Overview on Land Cover Monitoring

- Finland

NEESPI Workshop, Tartu, August 25-28, 2010

Tuomas Häme, Research Professor

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

201/09/2010

2

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

VTT IS

The biggest multi-technological applied research organization in Northern Europe

Not-for-profit organization

VTT HAS

Multi-technological R&D covering different fields of technology from electronics to building technology

Clients and partners: industrial and business enterprises, organizations, universities and research institutes

VTT CREATES

New technology and science-based innovations in co-operation with domestic and foreign partners

REMOTE SENSING RESEARCH SINCE 1973

Turnover 245 M€

Personnel 2,700

77% with higher

academic degree

6,200 customers

Established 1942

Controlled by the

Finnish government

(Ministry of

Employment and the

Economy)

VTT has been

granted

ISO9001:2000

certificate.

301/09/2010

Actors

Organization Activity

VTT (gov) Method development for and with

customers with a special reference in

forestry, environment, security, winter

navigation support

Finnish Environment Center SYKE (gov) Land cover, water quality, mainly

operative public services

Finnish Meteorological Institute (gov) Climate related application development,

snow, environment monitoring

Finnish Forest Research Institute (gov) National Forest Inventory

Finnish Geodetic Institute (gov) Land cover, agriculture, forestry

Geological Survey of Finland (gov) Earth exploration applications

University of Helsinki Forestry, land cover

University of East Finland Forestry

Aalto University Snow cover, forest, land cover

Arbonaut Oy (private) Forestry

MosaicMill (private) UAV imaging and image processing

systems

Finnmap Oy (private) Aerial mapping

Blom kartta (private) Aerial mapping

401/09/2010

1.9.2010Ilmatieteen laitos / PowerPoint ohjeistus 4

Assessment of CO2 and methane fluxes

by combining EO, in situ and land cover data

Example on the mapping of CH4 fluxes for northern Eurasia combining satellite

data on snow melt and land cover with model/re-analysis data on near surface

air temperature

High net emission

from wetlands

501/09/2010

1.9.2010Finnish Meteorological Institute 5

ESA GlobSnow SWE product by FMI

Assimilation method combining space-borne microwave radiometer data with:

- In situ weather station observations of snow depth

- Land cover data

Fundamental Climate Data Record for a period of 30 years

Daily/weekly/monthly maps of hemispherical snow cover:

- SWE for the permanent seasonal snow area

- Total snow area and snow melt

Can be applied as one input data source for CO2/CH4 mapping

601/09/2010

Corine Land Cover

Pan-European, homogeneous land cover and use

classification

Financed by European Union via European Environment Agency

Hierarchial classification system, 44 classes at level 3

1. Artificial surfaces

2. Agricultral areas

3. Forests and other seminatural areas

4. Wetlands

5. Water

Technical details

Visual interpretation of satellite images

Minimum Mapping Unit 25 ha

Mapping scale 1:100 000

701/09/2010

Finnish Corine Land Cover

European version does not meet the requirements of

end-users

resolution (MMU), nomenclature

National co-operation

avoid overlapping work, use best available data

Open data policy, freely downloadable

Satellite images

2000: Landsat ETM

2006: IRS LISS, Spot XS

Interpretation

Land cover: estimate variables of vegetation cover from

satellite images

Land use: recode and modify existing digital map data

and registers

Finnish Corine raster classification with 25 m pixel

Arc/Info generalizing macros → European version with

25 ha MMU

801/09/2010

Time-series analysis

Corine is used e.g. to stratify time-series analysis

Example:

NDVI of growing season, Snow Covered Area (SCA) during melting season

Lepsämänjoki drainage basin, Agricultural areas

This information is used in modeling

E.g. hydrological, nutrient leaching, carbon balance modeling

Jan/01 Jan/02 Jan/03 Jan/04 Jan/05 Jan/06 Jan/07 Jan/080

20

40

60

80

100

ND

VI

NDVI obs. 2001-2008 from Paijanne and AgriAreas

NDVI

Jan/01 Jan/02 Jan/03 Jan/04 Jan/05 Jan/06 Jan/07 Jan/080

20

40

60

80

100

SC

A

Julian Date

SCA obs. 2001-2008 from Paijanne and AgriAreas

SCA

901/09/2010

Crown cover (cc)

Close-up view, 20 km x 17 km

Geoland 2 project

EU FP7

1001/09/2010

Forest type incl. unstocked

Close-up view, 20 km x 17 km

1101/09/2010

Landsat 2000

30 m resolutionArea size 12 x 12 km2

Spot 2006

20 m resolution

Clear cut map

2000-2006

Geoland2: AutoChange clear cut map from Sodankylä

1201/09/2010

Weeks 17 … 22

1301/09/2010

Weeks 23 … 28

1401/09/2010

Weeks 29 … 31

1501/09/2010

Radar image mosaic from Finland

1601/09/2010

NewSAR - Processing and Analysis Techniques for Satellite-borne Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radar (SAR)

Pre-Processing Techniques

Ortho-rectification of fully polarimetric SAR imagery

Enables interfacing polarimetric SAR data with common GIS systems

Adapted to ALOS/Palsar and TerraSAR-X data

Analysis Techniques

Fully polarimetric analysis techniques and multi-temporal analysis the most effective techniques for polarimetric SAR

Biomass mapping with new polarisations like circular polarisation

Networking

Co-operation with HUT and Finnish Geodetic Institute

Several user organisations connected

Ready to develop operational applications

1701/09/2010

NewForest – Individual Tree species classification

Spruce

Pan-sharpened GeoEye truecolour image 850 m x 750 m

Classified stem map: pine = green, spruce = blue,

birch = red, aspen = orange, sunlit = yellow

• Classifier trained with 850 training samples, 4 spectral, 1 histogram feature

1801/09/2010

ForSe

Pyramidas - Hierarchical segmentation software

Ikonos-2 image , 1.4 km x 1.0 km

Exploits statistically well defined

measures to extract homogenous

image objects

Extracts several levels of detail in

a single program run

The mean size of the segments is in

the three segmentations:

White borders: 1 ha

White and yellow borders: 0.5 ha

White, yellow + green borders: 0.3 ha

(white lines/dots = reference data)

1901/09/2010

Image series from Enontekiö 28.8. - 28.9.2007

Daily images recorded at high noon

Challenges

Illumination intensity variation -

especially sunny images

Incident light colour balance

variations + trend

Camera colour balance variations

Target movement (wind)

Web camera images

2001/09/2010

Lehdet täysikasvuisia

Kellastuminen alkaa

Variseminen alkaa

Lehdet kellastuneet

Lehdet varisseet

Kartan värien selitykset

Monitoring of seasonal changes

Autumn coloring in September-October 2005

2101/09/2010

Analysis results of

digital ground

photos - use as a

ground reference

for satellite image

analysis

Satellite imageThematic map

Social forest planning

– general principle

Cellular phone

image

2201/09/2010

The SilvaSat concept

Reliable statistical data,

many variables

- expensive, can be unfeasible

to collect

Reliable statistical data

on forest and land cover

- feasible, with

reasonable costs

Maps with

variable or unknown

accuracy

"Wall-to-wall" optical or radar satellite

data - medium to low resolution

SilvaSat – sample of very high

resolution images

Ground measurementsStatistical data

with reduced

field sampling

rate, many

variables,

Including

biomass

Maps with

known and

harmonized

accuracy

Maps with

known and

harmonized

accuracy, many

variables

http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2006/P599.pdf

2301/09/2010

Satellite images with different ground resolution from

Laos

AVNIR

Quickbird-2

Feb 13, 2005

0.5 meter resolution

Kompsat-2 (another location)

Feb12, 2008

Na

tura

l co

lor

Co

lor

infr

are

d

Landsat-5 (GeoCover)

30 meter resolution

AVNIR-2

Feb 3, 2009

10 meter resolution

PALSAR, HV-polarization

AVNIR

Quickbird-2

Feb 13, 2005

0.5 meter resolution

Kompsat-2 (another location)

Feb12, 2008

Na

tura

l co

lor

Co

lor

infr

are

d

Landsat-5 (GeoCover)

30 meter resolution

AVNIR-2

Feb 3, 2009

10 meter resolution

PALSAR, HV-polarization