Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel...Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel and spectral reflectance. Results show that after the dry, hot and windy summer in 2007, many landscape trees in Yamaguchi City tended to respond the extreme weather events by reducing their leaf surface area and receiving less radiation energy. Premature leaf discoloration or defoliation appeared on some landscape tree species and leaf necrosis occurred on tip and margin of many Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) trees at unfavorable sites. Described by image pixel analysis method, the leaf necrotic area percentage (LNAP) of sampled dogwood trees averaged 41.6% and the sampled Sasanqua camellia (Camelia sasanqua) tree also showed fewer flowers in flower season of 2007 than that in 2006. By differential analysis of partial discolored crown, it presented a logistic differential equation of crown color for sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) trees. It suggested that the persistent higher temperature and lower precipitation could be injurious to the sensitive landscape trees at poor sites, even in relative humid area like Yamaguchi.展开更多
Autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is a newly described entity of pancreatitis in which the pathogenesis appears to involve autoimmune mechanisms. Based on histological and immunohistochemical examinations of various organ...Autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is a newly described entity of pancreatitis in which the pathogenesis appears to involve autoimmune mechanisms. Based on histological and immunohistochemical examinations of various organs of AIP patients, AIP appears to be a pancreatic lesion reflecting a systemic "IgG4-related sclerosing disease". Clinically, AIP patients and patients with pancreatic cancer share many features, such as preponderance of elderly males, frequent initial symptom of painless jaundice, development of new-onset diabetes mellitus, and elevated levels of serum tumor markers. It is of uppermost importance not to misdiagnose AIP as pancreatic cancer. Since there is currently no diagnostic serological marker for AIP, and approach to the pancreas for histological examination is generally difficult, AIP is diagnosed using a combination of clinical, serological, morphological, and histopathological features. Findings suggesting AIP rather than pancreatic cancer include:fluctuating obstructive jaundice; elevated serum IgG4 levels; diffuse enlargement of the pancreas; delayed en- hancement of the enlarged pancreas and presence of a capsule-like rim on dynamic computed tomography; low apparent diffusion coefficient values on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance image; irregular narrowing of the main pancreatic duct on endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography; less upstream dilatation of the main pancreatic duct on magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography, presence of other organ involvement such as bilateral salivary gland swelling, retroperitoneal fibrosis and hilar or intrahepatic sclerosing cholangitis; negative work-up for malignancy including endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration; and steroid responsiveness. Since AIP responds dramatically to steroid therapy, accurate diagnosis of AIP can avoid unnecessary laparotomy or pancreatic resection.展开更多
Nowadays, remote sensing imagery, especially with its high spatialresolution, has become an indispensable tool to provide timely up-gradation of urban land use andland cover information, which is a prerequisite for pr...Nowadays, remote sensing imagery, especially with its high spatialresolution, has become an indispensable tool to provide timely up-gradation of urban land use andland cover information, which is a prerequisite for proper urban planning and management. Thepossible method described in the present paper to obtain urban land use types is based on theprinciple that land use can be derived from the land cover existing in a neighborhood. Here, movingwindow is used to represent the spatial pattern of land cover within a neighborhood and seven windowsizes (61mx61m, 68mx68m, 75mx75m, 87mx87m, 99mx99m, 110mx110m and 121mxl21m) are applied todetermining the most proper window size. Then, the unsupervised method of ISODATA is employed toclassify the layered land cover density maps obtained by the moving window. The results of accuracyevaluation show that the window size of 99mx99m is proper to infer urban land use categories and theproposed method has produced a land use map with a total accuracy of 85%.展开更多
Since there is lack of methodology to assess the performance of defogging algorithm and the existing assessment methods have some limitations,three new methods for assessing the defogging algorithm were proposed.One w...Since there is lack of methodology to assess the performance of defogging algorithm and the existing assessment methods have some limitations,three new methods for assessing the defogging algorithm were proposed.One was using synthetic foggy image simulated by image degradation model to assess the defogging algorithm in full-reference way.In this method,the absolute difference was computed between the synthetic image with and without fog.The other two were computing the fog density of gray level image or constructing assessment system of color image from human visual perception to assess the defogging algorithm in no-reference way.For these methods,an assessment function was defined to evaluate algorithm performance from the function value.Using the defogging algorithm comparison,the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed methods.展开更多
This letter proposes a new kind of image quality philosophy—Modulate Quality based on Fixation Points (MQFP) based on Human Visual System (HVS) model. Dissimilar to the former HVS-based quality assessment, the new me...This letter proposes a new kind of image quality philosophy—Modulate Quality based on Fixation Points (MQFP) based on Human Visual System (HVS) model. Dissimilar to the former HVS-based quality assessment, the new measure emphasizes particularly on modeling the jumping phenomenon of human sight instead of modeling the visual perception of human. In other words, to model the HVS using fixation points and stay-frequency instead of Contrast Sensitive Function (CSF) etc. which models the visual perception of HVS. The experiment on various frequency-distortion images indicates that the new measure is correlated with the subjective judgment more than the former HVS-based measure and is a robust measure.展开更多
Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel...Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel and spectral reflectance, Results show that after the dry, hot and windy summer in 2007, many landscape trees in Yamaguchi City tended to respond the extreme weather events by re- ducing their leaf surface area and receiving less radiation energy. Premature leaf discoloration or defoliation appeared on some landscape tree species and leaf necrosis occurred on tip and margin of many Kousa dogwood (Comus kousa) trees at unfavorable sites. Described by image pixel analysis method, the leaf necrotic area percentage (LNAP) of sampled dogwood trees averaged 41.6% and the sampled Sasanqua camellia (Camelia sasanqua) tree also showed fewer flowers in flower season of 2007 than that in 2006. By differential analysis of partial discolored crown, it presented a logistic differential equation of crown color for sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) trees. It suggested that the persistent higher temperature and lower precipitation could be injurious to the sensitive landscape trees at poor sites, even in relative humid area like Yamaguchi.展开更多
Along with the time esthetic idea change, the new drawing language form appearance has entrusted with picture quoin more significances. Therefore must take the picture quoin, appropriate processing. The picture quoin ...Along with the time esthetic idea change, the new drawing language form appearance has entrusted with picture quoin more significances. Therefore must take the picture quoin, appropriate processing. The picture quoin does not allow in picture position and the function to set otherwise.展开更多
Hannah Arendt, the new film by the German director Margarethe Von Trotta, does not seem just like another trying to represent philosophy through the classic cinematic storytelling. It builds instead a perfect dialogue...Hannah Arendt, the new film by the German director Margarethe Von Trotta, does not seem just like another trying to represent philosophy through the classic cinematic storytelling. It builds instead a perfect dialogue between these two practices that never encroach each other: There is not any doctrine that prevents cinema's freedom to create images and any philosophy claim that forces cinema to find in images an alternative way of expression. Von Trotta leaves any biopic form and stages a harmonic building where cinema fulfills philosophy and philosophy fulfills cinema. In this way she gets an outright practical exhibition of a theory, the "banality of evil". We want to comprehend the reasons of this perfect building analyzing this film, its characters with their acts, all the images their montage, and editing, everything that supports the Arendt's philosophical notion. We work on the film with the philosophical categories created by Gilles Deleuze to study the history of cinema in two essays, Image-mouvement and Image-time. In this way we can unfold how Margarethe Von Trotta represents a theory through images, without any word as intermediary展开更多
This paper presents the studies of the refining of IKONOS-2 RPC, the transform of the datum, the mode of the control point distribution and the method of IKONOS stereo triangulation, so that IKONOS imagery can be used...This paper presents the studies of the refining of IKONOS-2 RPC, the transform of the datum, the mode of the control point distribution and the method of IKONOS stereo triangulation, so that IKONOS imagery can be used to collect the precise geospatial data and produce the large scale map.The transform between the IKONOS-2 image space and the national coordinate system based on the RPC have been developed, and the results of block adjustment with various control schemes in a practical project near Himalayas have been examined and analysed. The encouraging results of high positioning accuracy have been obtained.展开更多
A methodology was presented relating the microstructure of asphalt mixtures to their damage behavior. Digital image techniques were used to capture the asphalt mixture microstructure, and the finite element method was...A methodology was presented relating the microstructure of asphalt mixtures to their damage behavior. Digital image techniques were used to capture the asphalt mixture microstructure, and the finite element method was used to simulate the damage evolution of asphalt mixture through splitting test. Aggregates were modeled to be linearly elastic, and the mastics were modeled to be plastically damaged. The splitting test simulation results show that the material heterogeneity, the properties of aggregates and air voids have significant effects on the damage evolution approach. The damage behavior of asphalt mixture considering material heterogeneity is quite different from that of the conventional hypothesis of homogeneous material. The results indicate that the proposed method can be extended to the numerical analysis for the other micromechanical behaviors of asphalt concrete.展开更多
One of the biggest factors to deteriorate the satellite product quality is cloud coverage. Therefore, cloud masking process is important to improve the quality of various satellite products. However, satellite-based c...One of the biggest factors to deteriorate the satellite product quality is cloud coverage. Therefore, cloud masking process is important to improve the quality of various satellite products. However, satellite-based cloud discrimination algorithm has been developing and efficient ground-based cloud observations are necessary to validate satellite-based cloud discrimination. The purpose of this study is to develop the efficient ground-based cloud observation methodology using whole sky camera. This paper deals with methods how to discriminate cloud portions on whole sky image, how to apply the ground-based cloud observation to the validations for satellite products. For the cloud discrimination on whole sky image, we propose SI (sky index) and BI (brightness index) calculated from RGB (red, green and blue) channels. SI shows the extent of the blueness and gray scale and BI indicates the extent of the brightness. Sun, cloud and blue sky portions are divided by SI and BI threshold. As an application of ground-based cloud observation for the validation of satellite products, clouds portions discriminated from whole sky image are projected onto ground surface with map coordinate. We also examine to compare with cloud portions on whole sky images and MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) image as one of experiments. The proposed ground-based cloud observation method and its extension to satellite-based cloud discrimination should be connected to improve the quality of satellite products.展开更多
Developed independently by China,HJ-1A/B satellites have operated well on-orbit for five years and acquired a large number of high-quality observation data.The realization of the observation data geometric precision c...Developed independently by China,HJ-1A/B satellites have operated well on-orbit for five years and acquired a large number of high-quality observation data.The realization of the observation data geometric precision correction is of great significance for macro and dynamic ecological environment monitoring.The paper analyzed the parameter characteristics of HJ-1 satellite and geometric features of HJ-1 satellite level 2 data(systematic geo- corrected data).Based on this,the overall HJ- 1 multi- sensor geometric correction flow and charge-coupled device(CCD) automatic geometric precision correction method were designed.Actual operating data showed that the method could achieve good result for automatic geometric precision correction of HJ-1 satellite data,automatic HJ-1 CCD image geometric precision correction accuracy could be achieved within two pixels and automatic matching accuracy between the images of same satellite could be obtained less than one pixel.展开更多
The study is meant to describe the evolution of American short-story writing with patterns where visual images have become central and not peripheral for the understanding of stories. Hemingway's use of objective cor...The study is meant to describe the evolution of American short-story writing with patterns where visual images have become central and not peripheral for the understanding of stories. Hemingway's use of objective correlatives was a trace mark, and the literary editors at The New Yorker urged their writers to slow down the emphasis on movement and plot in order to recreate a certain mood which would favour the perception of objects, anecdotes, and details. The impressionistic device works very much in the same way that an advertisement would do. It is meant to persuade the audience. The apparently non-commitant vision of reality shows in fact the author's point of view. The apparent simplicity is meant for a very wide audience and its deepest meaning suggests the scope of the particular visual aids working at the deepest level of consciousness展开更多
For over twenty years, Obuasi Municipality, Ghana, has experienced land-cover change arising from gold mining and urbanisation. This project quantified the land-cover changes that have taken place and projected likely...For over twenty years, Obuasi Municipality, Ghana, has experienced land-cover change arising from gold mining and urbanisation. This project quantified the land-cover changes that have taken place and projected likely future land-cover. An integration of EO (earth observation), GIS (geographical information science) and Stochastic Modelling was examined. Post-classification Change Detection employed Landsat TM or ETM+ images in 1986, 2002 and 2008. Subsequently, Markov Chain Analysis projected the land-cover distribution for 2020. Seven broad land-use and land-cover classes were identified and mapped, namely: built-up areas, mine sites tailing ponds barren land forestland farmland and rangeland. The results obtained for the 2008 to 2020 projection revealed a continuous expansion of built-up areas (1.63%), mine sites (0.89%) and farmland (3.4%), and a reduction of forestland (4.17%) and rangeland (2.59%). Despite the advent of very high resolution satellite imagery, this use of EO and GIS technology focussed on low-cost and lower resolution satellite imagery, coupled with Markov Modelling and was found to be beneficial in describing and analysing land-cover change processes in the study area, and was hence potentially useful for strategic planning purposes.展开更多
文摘Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel and spectral reflectance. Results show that after the dry, hot and windy summer in 2007, many landscape trees in Yamaguchi City tended to respond the extreme weather events by reducing their leaf surface area and receiving less radiation energy. Premature leaf discoloration or defoliation appeared on some landscape tree species and leaf necrosis occurred on tip and margin of many Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) trees at unfavorable sites. Described by image pixel analysis method, the leaf necrotic area percentage (LNAP) of sampled dogwood trees averaged 41.6% and the sampled Sasanqua camellia (Camelia sasanqua) tree also showed fewer flowers in flower season of 2007 than that in 2006. By differential analysis of partial discolored crown, it presented a logistic differential equation of crown color for sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) trees. It suggested that the persistent higher temperature and lower precipitation could be injurious to the sensitive landscape trees at poor sites, even in relative humid area like Yamaguchi.
文摘Autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is a newly described entity of pancreatitis in which the pathogenesis appears to involve autoimmune mechanisms. Based on histological and immunohistochemical examinations of various organs of AIP patients, AIP appears to be a pancreatic lesion reflecting a systemic "IgG4-related sclerosing disease". Clinically, AIP patients and patients with pancreatic cancer share many features, such as preponderance of elderly males, frequent initial symptom of painless jaundice, development of new-onset diabetes mellitus, and elevated levels of serum tumor markers. It is of uppermost importance not to misdiagnose AIP as pancreatic cancer. Since there is currently no diagnostic serological marker for AIP, and approach to the pancreas for histological examination is generally difficult, AIP is diagnosed using a combination of clinical, serological, morphological, and histopathological features. Findings suggesting AIP rather than pancreatic cancer include:fluctuating obstructive jaundice; elevated serum IgG4 levels; diffuse enlargement of the pancreas; delayed en- hancement of the enlarged pancreas and presence of a capsule-like rim on dynamic computed tomography; low apparent diffusion coefficient values on diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance image; irregular narrowing of the main pancreatic duct on endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography; less upstream dilatation of the main pancreatic duct on magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography, presence of other organ involvement such as bilateral salivary gland swelling, retroperitoneal fibrosis and hilar or intrahepatic sclerosing cholangitis; negative work-up for malignancy including endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration; and steroid responsiveness. Since AIP responds dramatically to steroid therapy, accurate diagnosis of AIP can avoid unnecessary laparotomy or pancreatic resection.
基金Under the auspices of Jiangsu Provincial Natural ScienceFoundation(No .BK2002420 )
文摘Nowadays, remote sensing imagery, especially with its high spatialresolution, has become an indispensable tool to provide timely up-gradation of urban land use andland cover information, which is a prerequisite for proper urban planning and management. Thepossible method described in the present paper to obtain urban land use types is based on theprinciple that land use can be derived from the land cover existing in a neighborhood. Here, movingwindow is used to represent the spatial pattern of land cover within a neighborhood and seven windowsizes (61mx61m, 68mx68m, 75mx75m, 87mx87m, 99mx99m, 110mx110m and 121mxl21m) are applied todetermining the most proper window size. Then, the unsupervised method of ISODATA is employed toclassify the layered land cover density maps obtained by the moving window. The results of accuracyevaluation show that the window size of 99mx99m is proper to infer urban land use categories and theproposed method has produced a land use map with a total accuracy of 85%.
基金Projects(91220301,61175064,61273314)supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaProject(126648)supported by the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Central South University,ChinaProject(2012170301)supported by the New Teacher Fund for School of Information Science and Engineering,Central South University,China
文摘Since there is lack of methodology to assess the performance of defogging algorithm and the existing assessment methods have some limitations,three new methods for assessing the defogging algorithm were proposed.One was using synthetic foggy image simulated by image degradation model to assess the defogging algorithm in full-reference way.In this method,the absolute difference was computed between the synthetic image with and without fog.The other two were computing the fog density of gray level image or constructing assessment system of color image from human visual perception to assess the defogging algorithm in no-reference way.For these methods,an assessment function was defined to evaluate algorithm performance from the function value.Using the defogging algorithm comparison,the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed methods.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.60372068) and theGuangdong Province Science Foundation (No.011628).
文摘This letter proposes a new kind of image quality philosophy—Modulate Quality based on Fixation Points (MQFP) based on Human Visual System (HVS) model. Dissimilar to the former HVS-based quality assessment, the new measure emphasizes particularly on modeling the jumping phenomenon of human sight instead of modeling the visual perception of human. In other words, to model the HVS using fixation points and stay-frequency instead of Contrast Sensitive Function (CSF) etc. which models the visual perception of HVS. The experiment on various frequency-distortion images indicates that the new measure is correlated with the subjective judgment more than the former HVS-based measure and is a robust measure.
文摘Extreme weather events were analyzed based on the meteorological data from the year of 1967 to 2007 for Yamaguchi, Japan. The responses from landscape trees were also investigated mainly by the analysis of image pixel and spectral reflectance, Results show that after the dry, hot and windy summer in 2007, many landscape trees in Yamaguchi City tended to respond the extreme weather events by re- ducing their leaf surface area and receiving less radiation energy. Premature leaf discoloration or defoliation appeared on some landscape tree species and leaf necrosis occurred on tip and margin of many Kousa dogwood (Comus kousa) trees at unfavorable sites. Described by image pixel analysis method, the leaf necrotic area percentage (LNAP) of sampled dogwood trees averaged 41.6% and the sampled Sasanqua camellia (Camelia sasanqua) tree also showed fewer flowers in flower season of 2007 than that in 2006. By differential analysis of partial discolored crown, it presented a logistic differential equation of crown color for sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) trees. It suggested that the persistent higher temperature and lower precipitation could be injurious to the sensitive landscape trees at poor sites, even in relative humid area like Yamaguchi.
文摘Along with the time esthetic idea change, the new drawing language form appearance has entrusted with picture quoin more significances. Therefore must take the picture quoin, appropriate processing. The picture quoin does not allow in picture position and the function to set otherwise.
文摘Hannah Arendt, the new film by the German director Margarethe Von Trotta, does not seem just like another trying to represent philosophy through the classic cinematic storytelling. It builds instead a perfect dialogue between these two practices that never encroach each other: There is not any doctrine that prevents cinema's freedom to create images and any philosophy claim that forces cinema to find in images an alternative way of expression. Von Trotta leaves any biopic form and stages a harmonic building where cinema fulfills philosophy and philosophy fulfills cinema. In this way she gets an outright practical exhibition of a theory, the "banality of evil". We want to comprehend the reasons of this perfect building analyzing this film, its characters with their acts, all the images their montage, and editing, everything that supports the Arendt's philosophical notion. We work on the film with the philosophical categories created by Gilles Deleuze to study the history of cinema in two essays, Image-mouvement and Image-time. In this way we can unfold how Margarethe Von Trotta represents a theory through images, without any word as intermediary
基金Funded by the Western Region Transport Development Science and Technology Program (No.2002 318 0050).
文摘This paper presents the studies of the refining of IKONOS-2 RPC, the transform of the datum, the mode of the control point distribution and the method of IKONOS stereo triangulation, so that IKONOS imagery can be used to collect the precise geospatial data and produce the large scale map.The transform between the IKONOS-2 image space and the national coordinate system based on the RPC have been developed, and the results of block adjustment with various control schemes in a practical project near Himalayas have been examined and analysed. The encouraging results of high positioning accuracy have been obtained.
基金Project(50808086) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
文摘A methodology was presented relating the microstructure of asphalt mixtures to their damage behavior. Digital image techniques were used to capture the asphalt mixture microstructure, and the finite element method was used to simulate the damage evolution of asphalt mixture through splitting test. Aggregates were modeled to be linearly elastic, and the mastics were modeled to be plastically damaged. The splitting test simulation results show that the material heterogeneity, the properties of aggregates and air voids have significant effects on the damage evolution approach. The damage behavior of asphalt mixture considering material heterogeneity is quite different from that of the conventional hypothesis of homogeneous material. The results indicate that the proposed method can be extended to the numerical analysis for the other micromechanical behaviors of asphalt concrete.
文摘One of the biggest factors to deteriorate the satellite product quality is cloud coverage. Therefore, cloud masking process is important to improve the quality of various satellite products. However, satellite-based cloud discrimination algorithm has been developing and efficient ground-based cloud observations are necessary to validate satellite-based cloud discrimination. The purpose of this study is to develop the efficient ground-based cloud observation methodology using whole sky camera. This paper deals with methods how to discriminate cloud portions on whole sky image, how to apply the ground-based cloud observation to the validations for satellite products. For the cloud discrimination on whole sky image, we propose SI (sky index) and BI (brightness index) calculated from RGB (red, green and blue) channels. SI shows the extent of the blueness and gray scale and BI indicates the extent of the brightness. Sun, cloud and blue sky portions are divided by SI and BI threshold. As an application of ground-based cloud observation for the validation of satellite products, clouds portions discriminated from whole sky image are projected onto ground surface with map coordinate. We also examine to compare with cloud portions on whole sky images and MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) image as one of experiments. The proposed ground-based cloud observation method and its extension to satellite-based cloud discrimination should be connected to improve the quality of satellite products.
文摘Developed independently by China,HJ-1A/B satellites have operated well on-orbit for five years and acquired a large number of high-quality observation data.The realization of the observation data geometric precision correction is of great significance for macro and dynamic ecological environment monitoring.The paper analyzed the parameter characteristics of HJ-1 satellite and geometric features of HJ-1 satellite level 2 data(systematic geo- corrected data).Based on this,the overall HJ- 1 multi- sensor geometric correction flow and charge-coupled device(CCD) automatic geometric precision correction method were designed.Actual operating data showed that the method could achieve good result for automatic geometric precision correction of HJ-1 satellite data,automatic HJ-1 CCD image geometric precision correction accuracy could be achieved within two pixels and automatic matching accuracy between the images of same satellite could be obtained less than one pixel.
文摘The study is meant to describe the evolution of American short-story writing with patterns where visual images have become central and not peripheral for the understanding of stories. Hemingway's use of objective correlatives was a trace mark, and the literary editors at The New Yorker urged their writers to slow down the emphasis on movement and plot in order to recreate a certain mood which would favour the perception of objects, anecdotes, and details. The impressionistic device works very much in the same way that an advertisement would do. It is meant to persuade the audience. The apparently non-commitant vision of reality shows in fact the author's point of view. The apparent simplicity is meant for a very wide audience and its deepest meaning suggests the scope of the particular visual aids working at the deepest level of consciousness
文摘For over twenty years, Obuasi Municipality, Ghana, has experienced land-cover change arising from gold mining and urbanisation. This project quantified the land-cover changes that have taken place and projected likely future land-cover. An integration of EO (earth observation), GIS (geographical information science) and Stochastic Modelling was examined. Post-classification Change Detection employed Landsat TM or ETM+ images in 1986, 2002 and 2008. Subsequently, Markov Chain Analysis projected the land-cover distribution for 2020. Seven broad land-use and land-cover classes were identified and mapped, namely: built-up areas, mine sites tailing ponds barren land forestland farmland and rangeland. The results obtained for the 2008 to 2020 projection revealed a continuous expansion of built-up areas (1.63%), mine sites (0.89%) and farmland (3.4%), and a reduction of forestland (4.17%) and rangeland (2.59%). Despite the advent of very high resolution satellite imagery, this use of EO and GIS technology focussed on low-cost and lower resolution satellite imagery, coupled with Markov Modelling and was found to be beneficial in describing and analysing land-cover change processes in the study area, and was hence potentially useful for strategic planning purposes.