence funnels near the MLs are discovered through the hierarchical analysis. The testing results demonstrate the satisfactory capacity of the proposed MTI method in providing detailed subsidence information near MLs.

Study of Forest Cover Change Dynamics between 2000 and 2015 in the Ikongo District of Madagascar Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Satellite Images

Satellite images are considered reliable data that preserve land cover information. In the field of remote sensing, these images allow relevant analyses of changes in space over time through the use of computer tools. In this study, we have applied the “discriminant” change detection algorithm. In this, we have verified its effectiveness in multi-temporal studies. Also, we have determined the change in forest dynamics in the Ikongo district of Madagascar between 2000 and 2015. During the treatments, we have used the Landsat TM satellite images for the years 2000, 2005 and 2010 as well as ETM+ for 2015. Thus, analyses carried out have allowed us to note that between 2000-2005, 1.4% of natural forest disappeared. And, between 2005-2010, forests degradation was 1.8%. Also, between 2010-2015, about 0.5% of the natural forest conserved in 2010 disappeared. Furthermore, we have found that the discriminant algorithm is considerably efficient in terms of monitoring the dynamics of forest cover change.

Unsupervised change detection of man-made objects using coherent and incoherent features of multi-temporal SAR images

Constrained by complex imaging mechanism and extraordinary visual appearance,change detection with synthetic aperture radar(SAR)images has been a difficult research topic,especially in urban areas.Although existing studies have extended from bi-temporal data pair to multi-temporal datasets to derive more plentiful information,there are still two problems to be solved in practical applications.First,change indicators constructed from incoherent feature only cannot characterize the change objects accurately.Second,the results of pixel-level methods are usually presented in the form of the noisy binary map,making the spatial change not intuitive and the temporal change of a single pixel meaningless.In this study,we propose an unsupervised man-made objects change detection framework using both coherent and incoherent features derived from multi-temporal SAR images.The coefficients of variation in timeseries incoherent features and the man-made object index(MOI)defined with coherent features are first combined to identify the initial change pixels.Afterwards,an improved spatiotemporal clustering algorithm is developed based on density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise(DBSCAN)and dynamic time warping(DTW),which can transform the initial results into noiseless object-level patches,and take the cluster center as a representative of the man-made object to determine the change pattern of each patch.An experiment with a stack of 10 TerraSAR-X images in Stripmap mode demonstrated that this method is effective in urban scenes and has the potential applicability to wide area change detection.

Contribution of MODIS NDVI 250 m Multi-Temporal Imagery Dataset for the Detection of Natural Forest Distribution of Java Island, Indonesia

As landmass of the world is covered by vegetation, taking into account phenology when performing land cover classification may yield more accurate maps. The availability of no-cost Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) NDVI dataset that provides high-quality continuous time series data is representing a potentially significant source of land cover information especially for detection natural forest distribution. This study intends to assess the advantage of MODIS 250 m Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) multi-temporal imagery for detection of densely vegetation cover distribution in Java and then for identification of remaining natural forest in Java from densely vegetation cover distribution. Result of this study successfully demonstrated the contribution of MODIS NDVI 250 m for detection the natural forest distribution in Java Island. Therefore, the approach described herein provided classification accuracy comparable to those of maps derived from higher resolution data and will be a viable alternative for regional or national classifications.

Multi-temporal urban semantic understanding based on GF-2 remote sensing imagery:from tri-temporal datasets to multi-task mapping

High resolution satellite images are becoming increasingly available for urban multi-temporal semantic understanding.However,few datasets can be used for land-use/land-cover(LULC)classification,binary change detection(BCD)and semantic change detection(SCD)simultaneously because classification datasets always have one time phase and BCD datasets focus only on the changed location,ignoring the changed classes.Public SCD datasets are rare but much needed.To solve the above problems,a tri-temporal SCD dataset made up of Gaofen-2(GF-2)remote sensing imagery(with 11 LULC classes and 60 change directions)was built in this study,namely,the Wuhan Urban Semantic Understanding(WUSU)dataset.Popular deep learning based methods for LULC classification,BCD and SCD are tested to verify the reliability of WUSU.A Siamese-based multi-task joint framework with a multi-task joint loss(MJ loss)named ChangeMJ is proposed to restore the object boundaries and obtains the best results in LULC classification,BCD and SCD,compared to the state-of-the-art(SOTA)methods.Finally,a large spatial-scale mapping for Wuhan central urban area is carried out to verify that the WUsU dataset and the ChangeMJ framework have good application values.

Analysis of spatio-temporal pattern and driving force of land cover change using multi-temporal remote sensing images

Landuse and land cover change is regarded as a good indicator that represents the impact of human activities on earth’s environment.When the large collection of multi-temporal satellite images has become available,it is possible to study a long-term historical process of land cover change.This study aims to investigate the spatio-temporal pattern and driving force of land cover change in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China,where the rapid development has been witnessed since 1980s.The fast economic growth has been associated with an accelerated expansion of urban landuse,which has been recorded by historical remote sensing images.This paper reports the method and outcome of the research that attempts to model spatio-temporal pattern of land cover change using multi-temporal satellite images.The classified satellite images were compared to detect the change from various landuse types to built-up areas.The trajectories of land cover change have then been established based on the time-series of the classified land cover classes.The correlation between the expansion of built-up areas and selected economic data has also been analysed for better understanding on the driving force of the rapid urbanisation process.The result shows that,since early 1990s,the dominant trend of land cover change has been from farmland to urban landuse.The relationship between economic growth indicator(measured by GDP)and built-up area can well fit into a linear regression model with correlation coefficients greater than 0.9.It is quite clear that cities or towns have been sprawling in general,demonstrating two growth models that were closely related to the economic development stages.

Application of Fengyun-4 Satellite to Flood Disaster Monitoring through a Rapid Multi-Temporal Synthesis Approach

Fengyun-4 A(FY-4 A) belongs to the second generation of geostationary meteorological satellite series in China. Its observations with high frequency and resolution provide a better data basis for monitoring of extreme weather such as sudden flood disasters. In this study, the flood disasters occurred in Bangladesh, India, and some other areas of South Asia in August 2018 were investigated by using a rapid multi-temporal synthesis approach for the first time for removal of thick clouds in FY-4 A images. The maximum between-class variance algorithm(OTSU;developed by Otsu in 2007) and linear spectral unmixing methods are used to extract the water area of flood disasters. The accuracy verification shows that the water area of flood disasters extracted from FY-4 A is highly correlated with that from the high-resolution satellite datasets Gaofen-1(GF-1) and Sentinel-1 A, with the square correlation coefficient R2 reaching 0.9966. The average extraction accuracy of FY-4 A is over 90%. With the rapid multi-temporal synthesis approach used in flood disaster monitoring with FY-4 A satellite data, advantages of the wide coverage, fast acquisition,and strong timeliness with geostationary meteorological satellites are effectively combined. Through the synthesis of multi-temporal images of the flood water body, the influence of clouds is effectively eliminated, which is of great significance for the real-time flood monitoring. This also provides an important service guarantee for the disaster prevention and reduction as well as economic and social development in China and the Asia-Pacific region.

Multi-temporal monitoring of wheat growth by using images from satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle

Recently near-ground remote sensing using unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV)witnessed wide applications in obtaining field information.In this research,four Rapideye satellite images and eight RGB images acquired from UAV were used from early June to the end of July,2015 covering two experimental winter wheat fields,in order to monitor wheat canopy growth status and analyze the correlation among satellite images based normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI)with UAV’s RGB images based visible-band difference vegetation index(VDVI)and ground variables of the sampled grain protein contents.Firstly,through image interpretation of UAV’s multi-temporal RGB images with fine spatial resolution,the wheat canopy color changes could be intuitively and clearly monitored.Subsequently,by monitoring the changes of satellite images based NDVI as well as VDVI values and UAV’s RGB images based VDVI values,the conclusions were made that these three vegetation indices demonstrated the same and synchronized trend of increasing at the early stage of wheat growth season,reaching up to peak values at the same timing,and starting to decrease since then.The results of the correlation analysis between NDVI of satellite images and sampled grain protein contents show that NDVI has good predicative capability for mapping grain protein content before ripening growth stage around June7,2015,while the reliability of using satellite image based NDVI to predict grain protein contents becomes worse as ripening stage approaches.The regression analysis between UAV’s RGB image based VDVI and satellite image based VDVI as well as NDVI showed good coefficients of determination.It is concluded that it is feasible and practical to temporally complement satellite remote sensing by using UAV’s RGB images based vegetation indices to monitor wheat growth status and to map within-field spatial variations of grain protein contents for small scale farmlands.

Sub-pixel change detection for urban land-cover analysis via multi-temporal remote sensing images

Conventional change detection approaches are mainly based on per-pixel processing,which ignore the sub-pixel spectral variation resulted from spectral mixture.Especially for medium-resolution remote sensing images used in urban landcover change monitoring,land use/cover components within a single pixel are usually complicated and heterogeneous due to the limitation of the spatial resolution.Thus,traditional hard detection methods based on pure pixel assumption may lead to a high level of omission and commission errors inevitably,degrading the overall accuracy of change detection.In order to address this issue and find a possible way to exploit the spectral variation in a sub-pixel level,a novel change detection scheme is designed based on the spectral mixture analysis and decision-level fusion.Nonlinear spectral mixture model is selected for spectral unmixing,and change detection is implemented in a sub-pixel level by investigating the inner-pixel subtle changes and combining multiple composition evidences.The proposed method is tested on multi-temporal Landsat Thematic Mapper and China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite remote sensing images for the land-cover change detection over urban areas.The effectiveness of the proposed approach is confirmed in terms of several accuracy indices in contrast with two pixel-based change detection methods(i.e.change vector analysis and principal component analysis-based method).In particular,the proposed sub-pixel change detection approach not only provides the binary change information,but also obtains the characterization about change direction and intensity,which greatly extends the semantic meaning of the detected change targets.

Multi-temporal remote sensing of land cover change and urban sprawl in the coastal city of Yantai, China

The importance of accurately mapping and monitoring land cover changes over time is increasing,especially in rapidly growing coastal cities.In this study,three pairs of Landsat images of Yantai,a representative coastal city in China,from 1989,1999,and 2009 were selected to monitor land cover changes and urban sprawl dynamics.To improve the classification accuracy,three classification methods together with the minimum noise fraction(MNF)and pixel purity index(PPI)calculations were performed on the images.The classification results showed that the overall five-class classification accuracies averaged 91.38%for the 20-year period,which produced an accuracy of 83.78%for change maps.The analysis of change maps indicated that from 1989 to 2009,the percentage of urban area increased from 31.41%to 50.28%of the total area,and the newly urbanized area was mainly located in residential areas and the reclaimed harbor region.Analysis of the relationships between urban area and its driving forces obtained from statistical data found that the urban sprawl of Yantai before 2000 was relatively extensive,which is consistent with the conclusion drawn by using remote sensing techniques.The research results could be used as inputs for sustainable urban management and establishing Digital Earth database.

Post-Processing of InSAR Deformation Time Series Using Clustering-Based Pattern Identification

Multi-temporal synthetic aperture radar interferometry(MT-InSAR)is a standard technique for mapping clustering and wide-scale deformation.A linear model is often used in phase unwrapping to overcome the underdetermination.It’s difficult to identify different types of nonlinear deformation.However,the interpretation of nonlinear deformation is very important in monitoring potential risk.This paper introduces a comprehensive approach for identifying and interpreting different types of deformation within InSAR datasets,integrating initial clustering and classification simplification.Initial classification is performed using the K-means clustering method to cluster the collected InSAR deformation time-series data.Then we use F test and Anderson-Darling test(AD test)to simplify the clusters after initial classification.This technique distinctly discerns the changing trends of deformation signals,thereby providing robust support for interpreting potential deformation scenarios within observed InSAR regions.

The Vegetation Classification of the Return Farmland to Pasture or Forest Region in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Based on SPOT/VEGETATION Data

In order to assess the climatical and ecological effect which returned the farmland to pasture or forest, the vegetation and crop in Northwest China with suitable threshold value were classified in this experiment by using multi-temporal SPOT/VEGETATION dada and combing supervised classification with unsupervised classification. Compared with the data from Statistical Department and actual investigation, the precision of the classified result was above 85%.