Nilton Correia da Silva

A New Approach to Change Vector Analysis Using Distance and Similarity Measures

The need to monitor the Earth’s surface over a range of spatial and temporal scales is fundamental in ecosystems planning and management. Change-Vector Analysis (CVA) is a bi-temporal method of change detection that considers the magnitude and direction of change vector. However, many multispectral applications do not make use of the direction component. The procedure most used to calculate the direction component using multiband data is the direction cosine, but the number of output direction cosine images is equal to the number of original bands and has a complex interpretation. This paper proposes a new approach to calculate the spectral direction of change, using the Spectral Angle Mapper and Spectral Correlation Mapper spectral-similarity measures. The chief advantage of this approach is that it generates a single image of change information insensitive to illumination variation. In this paper the magnitude component of the spectral similarity was calculated in two ways: as the standard Euclidean distance and as the Mahalanobis distance. In this test the best magnitude measure was the Euclidean distance and the best similarity measure was Spectral Angle Mapper. The results show that the distance and similarity measures are complementary and need to be applied together.

Radiometric Normalization of Temporal Images Combining Automatic Detection of Pseudo-Invariant Features from the Distance and Similarity Spectral Measures, Density Scatterplot Analysis, and Robust Regression

Radiometric precision is difficult to maintain in orbital images due to several factors (atmospheric conditions, Earth-sun distance, detector calibration, illumination, and viewing angles). These unwanted effects must be removed for radiometric consistency among temporal images, leaving only land-leaving radiances, for optimum change detection. A variety of relative radiometric correction techniques were developed for the correction or rectification of images, of the same area, through use of reference targets whose reflectance do not change significantly with time, i.e., pseudo-invariant features (PIFs). This paper proposes a new technique for radiometric normalization, which uses three sequential methods for an accurate PIFs selection: spectral measures of temporal data (spectral distance and similarity), density scatter plot analysis (ridge method), and robust regression. The spectral measures used are the spectral angle (Spectral Angle Mapper, SAM), spectral correlation (Spectral Correlation Mapper, SCM), and Euclidean distance. The spectral measures between the spectra at times t1 and t2 and are calculated for each pixel. After classification using threshold values, it is possible to define points with the same spectral behavior, including PIFs. The distance and similarity measures are complementary and can be calculated together. The ridge method uses a density plot generated from images acquired on different dates for the selection of PIFs. In a density plot, the invariant pixels, together, form a high-density ridge, while variant pixels (clouds and land cover changes) are spread, having low density, facilitating its exclusion. Finally, the selected PIFs are subjected to a robust regression (M-estimate) between pairs of temporal bands for the detection and elimination of outliers, and to obtain the optimal linear equation for a given set of target points. The robust regression is insensitive to outliers, i.e., observation that appears to deviate strongly from the rest of the data in which it occurs, and as in our case, change areas. New sequential methods enable one to select by different attributes, a number of invariant targets over the brightness range of the images.

Karst Depression Detection Using ASTER, ALOS/PRISM and SRTM-Derived Digital Elevation Models in the Bambuí Group, Brazil

Remote sensing has been used in karst studies to identify limestone terrain, describe exokarst features, analyze karst depressions, and detect geological structures important to karst development. The aim of this work is to investigate the use of ASTER-, SRTM- and ALOS/PRISM-derived digital elevation models (DEMs) to detect and quantify natural karst depressions along the Sa o Francisco River near Barreiras city, northeast Brazil. The study area is a karst landscape characterized by karst depressions (dolines), closed depressions in limestone, many of which contain standing water connected with the ground-water table. The base of dolines is typically sealed with an impermeable clay layer covered by standing water or herbaceous vegetation. We identify dolines by combining the extraction of sink depth from DEMs, morphometric analysis using GIS, and visual interpretation. Our methodology is a semi-automatic approach involving several steps: (a) DEM acquisition; (b) sink-depth calculation using the difference between the raw DEM and the corresponding DEM with sinks filled; and (c) elimination of falsely identified karst

Classificação de padrões de savana usando assinaturas temporais NDVI do sensor MODLS no Parque Nacional Chapada dos Veadeiros

Savannas are the main vegetation type in Central Brazil, covering approximately 23% of the national territory. Locally known as Cerrado, Brazilian Savannas are formed by amosaic of different physiognomies such as grassland, shrubland and woodland that have atypical phenological cycle. ln this context, the MODIS data provide daily measurements well suited to monitor the seasonal phenology of vegetation. The present work aims to evaluate the advantages of the temporal signatures to detect Brazilian Savanna vegetation types in the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, Brazil. The adopted methodology may be subdivided into the following steps: (a) elaboration of the 3D cube of NDVI from temporal MODIS images, where the z profile corresponding to temporal signature, (b) noise elimination by combining Median Filter and Minimum Noise Fraction techniques, (c) endmember detection, and (d) spectral classification using Spectral Correlation Mapper method. The results demonstrate that the savanna physiognomies present typical temporal signatures. The endmembers correspond to the three major physiognomic domains: (a) Cerrado grassland, herbaceous dominated region; (b) Cerrado, mostly amixture of grasses and shrubs; and (c) Cerrado woodland, densely covered by trees. Comparison with Landsat 7/ETM+ image demonstrates the classification efficiency of the temporal series. The study concluded that the NDVI series is useful in differentiating the amount of vegetation types The methodology efficiency has been proved for regional delimitation of savanna physiognomies even considering the low spatial resolution of the 250m MODIS sensor and the high spectral mixture.

Probability Density Components Analysis: A New Approach to Treatment and Classification of SAR Images

Speckle noise (salt and pepper) is inherent to synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which causes a usual noise-like granular aspect and complicates the image classification. In SAR image analysis, the spatial information might be a particular benefit for denoising and mapping classes characterized by a statistical distribution of the pixel intensities from a complex and heterogeneous spectral response. This paper proposes the Probability Density Components Analysis (PDCA), a new alternative that combines filtering and frequency histogram to improve the classification procedure for the single-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. This method was tested on L-band SAR data from the Advanced Land Observation System (ALOS) Phased-Array Synthetic-Aperture Radar (PALSAR) sensor. The study area is localized in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, northern Rondonia State (municipality of Candeias do Jamari), containing forest and land use patterns. The proposed algorithm uses a moving window over the image, estimating the probability density curve in different image components. Therefore, a single input image generates an output with multi-components. Initially the multi-components should be treated by noise-reduction methods, such as maximum noise fraction (MNF) or noise-adjusted principal components (NAPCs). Both methods enable reducing noise as well as the ordering of multi-component data in terms of the image quality. In this paper, the NAPC applied to multi-components provided large reductions in the noise levels, and the color composites considering the first NAPC enhance the classification of different surface features. In the spectral classification, the Spectral Correlation Mapper and Minimum Distance were used. The results obtained presented as similar to the visual interpretation of optical images from TM-Landsat and Google Maps.

Vegetation mapping in the Parque Nacional, Brasilia (Brazil) area using advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) data and spectral identification method (SIM)

The spectral classifiers allow a good estimate for the mapping of the materials from the similarity between the reference curve and the image. Initially the spectral classifiers had been developed for hyperspectral images analysis. However, some works demonstrate good results for the application of these techniques in multispectral images. The present work aims to evaluate the spectral classifier Spectral Identification Method (SIM) in ASTER image. The Spectral Identification Method (SIM) is proposed to establish a new similarity index and three estimates according to the significance of regression (5%, 10% and 15%) of the materials. This method is based on two statistical procedures: ANOVA and Spectral Correlation Mapper (SCM) coefficient. This information can be used to evaluate the degree of correlation among the materials in analysis. The advantage of this method is to validate according to significance of regression most probable areas of the sought material. The method was applied to ASTER image at the Parque Nacional (DF - Brazil). The images were acquired with atmosphere correction. The pixels size from the SWIR image was duplicated in order to join the VNIR and SWIR images. Endmembers were detected in three steps: a) spectral reduction by the Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF), b) spatial reduction by the Pixel Purity Index (PPI) and c) manual identification of the endmembers using the N-dimensional visualizer. The classification was made from the endmembers of nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV), photosynthetic vegetation (PV) and soil. These procedures allowed identifying the main scenarios in the study area.