The potential of multi-sensor satellite data for applications in environmental monitoring with special emphasis on land cover mapping, desertification monitoring and fire detection [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Shengli Huang

Huang, Shengli

Informations

• Publié par: ludwig-maximilians-universitat_munchen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

THE POTENTIAL OF MULTI-SENSOR SATELLITE
DATA FOR APPLICATIONS IN ENVIRONMENTAL
MONITORING WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON LAND
COVER MAPPING, DESERTIFICATION MONITORING
AND FIRE DETECTION






Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Fakultät für
Biologie der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München






vorgelegt von







Shengli Huang







Department II – GeoBio-Center
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Großhadener Str. 2
82152 Planegg-Martinsried
Deutschland








































1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Florian Siegert
2. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Diehl

Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 08.04.2005
SUMMARY

Unprecedented pressure on the physical, chemical and biological systems of the Earth results in
environment problems locally and globally, therefore the detection and understanding of ental change based on long-term environmental data is very urgent. In developing
countries/regions, because the natural resources are depleted for development while environmental
awareness is poor, environment is changing faster. The insufficient environmental investment and
sometimes infeasible ground access make the environment information acquisition and update
inflexible through standard methods. With the main advantages of global observation, repetitive
coverage, multispectral sensing and low-cost implementation, satellite remote sensing technology is a
promising tool for monitoring environment, especially in the less developed countries.

Multi-sensor satellite images may provide increased interpretation capabilities and more reliable
results since data with different characteristics are combined and can achieve improved accuracies,
better temporal coverage, and better inference about the environment than could be achieved by the
use of a single sensor alone. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the capability and technique
of the multi-sensor satellite data to monitor the environment in developing countries. Land cover
assessment of Salonga national park in the democratic republic of Congo of Africa, desertification
monitoring in North China and tropical/boreal wildland fire detection in Indonesia/Siberia were
selected as three cases in this study for demonstrating the potential of multi-sensor application to
environment monitoring.

Chapter 2 demonstrates the combination of Landsat satellite images, Global Position System (GPS)
signals, aerial videos and digital photos for assessing the land cover of Salonga national park in
Congo. The purpose was to rapidly assess the current status of Salonga national park, especially its
vegetation, and investigated the possible human impacts by shifting cultivation, logging and mining.
Results show that the forests in the Salonga national park are in very good condition. Most of the area
is covered by undisturbed, pristine evergreen lowland and swamp forests. No logging or mining
activity could be detected.

Chapter 3 demonstrates the one full year time series SPOT VEGETATION with coarse resolution of 1
km and the ASTER images with higher resolution of 15 meters as well as Landsat images for land
2cover mapping optimised for desertification monitoring in North-China. One point six million km
were identified as risk areas of desertification. Results show within a satellite based multi-scale
monitoring system SPOT VEGETATION imagery can be very useful to detect large scale dynamic
environmental changes and desertification processes which then can be analysed in more detail by
high resolution imagery and field surveys.
I Chapter 4 demonstrates the detection of tropical forest fire and boreal forest fire. Firstly, the
ENVISAT ASAR backscatter dynamics and ENVISAT full resolution MERIS characteristics of fire
scars were investigated in Siberian boreal forest, and results show these two sensors are very useful for
fire monitoring and impact assessment. Secondly, the general capability and potential of ENVISAT
multi-sensor of MERIS, AATSR, ASAR as well as NOAA-AVHRR and MODIS for tropical forest
fire event monitoring and impact assessment in tropical Indonesia were investigated, and results show
the capability of ENVISAT to acquire data from different sensors simultaneously or within a short
period of time greatly enhances the possibilities to monitor fire occurrence and assess fire impact.
Finally, the multi-sensor technology was applied to the disastrous boreal forest fire event of 2003
2around East and West Lake Baikal in Siberia, and results show that 202,000 km burnt in 2003 within
2the study area of 1,300,000 km , which is more than the total burnt area between 1996-2002. 71.4% of
the burnt areas were forests, and 11.6% were wetlands or bogs. In total 32.2% of the forest cover has
been burnt at least once from 1996 to 2003, 14% of the area has been affected at least twice by fire.

These demonstrations show that in spite of the two disadvantages of indirect satellite measurements
and the difficulty of detecting the cause of environment change, multi-sensor satellite technology is
very useful in environment monitoring. However more studies on multi-sensor data fusion methods
are needed for integrating the different satellite data from various sources. The lack of personnel
skilled in remote sensing is a severe deficiency in developing countries, so the technology transfer
from the developed countries is needed.














II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


I am very grateful to many individuals who have helped and supported me through my doctoral study
in Munich University (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, LMU). First of all, I would like to
express my thanks to professor Dr. Florian Siegert for advising this thesis and mentoring me
throughout my three years at Munich university and remote sensing solutions Gmbh. Were it not for
his excellent guidance and encouragement, his patience in discussing my questions, his original
suggestions for some solutions during my Ph.D. work, I would not have finished the Ph.D. work
smoothly. His broad knowledge and deep insights have been an important resource to my
accomplishment.

I would like to thank ESA/ESRIN for free ENVISAT data provision in the framework of ENVISAT
AO 689 (08-03/ENVISAT-Siberia), to the EU 5th Framework Programme (INCO-DEV project
STRAPEAT) for field data collection in Indonesia, to European Commission Joint Research Centre
for SPOT VEGETATION data provision. Additionally, thanks to Don Cahoon for providing data for
the comparative assessment of the 1987 fires and Chris Schmullius for providing forest cover maps.

How to thank the many colleagues in the company of remote sensing solutions Gmbh who have
helped me in very substantial ways? Ruth Leska, Andreas Langner, Annette Bechteler, Oelaf Kranz,
Robert Lanz, Stefan Einsiedel, Cornelia Merk, Jukka Miettinen, Michael Schulze-Horsel have helped
me so much in both research work and daily life. In processing data, searching literatures, repairing
hardware/software, visa application, living place searching, they provided unbelievable help in all
aspects. My work and life here in Germany would have been a hundred times harder if not for their
excellent contributions. Special thanks to René Beuchle, who is now in Global Vegetation Monitoring
Unit (GVM) of Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) in Joint Research Centre of the
European Commission (JRC), for his advice and help before he left the company. Thanks also to Dr.
Steffen Kuntz for his initial help when I began the study.

Throughout my time at Munich, I have had several very positive interactions with other scientists who
helped me in project implement, publication cooperation, course training, data dissemination, ground
survey and academic conference. Thanks to all these people: Claudia Roeben (Zoology institute,
Department Biologie II, Munich university, Germany), Claudius Mott (Lehrstuhl für
Landnutzungsplanung und Naturschutz der Technical university Munich, Limnologische Station
Iffeldorf, Germany), Gernot Ruecker (ZEBRIS GbR, Germany), Johann G. Goldammer (The Global
Fire Monitoring Center, Fire Ecology Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany),
Anatoly Sukhinin (Sukachev Institute of Forest Research Akademgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, Russia), Adi
III Jaya ( University of Palangka Raya, Indonesia), Hans-Jurgen STIBIG and Etienne Bartholome (Joint
Research Centre of the European Commission, Italy), Sabrina Bonaventura (Europeau Space Agency,
Italy), Maurizio Santoro (Institute of Geography, Department of Geoinformatics, Friedrich-Schiller-
University Jena, Germany), Andreas Wimmer (Joannum Research, Institute for Digital Image
Processing, Austria), Lenny Christy and Nanang Hayani (Integrated Forest Fire Management Project
(IFFM)/GTZ, I