The analyses of trends in vegetation dynamics require a profound knowledge of its seasonality. For the determination of the seasonality conventional methods of time series analyses often use a simple averaging of measured values of the identical time in different cycle of the whole time series (e.g. bfast). Then it is assumed that the resulting seasonal portion of a time series is constant and stable for the entire time series. However, analyses of vegetation time series show that trends in vegetation dynamics do not always run steadily, but show structural breaks, especially in regions with high potential for possible landscape changes. For such conversion areas, the assumption of a constant seasonality is not always ensured. The dynamic or variability of the seasonality can have temporal effects by a shift of the start of the season (SOS) or the end of the season (EOS) and therefore also on the length of the vegetation period. To show whether seasonal dynamics can be detected in vegetation time series, two requirements must be fulfilled. (1) High-temporal resolution vegetation information provided for example as MODIS-NDVI. (2) Indicators are needed which allows the description of the variability of seasonality. As a result these metrics allow a better modeling of long-term vegetation dynamics in the trend, taking into account the variability of the seasonality. But at the same time the metrics itself serve as indicators for long term vegetation dynamics. The aim of the present study is to analyse phenological and greenness metrics for the modelling of vegetation dynamics in the nature reserve Konigsbrucker Heide. Detailed analyses of key metrics like SOS and EOS using different metric approaches and interpolation methods are applied and compared. The results show that it is difficult to determine consistent information for example for the trend of single phenology metrics.
The vegetation in the riparian zone of a watercourse influences the water state with multiple factors, first via direct substance discharge and secondly via shadow casting on the water surface. Shadowing directly regulates the solar radiant energy arriving at the water surface. Solar radiation input to aquatic environments is the most important abiotic factor for aquatic flora and fauna habitat development. Thus, to adequately asses the ecological state of water courses it is necessary to quantify the solar surface irradiance E (W/m2) arriving on the water surface. When estimating the solar surface irradiance the complex coherence between incoming solar radiation, atmospheric influences, and spatial-temporal geometries need to be investigated. This work established a work flow to compute the solar surface irradiance for water bodies using different remote sensing data. The work flow was tested on regional level for a section of the river Freiberger Mulde, Saxony, for the year 2016. Product of the calculations is a map visualising the annual sum of the solar surface irradiance (kWh/m2) arriving on the Freiberger Mulde water surface and the surrounding terrain. Based on these information bio-hydrological issues can be further examinated.
KEYWORDS: Backscatter, Synthetic aperture radar, Temperature metrology, Radar, Remote sensing, Soil science, Agriculture, Geographic information systems, Data acquisition, Data modeling
TerraSAR-X images have been tested for agricultural fields of corn and wheat. The main purpose was to evaluate the
impact of daily temperatures in crop development to optimize climate induced factors on the plant growth anomalies.
The results are completed by utilizing Geographic Information Science, e.g. tools of ArcMap 10.3.1 and databases of
ground truth and meteorological information. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from German Aerospace Center
(DLR) are acquired and the field survey datasets are sampled, each per month for three years (2010-2012) but only for
the crop seasons (April-October). Correlation between SAR images and farmland anomalies is investigated in
accordance with daily heat accumulations and a comparison of the three years’ SAR backscatter signatures is explained
for corn and wheat. Finding the influence of daily temperatures on crops and hence on the TerraSAR-X backscatter is
developed by Growing Degree Days (GDD) which appears to be the most suitable parameter for this purpose.
Observation of GDD permits that the coolest year was 2010, either rest of the years were warmer and GDD accumulated
in 2011 was higher as compared to that of 2012 in the first half of the year, however 2012 had rather more heat
accumulation in the second half of the year. SAR backscatter from farmland depicts the crop development stages which
depend upon the time when satellite captures data during the crop season. It varies with different development stages of
crop plants. Backscatter of each development stage changes as the roughness and the moisture content (dielectric
property) of the plants changes and local temperature directly impacts crop growth and hence the development stages.
Nowadays remote sensing is a well-established method and technique of providing data. The current development shows the availability of systems with very high geometric resolution for the monitoring of vegetation. At the same time, however, the value of temporally high-resolution data is underestimated, particularly in applications focusing on the detection of short-term changes. These can be natural processes like natural disasters as well as changes caused by anthropogenic interventions. These include economic activities such as forestry, agriculture or mining but also processes which are intended to convert previously used areas into natural or near-natural surfaces. The K¨onigsbr¨ucker Heide is a former military training site located about 30 km north of the Saxon state capitol Dresden. After the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in 1992 and after nearly 100 years of military use this site was declared as nature reserve in 1996. The management of the whole protection area is implemented in three different management zone. Based on MODIS-NDVI time series between 2000 and 2016 different developments are apparent in the nature development zone and the zone of controlled succession. Nevertheless, the analyses also show that short-term changes, so called breaks in the vegetation development cannot be described using linear trend models. The complete understanding of vegetation trends is only given if discontinuities in vegetation development are considered. Structural breaks in the NDVI time series can be found simultaneously in the whole study area. Hence it can be assumed that these breaks have a more natural character, caused for example by climatic conditions like temperature or precipitation. Otherwise, especially in the zone of controlled succession structural breaks can be detected which cannot be traced back to natural conditions. Final analyses of the spatial distribution of breakpoints as well as their frequency depending on the respective protection zone allow a detailed view to vegetation development in the K¨onigsbr¨ucker Heide.
KEYWORDS: Vegetation, Temporal resolution, Time series analysis, Remote sensing, Process modeling, Signal processing, Modeling, Agriculture, Knowledge management, Environmental monitoring
The value of remote sensing data is particularly evident where an areal monitoring is needed to provide information on the earth’s surface development. The use of temporal high resolution time series data allows for detecting short-term changes. In Kogi State in Nigeria different vegetation types can be found. As the major population in this region is living in rural communities with crop farming the existing vegetation is slowly being altered. The expansion of agricultural land causes loss of natural vegetation, especially in the regions close to the rivers which are suitable for crop production. With regard to these facts, two questions can be dealt with covering different aspects of the development of vegetation in the Kogi state, the determination and evaluation of the general development of the vegetation in the study area (trend estimation) and analyses on a short-term behavior of vegetation conditions, which can provide information about seasonal effects in vegetation development. For this purpose, the GIMMS-NDVI data set, provided by the NOAA, provides information on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in a geometric resolution of approx. 8 km. The temporal resolution of 15 days allows the already described analyses. For the presented analysis data for the period 1981-2012 (31 years) were used. The implemented workflow mainly applies methods of time series analysis. The results show that in addition to the classical seasonal development, artefacts of different vegetation periods (several NDVI maxima) can be found in the data. The trend component of the time series shows a consistently positive development in the entire study area considering the full investigation period of 31 years. However, the results also show that this development has not been continuous and a simple linear modeling of the NDVI increase is only possible to a limited extent. For this reason, the trend modeling was extended by procedures for detecting structural breaks in the time series.
The European Water Framework Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC) is a mandatory agreement that guides the member states of the European Union in the field of water policy to fulfill the requirements for reaching the aim of the good ecological status of water bodies. In the last years several workflows and methods were developed to determine and evaluate the characteristics and the status of the water bodies. Due to their area measurements remote sensing methods are a promising approach to constitute a substantial additional value. With increasing availability of optical and radar remote sensing data the development of new methods to extract information from both types of remote sensing data is still in progress. Since most limitations of these data sets do not agree the fusion of both data sets to gain data with higher spectral resolution features the potential to obtain additional information in contrast to the separate processing of the data. Based thereupon this study shall research the potential of multispectral and radar remote sensing data and the potential of their fusion for the assessment of the parameters of water body structure. Due to the medium spatial resolution of the freely available multispectral Sentinel-2 data sets especially the surroundings of the water bodies and their land use are part of this study. SAR data is provided by the Sentinel-1 satellite. Different image fusion methods are tested and the combined products of both data sets are evaluated afterwards. The evaluation of the single data sets and the fused data sets is performed by means of a maximum-likelihood classification and several statistical measurements. The results indicate that the combined use of different remote sensing data sets can have an added value.
In 1989 about 1.5 million soldiers were stationed in Germany. With the political changes in the early 1990s a substantial decline of the staff occurred on currently 200,000 employees in the armed forces and less than 60,000 soldiers of foreign forces. These processes entailed conversions of large areas not longer used for military purposes, especially in the new federal states in the eastern part of Germany. One of these conversion areas is the former military training area Konigsbruck in Saxony. For the analysis of vegetation and its development over time, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) has established as one of the most important indicators. In this context, the questions arise whether MODIS NDVI products are suitable to determine conversion processes on former military territories like military training areas and what development processes occurred in the ”Konigsbrucker Heide” in the past 15 years. First, a decomposition of each series in its trend component, seasonality and the remaining residuals is performed. For the trend component different regression models are tested. Statistical analysis of these trends can reveal different developments, for example in nature development zones (without human impact) and zones of controlled succession. The presented workflow is intended to show the opportunity to support a high temporal resolution monitoring of conversion areas such as former military training areas.
KEYWORDS: Modeling, LIDAR, Data modeling, Process modeling, Data conversion, Statistical modeling, Data processing, Magnetism, Particles, Visualization
Currently in archaeological studies digital elevation models are mainly used especially in terms of shaded reliefs for the prospection of archaeological sites. Hesse (2010) provides a supporting software tool for the determination of local relief models during the prospection using LiDAR scans. Furthermore the search for relicts from WW2 is also in the focus of his research. In James et al. (2006) the determined contour lines were used to reconstruct locations of archaeological artefacts such as buildings. This study is much more and presents an innovative workflow of determining historical high resolution terrain surfaces using recent high resolution terrain models and sedimentological expert knowledge. Based on archaeological field studies (Franconian Saale near Bad Neustadt in Germany) the sedimentological analyses shows that archaeological interesting horizon and geomorphological expert knowledge in combination with particle size analyses (Koehn, DIN ISO 11277) are useful components for reconstructing surfaces of the early Middle Ages. Furthermore the paper traces how it is possible to use additional information (extracted from a recent digital terrain model) to support the process of determination historical surfaces. Conceptual this research is based on methodology of geomorphometry and geo-statistics. The basic idea is that the working procedure is based on the different input data. One aims at tracking the quantitative data and the other aims at processing the qualitative data. Thus, the first quantitative data were available for further processing, which were later processed with the qualitative data to convert them to historical heights. In the final stage of the workflow all gathered information are stored in a large data matrix for spatial interpolation using the geostatistical method of Kriging. Besides the historical surface, the algorithm also provides a first estimation of accuracy of the modelling. The presented workflow is characterized by a high flexibility and the opportunity to include new available data in the process at any time.
Terrain surfaces conserve human activities in terms of textures and structures. With reference to archaeological questions, the geological archive is investigated by means of models regarding anthropogenic traces. In doing so, the high-resolution digital terrain model is of inestimable value for the decoding of the archive. The evaluation of these terrain models and the reconstruction of historical surfaces is still a challenging issue. Due to the data collection by means of LiDAR systems (light detection and ranging) and despite their subsequent pre-processing and filtering, recently anthropogenic artefacts are still present in the digital terrain model.
Analysis have shown that elements, such as contour lines and channels, can well be extracted from a high-resolution digital terrain model. This way, channels in settlement areas show a clear anthropogenic character. This fact can also be observed for contour lines. Some contour lines representing a possibly natural ground surface and avoid anthropogenic artefacts. Comparable to channels, noticeable patterns of contour lines become visible in areas with anthropogenic artefacts. The presented workflow uses functionalities of ArcGIS and the programming language R.1 The method starts with the extraction of contour lines from the digital terrain model. Through macroscopic analyses based on geomorphological expert knowledge, contour lines are selected representing the natural geomorphological character of the surface. In a first step, points are determined along each contour line in regular intervals. This points and the corresponding height information which is taken from an original digital terrain model is saved as a point cloud. Using the programme library gstat, a variographic analysis and the use of a Kriging-procedure based on this follow.2-4
The result is a digital terrain model filtered considering geomorphological expert knowledge showing no human degradation in terms of artefacts, preserving the landscape-genetic character and can be called a prehistoric terrain model.
It seems to be obvious that precipitation has a major impact on greening during the rainy season in semi-arid regions. First results1 imply a strong dependence of NDVI on rainfall. Therefore it will be necessary to consider specific rainfall events besides the known ordinary annual cycle. Based on this fundamental idea, the paper will introduce the development of a rain adjusted vegetation index (RAVI). The index is based on the enhancement of the well-known normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI2) by means of TAMSAT rainfall data and includes a 3-step procedure of determining RAVI. Within the first step both time series were analysed over a period of 29 years to find best cross correlation values between TAMSAT rainfall and NDVI signal itself. The results indicate the strongest correlation for a weighted mean rainfall for a period of three months before the corresponding NDVI value. Based on these results different mathematical models (linear, logarithmic, square root, etc.) are tested to find a functional relation between the NDVI value and the 3-months rainfall period before (0.8). Finally, the resulting NDVI-Rain-Model can be used to determine a spatially individual correction factor to transform every NDVI value into an appropriate rain adjusted vegetation index (RAVI).
KEYWORDS: Vegetation, Statistical analysis, Agriculture, Statistical modeling, Data modeling, Analytical research, Time series analysis, Image segmentation, Visualization, Process modeling
Quantitative analysis of trends in vegetation cover, especially in Kogi state, Nigeria, where agriculture plays a major role in the region’s economy, is very important for detecting long-term changes in the phenological behavior of vegetation over time. This study employs the use of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) [global inventory modeling and mapping studies 3g (GIMMS)] data from 1983 to 2011 with detailed methodological and statistical approach for analyzing trends within the NDVI time series for four selected locations in Kogi state. Based on the results of a comprehensive study of seasonalities in the time series, the original signals are decomposed. Different linear regression models are applied and compared. In order to detect structural changes over time a detailed breakpoint analysis is performed. The quality of linear modeling is evaluated by means of statistical analyses of the residuals. Standard deviations of the regressions are between 0.015 and 0.021 with R2 of 0.22–0.64. Segmented linear regression modeling is performed for improvement and a decreasing standard deviation of 33%–40% (0.01–0.013) and R2 up to 0.82 are obtained. The approach used in this study demonstrates the added value of long-term time series analyses of vegetation cover for the assessment of agricultural and rural development in the Guinea savannah region of Kogi state, Nigeria.
The availability of newly generated data from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) covering the last three decades has broaden our understanding of vegetation dynamics (greening) from global to regional scale through quantitative analysis of seasonal trends in vegetation time series and climatic variability especially in the Guinea savannah region of Nigeria where greening trend is inconsistent. Due to the impact of changes in global climate and sustainability of means of human livelihood, increasing interest on vegetation productivity has become important. The aim of this study is to examine association between NDVI and rainfall using remotely sensed data, since vegetation dynamics (greening) has a high degree of association with weather parameters. This study therefore analyses trends in regional vegetation dynamics in Kogi state, Nigeria using bi-monthly AVHRR GIMMS 3g (Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies) data and TAMSAT (Tropical Applications of Meteorology Satellite) monthly data both from 1983 to 2011 to identify changes in vegetation greenness over time. Analysis of changes in the seasonal variation of vegetation greenness and climatic drivers was conducted for selected locations to further understand the causes of observed interannual changes in vegetation dynamics. For this study, Mann-Kendall (MK) monotonic method was used to analyse long-term inter-annual trends of NDVI and climatic variable. The Theil-Sen median slope was used to calculate the rate of change in slopes between all pair wise combination and then assessing the median over time. Trends were also analysed using a linear model method, after seasonality had been removed from the original NDVI and rainfall data. The result of the linear model are statistically significant (p <0.01) in all the study location which can be interpreted as increase in vegetation trend over time (greening). Also the result of the NDVI trend analysis using Mann-Kendall test shows an increasing (i.e. positive) trend in the time series. The significance of the result was tested using Kendall's tau rank correlation coefficient and the results were significant. Finally the NDVI data and TAMSAT data were analysed together in order to describe the relationship between both values. Although, increase in rainfall over the last decades enhances vegetation greenness, other factors such as land use change and population density need to be investigated in order to better explain changing trends of vegetation greening for the study area in the future.
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