ASPRS

PE&RS August 2002

VOLUME 68, NUMBER 8
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING

Peer-Reviewed Articles

801 Effects of Sensor Resolution on Mapping In-Stream Habitats
Carl J. Legleiter, W. Andrew Marcus, and Rick L. Lawrence

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Effects of spatial, spectral, and radiometric resolution on remote mapping of fourth-order in-stream habitats were evaluated by comparing hyperspectral imagery to simulated multispectral data. Spectral resolution was more important than spatial or radiometric resolution in improving classification accuracies, although overall accuracies never exceeded 62 percent. Overall accuracies were significantly greater for (1) hyperspectral data (7.2 percent) compared to simulated multispectral imagery, (2) 1-m pixels (4.7 percent) compared to 2.5-m pixels, and (3) 11-bit data (0.8 percent) compared to 8-bit data. Higher spatial resolution also enabled removal of transitional areas between units by using interior buffers, improving accuracy by up to 15.6 percent. We believe low overall accuracies were primarily due to the subjective and oversimplified nature of the polygon-based field maps used as ground reference data, and high-resolution imagery might provide a more detailed representation of in-stream habitats. Improved methods of collecting ground reference data, utilizing a point-based approach, should be developed for assessing the accuracy of classifications derived from fine spatial resolution (less than 5-m) imagery.

809 Monitoring Wetland Ditch Water Levels Using Landsat TM and Ground-Based Measurements
D.H.A. Al-Khudhairy, C. Leemhuis, V. Hoffmann, I.M. Shepherd, R. Calaon, J.R. Thompson, H. Gavin, D.L. Gasca-Tucker, G. Zalidis, G. Bilas, and D. Papadimos

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A methodology which makes use of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data to indirectly provide remotely sensed observations of water levels within channels and ditches in wetlands is presented. Using multi-temporal Landsat TM imagery and simultaneous ground-based measurements of water levels, statistical relationships are established between satellite-derived effective wet-ditch widths and measured water levels in the drainage systems of three European wetlands. These relationships can thereafter be used to estimate historical ditch water levels and to monitor contemporary ditch water levels in the wetlands. The study shows that satellite imagery has much to offer in providing a historical perspective of wetland hydrology that otherwise would not be available, in monitoring changes in the hydrological regime of wetlands, and in providing complimentary approaches to field monitoring.

821 Photogrammetric Retrieval of Cloud Advection and Top Height from the Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR)
Jia Zong, Roger Davies, Jan-Peter Muller, and David J. Diner

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This article describes a stereo-photogrammetric method for simultaneous retrieval of cloud advection and cloud-top height fields using multi-angle imagery from the MISR instrument. Although stereoscopy has been widely used for topographic surface retrieval, its application to dynamic cloud elevations has been very limited. This article shows theoretically that, by using multiple MISR camera look angles from satellite altitudes, cloud advection and cloud-top height can be separated stereoscopically, thus enabling their simultaneous retrieval. A completely automatic retrieval algorithm was designed and implemented, including steps for multi-angle image registration on a reference Earth ellipsoid surface, mesoscale cloud advection derivation employing stereoscopic retrieval, and simultaneous stereoscopic reduction of high-resolution cloud-top heights. Before instrument launch, numerical simulations were implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the retrieval, and to derive estimates of the algorithm errors. Since launch, stereo cloud reduction from MISR has been routinely processed for global climatological studies.

831 Testing the Sensitivity of a MODIS-Like Daytime Active Fire Detection Model in Alaska Using NOAA;shAVHRR Infrared Data
C.A. Seielstad, J.P. Riddering, S.R. Brown, L.P. Queen, and W.M. Hao

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A MODIS-like daytime active fire detection model was tested in Alaskan biomes using NOAA-AVHRR infrared data, and its performance was assessed across a range of channel 3 (3.8 ;ZMm) brightness temperature and contextual standard deviation thresholds. Absolute thresholding of channel 3 (T;i3) and the channel 3;sh4 difference (T;i3;i4) was more effective than contextual analysis in minimizing false detections, although detection sensitivity to actual fire pixels was lower. The contextual analysis became more effective in terms of fire detections as the T;i3 and standard deviation thresholds were loosened. However, enhanced fire detection capabilities were achieved at the expense of increased false detections associated primarily with cloud edges. False detections increased exponentially and detections of active fires increased linearly as thresholds were loosened. Furthermore, T;i3 and standard deviation thresholds suggested for the MODIS global fire detection product appear too high for Alaska. An optimal T;i3 threshold between 314K and 315K and a standard deviation threshold between 2.5 and 3.5 are proposed. These results suggest that each biome or region may require different thresholds to optimize algorithm performance, recognizing that optimization of the model depends upon user goals. Effective cloud removal is clearly the most significant issue facing this type of fire detection method.

839 Evaluation of SAR-Optical Imagery Synthesis Techniques in a Complex Coastal Ecosystem
Floyd M. Henderson, Robert Chasan, Jamie Portolese, and Thomas Hart, Jr.

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Coastal areas comprise some of the world's most important and sensitive ecosystems. Although optical remote sensing systems have demonstrated an ability to map land cover in many coastal environments, spectral confusion has also been reported. The parameters of SAR imagery suggest that combinations of SAR and optical data may improve land-cover classification accuracy. Seven satellite SAR data sets were merged with TM data using four techniques. These were tested by classifying 11 upland and wetland land covers in a rapidly urbanizing coastal area of the northeast United States. Not all SAR;shTM combinations bettered the accuracy obtained using TM data alone. In general, simple techniques improved accuracy more than did complex image merge methods. Although one SAR image proved superior overall, improvement in detection accuracy varied among individual land-cover categories and SAR data. The results point to the possible benefits of hierarchical;shlayered classifications.

847 Effects of JPEG Compression on the Accuracy of Photogrammetric Point Determination
Zhilin Li, Xiuxiao Yuan, and Kent W.K. Lam

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An empirical investigation into the effects of JPEG compression on the accuracy of photogrammetric point determination (PPD) is described. A pair of black-and-white aerial photographs of a city, taken at a scale of 1:8000, was selected and scanned at a resolution of 25 ;ZMm. Eighteen image points were measured with the ISDM module of an Intergraph digital photogrammetric workstation (DPW), and the bundle adjustment of a single model was performed using WuCAPS;zS;zG;zP;zS (Wuhan GPS supported bundle block adjustment software). In processing various JPEG compressed images with Q-factors from 1 to 100, the accuracy of the 3D coordinates of the pass points was assessed and compared with that obtained from the original images (i.e., without compression). The empirical results show that, when the compression ratios are under 10, the compressed image is near-lossless. In other words, the visual quality of JPEG compressed images is still excellent and the accuracy of manual image mensuration is essentially not influenced. However, no indication can be found from the results that a compression of 10 is the critical value or the optimum compression level for PPD. Indeed, it is clear that the degradation of accuracy in PPD is almost linear

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