Qiming Qin

Evaluation of MODIS derived perpendicular drought index for estimation of surface dryness over northwestern China

In this paper, drought status of northwestern China is evaluated using the Terra–Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with a newly developed method called perpendicular drought index (PDI), which is defined as a line segment that is parallel with the soil line and perpendicular to the normal line of soil line intersecting the coordinate origin in the two‐dimensional scatter plot of red against near infrared (NIR) wavelength reflectance. To validate the PDI in macroscale applications, quantitative evaluation of drought conditions in Ningxia, Northwestern China is carried out by comparing the PDI with one of the well‐known drought indexes, namely, temperature‐vegetation index (TVX). Linear regression between ground‐measured soil moisture data and the PDI and the TVX was made. Results show that satellite based PDI and TVX has significant correlation with 0–20 cm averaged soil moisture obtained over the meteorological observing stations across the whole study area. The highest correlation of R 2 = 0.48 for the PDI and R 2 = 0.40 for the TVX is obtained when compared with average soil moisture from 0 to 20 cm soil depth. According to the drought critical values defined by soil hydrologic parameters including soil moisture, wilting coefficient and field moisture capacity, the PDI based drought guidelines are established, and then the drought status in the study area is evaluated using the PDI. It is evident from the results showing the spatial distribution of drought in northwestern China that the PDI is highly accordant with field drought status.

Shadow Segmentation and Compensation in High Resolution Satellite Images

In high spatial resolution satellite images, shadows are usually cast by elevated objects such as buildings, bridges, and towers, especially in urban region. Shadows may cause loss of feature information, false color tone and shape distortion of objects, which seriously affect the quality of images. Hence, it is important to segment shadow regions and restore their information for image interpretation. This paper presents an effective and robust approach for shadow segmentation and compensation in color satellite images with high spatial resolution. The approach uses normalized saturation-value difference index (NSVDI) in hue-saturation-value (HSV) color space to detect shadows and exploits histogram matching to recover the information under shadows. Experimental results by applying the proposed approach in the IKONOS color images of urban area demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.

A Practical Split-Window Algorithm for Estimating Land Surface Temperature from Landsat 8 Data

This paper developed a practical split-window (SW) algorithm to estimate land surface temperature (LST) from Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) aboard Landsat 8. The coefficients of the SW algorithm were determined based on atmospheric water vapor sub-ranges, which were obtained through a modified split-window covariance–variance ratio method. The channel emissivities were acquired from newly released global land cover products at 30 m and from a fraction of the vegetation cover calculated from visible and near-infrared images aboard Landsat 8. Simulation results showed that the new algorithm can obtain LST with an accuracy of better than 1.0 K. The model consistency to the noise of the brightness temperature, emissivity and water vapor was conducted, which indicated the robustness of the new algorithm in LST retrieval. Furthermore, based on comparisons, the new algorithm performed better than the existing algorithms in retrieving LST from TIRS data. Finally, the SW algorithm was proven to be reliable through application in different regions. To further confirm the credibility of the SW algorithm, the LST will be validated in the future.

Monitoring Drought over the Conterminous United States Using MODIS and NCEP Reanalysis-2 Data

Abstract Monitoring land surface drought using remote sensing data is a challenge, although a few methods are available. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a valuable indicator linked to land drought status and plays an important role in surface drought detection at continental and global scales. In this study, the evaporative drought index (EDI), based on the estimated actual ET and potential ET (PET), is described to characterize the surface drought conditions. Daily actual ET at 4-km resolution for April–September 2003–05 across the continental United States is estimated using a simple improved ET model with input solar radiation acquired by Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) at a spatial resolution of 4 km and input meteorological parameters from NCEP Reanalysis-2 data at a spatial resolution of 32 km. The PET is also calculated using some of these data. The estimated actual ET has been rigorously validated with ground-measured ET at six Enhanced Facility sites in the Southern Great Plains ...

VSDI: a visible and shortwave infrared drought index for monitoring soil and vegetation moisture based on optical remote sensing

In this article, a new index, the visible and shortwave infrared drought index (VSDI), is proposed for monitoring both soil and vegetation moisture using optical spectral bands. VSDI is defined as , where ρ represents the reflectance of shortwave infrared (SWIR) red and blue channels, respectively. VSDI is theoretically based on the difference between moisture-sensitive bands (SWIR and red) and moisture reference band (blue), and is expected to be efficient for agricultural drought monitoring over different land-cover types during the plant-growing season. The fractional water index (FWI) derived from 49 Mesonet stations over nine climate divisions (CDs) across Oklahoma are used as ground truth data and VSDI is compared with three other drought indices. The results show that VSDI generally presents the highest correlation with FWI among the four indices, either for whole sites or for individual CDs. The NDVI threshold method is applied to demonstrate the satisfactory performance of VSDI over different land-cover types. A time-lag analysis is also conducted and suggests that VSDI can be used as a real-time drought indicator with a time lag of less than 8 days. The VSDI drought maps are produced and compared with the US Drought Monitor (USDM) maps. A good agreement has been observed between the two products, and finer spatial information is also found in VSDI. In conclusion, VSDI appears to be a real-time drought indicator that is applicable over different land-cover types and is suitable for drought monitoring through the plant-growing season.

A re-examination of perpendicular drought indices

In this letter, the performance of newly developed drought indices, the perpendicular drought index (PDI) and modified perpendicular drought index (MPDI), are further explored for regional surface dryness monitoring to provide clear guidance on appropriate implementation of these indices over different eco‐systems through in‐depth analysis of their advantages and constraints. Spatio‐temporal patterns of surface drought derived by MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)‐based PDI and MPDI are compared against field‐measured soil moisture (SM), rainfall, and regional hydrological conditions. Results indicate that there are significant negative correlations between the PDI, the MPDI, and mean 0–20 cm SM content and rainfall. The PDI and the MPDI provide similar results at the early stage of vegetation growth, but a greater agreement between the drought information extracted by the MPDI and field measurements is observed for vegetated surfaces where the PDI fails. Therefore, it is recommended that PDI be used for bare soil applications, since it does not require calculation of additional information such as the fraction of vegetation which may contain some uncertainties, but the MPDI should be used for vegetated regions.

Integrated use of spatial and semantic relationships for extracting road networks from floating car data

Abstract The update frequency of digital road maps influences the quality of road-dependent services. However, digital road maps surveyed by probe vehicles or extracted from remotely sensed images still have a long updating circle and their cost remain high. With GPS technology and wireless communication technology maturing and their cost decreasing, floating car technology has been used in traffic monitoring and management, and the dynamic positioning data from floating cars become a new data source for updating road maps. In this paper, we aim to update digital road maps using the floating car data from Chinas National Commercial Vehicle Monitoring Platform, and present an incremental road network extraction method suitable for the platforms GPS data whose sampling frequency is low and which cover a large area. Based on both spatial and semantic relationships between a trajectory point and its associated road segment, the method classifies each trajectory point, and then merges every trajectory point into the candidate road network through the adding or modifying process according to its type. The road network is gradually updated until all trajectories have been processed. Finally, this method is applied in the updating process of major roads in North China and the experimental results reveal that it can accurately derive geometric information of roads under various scenes. This paper provides a highly-efficient, low-cost approach to update digital road maps.

Exploration of the spectral space based on vegetation index and albedo for surface drought estimation

In this paper, a simple surface dryness index (Vegetation Condition Albedo Drought Index, VCADI) based on the spectral patterns of surface moisture in two dimensional spectral space of vegetation index versus broadband albedo is suggested. VCADI derived from multi-sources remote sensing data including the Thematic Mapper (TM), the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images are significantly related to field measured soil moisture over different eco-systems. Spatio-temporal patterns of VCADI are further analyzed using time series of MODIS data over Ningxia Huizu Autonomous Region of China. Results indicate that VCADI variations are accordant with regional rainfall dynamics and the index has a potential in drought estimation as a simple satellite derived method completely independent of surface ancillary data.

Satellite remote sensing of groundwater: quantitative modelling and uncertainty reduction using 6S atmospheric simulations

Remote sensing has been successfully used in the exploration of natural resources such as groundwater. Satellite data with different spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics have been evaluated for their potential use in groundwater detection in arid and semi-arid regions. However, distortions and noises caused by the presence of the atmosphere in the radiometric wave transmission become serious impediments for quantitative analysis and measurement work. In the present study, oasis and desert ecotone (ODE), a nonlinear ecological transitional belt, in Qira, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China was selected for this research. The ODE boundary was defined on the basis of widely collected information from the study area, including environmental, sociological and economic data. A model of groundwater level distribution using remote sensing (GLDRS), which empirically relates satellite sensor spectral radiance with groundwater level, is developed via in situ measurement and field examination of soil moisture and groundwater. Next, the second simulation of the satellite signal in the solar spectrum (6S), a code enabling simulations of radiative transfer process on the Sun-target-sensor path, is used to reduce uncertainties in the calculation of groundwater level. Then, groundwater level is evaluated using 6S atmospheric corrected and uncorrected Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM)+ images respectively along with isochronous meteorological information. Greater correspondence between field examined and satellite monitoring data is obtained from 6S atmospheric corrected image (correlation coefficient is 0.94) than from the uncorrected image (correlation coefficient is 0.83).

An Efficient Approach for Automatic Rectangular Building Extraction From Very High Resolution Optical Satellite Imagery

This letter presents a new approach for rapid automatic building extraction from very high resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery. The proposed method conducts building extraction based on distinctive image primitives such as lines and line intersections. The optimized framework consists of three stages: First, a developed edge-preserving bilateral filter is adopted to reduce noise and enhance building edge contrast for preprocessing. Second, a state-of-the-art line segment detector called EDLines is introduced for the real-time accurate extraction of building line segments. Finally, we present a graph search-based perceptual grouping approach to hierarchically group previously detected line segments into candidate rectangular buildings. The recursive process was improved through the efficient examination of geometrical information with line linking and closed contour search, in order to obtain more reasonable omission and commission rate in building contour grouping. Extensive experiments performed on VHR optical QuickBird imageries justify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed linear-time procedure with an overall accuracy of 80.9% and completeness of 87.3%. This method does not require user intervention and thereby has the potential to be adopted in online applications and industrial use in the near future.