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The vegetation index-based (VI-based) mixture model is widely used to derive green fractional vegetation cover ( FVC ) from remotely sensed data. Two critical parameters of the model are the vegetation index values of fully-vegetated and bare soil pixels (denoted V x and V n hereafter). These are commonly empirically set according to spatial and/or temporal statistics. The uncertainty and difficulty of accurately determining V x and V n in many ecosystems limits the accuracy of resultant FVC estimates and hence reduces the utility of VI-based mixture model for FVC estimation. Here, an improved method called MultiVI is developed to quantitatively estimate V x and V n from angular VI acquired at two viewing angles. The directional VI is calculated from the MODIS Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)/Albedo product (MCD43A1) data. The results of simulated evaluation with 10% added noise show that the root mean square deviation (RMSD) of FVC is approximately 0.1 (the valid FVC range is [0, 1]). Direct evaluation against 34 globally-distributed FVC measurements from VAlidation of Land European Remote sensing Instruments (VALERI) sites during 2000 to 2014 demonstrated that the accuracy of MultiVI FVC (R 2  = 0.866, RMSD = 0.092) exceeds than from SPOT/VEGETATION bioGEOphysical product version 1 (GEOV1) FVC (R 2  = 0.795, RMSD = 0.159). MultiVI FVC also exhibits higher correlation to the VALERI reference FVC than does the MODIS fraction of photosynthetically active radiation product (MCD15A2H; R 2 is 0.696). A key advantage of the MultiVI method is obvious in areas where fully-vegetated and/or bare soil pixels do not exist in moderate-coarse spatial resolution imagery when compared to the conventional VI-based mixture modelling. The MultiVI method can be flexibly implemented over regional or global scales to monitor FVC , with maps of V x and V n generated as two important byproducts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of highly dense vegetation (NDVI v ) and bare soil (NDVI s ), identified as the key parameters for Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) estimation, are usually obtained with empirical statistical methods However, it is often difficult to obtain reasonable values of NDVI v and NDVI s at a coarse resolution (e.g., 1 km), or in arid, semiarid, and evergreen areas. The uncertainty of estimated NDVI s and NDVI v can cause substantial errors in FVC estimations when a simple linear mixture model is used. To address this problem, this paper proposes a physically based method. The leaf area index (LAI) and directional NDVI are introduced in a gap fraction model and a linear mixture model for FVC estimation to calculate NDVI v and NDVI s . The model incorporates the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) model parameters product (MCD43B1) and LAI product, which are convenient to acquire. Two types of evaluation experiments are designed 1) with data simulated by a canopy radiative transfer model and 2) with satellite observations. The root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) for simulated data is less than 0.117, depending on the type of noise added on the data. In the real data experiment, the RMSD for cropland is 0.127, for grassland is 0.075, and for forest is 0.107. The experimental areas respectively lack fully vegetated and non-vegetated pixels at 1 km resolution. Consequently, a relatively large uncertainty is found while using the statistical methods and the RMSD ranges from 0.110 to 0.363 based on the real data. The proposed method is convenient to produce NDVI v and NDVI s maps for FVC estimation on regional and global scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) represents the planar fraction of the land-surface covered by green foliage, and its dynamics are important for an enhanced understanding of ecosystems especially how they respond to climate change. The lack of global near-real-time satellite-based products restricts the application of FVC in ecosystem modeling, climate change, and vegetation phenology studies. Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft provides daily spectral reflectance of the entire sunlit Earth in the near Hotspot directions. Hotspot observations (i.e., observation in Hotspot direction which has the peak backscattering reflected radiation) with only sunlit vegetation and sunlit soil components are more suitable for FVC estimation with a two-endmember mixture model as such observations exclude contributions from shaded vegetation and soil components. In this study, an algorithm for retrieving quasi-daily FVC from EPIC based on two-endmember mixture and gap fraction models is developed. Analyses of its performance predict that the average Root-Mean-Square Deviations (RMSDs) of retrievals in FVC units is below 0.050 when compared with reference values. The RMSD is 0.043 when compared to field-based Landsat reference FVC, which confirms lower retrieval uncertainty than FVC retrieved from Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellite products such as MODIS, VIIRS, and GEOV2 with RMSDs 0.049– 0.087. The comparison analyses suggest a good consistency between EPIC FVC and FVC products from LEO and geostationary (GEO) satellites sensor, SEVIRI, with RMSD values less than 0.129. EPIC allows for quasi-daily FVC estimation across the global terrestrial surface at 10 km resolution, which is an important development for numerous biophysical applications. • Develop a method for quasi-daily Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) estimation. • FVC derived from DSCOVR EPIC at Sun-Earth L1 for global monitoring. • Using hotspot observations to avoid shadow effects and yield more accurate FVC. • EPIC FVC has a good consistency with products from MODIS, VIIRS, GEOV2, and LSA. • EPIC FVC benefits global biophysical applications which need vegetation dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image dehazing has always been a challenging topic in image processing. The development of deep learning methods, especially the generative adversarial networks (GAN), provides a new way for image dehazing. In recent years, many deep learning methods based on GAN have been applied to image dehazing. However, GAN has two problems in image dehazing. Firstly, For haze image, haze not only reduces the quality of the image but also blurs the details of the image. For GAN network, it is difficult for the generator to restore the details of the whole image while removing the haze. Secondly, GAN model is defined as a minimax problem, which weakens the loss function. It is difficult to distinguish whether GAN is making progress in the training process. Therefore, we propose a guided generative adversarial dehazing network (GGADN). Different from other generation adversarial networks, GGADN adds a guided module on the generator. The guided module verifies the network of each layer of the generator. At the same time, the details of the map generated by each layer are strengthened. Network training is based on the pre-trained VGG feature model and L1-regularized gradient prior which is developed by new loss function parameters. From the dehazing results of synthetic images and real images, the proposed method is better than the state-of-the-art dehazing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We performed a detailed analysis of Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) spectral data. We found that the vector composed of blue and near‐infrared (NIR) reflectance follows a counterclockwise closed‐loop trajectory from 0 to 24 UTC as Earth rotates. This nonlinear relationship was not observed by any other satellites due to limited spatial or temporal coverage of either low Earth orbit or geostationary satellites. We found that clouds play an important role in determining the nonlinear relationship in addition to the well‐known cloud‐free land‐ocean reflectance contrast in the two bands. The nonlinear relationship is the result of three factors: (1) a much larger cloud‐free land‐ocean contrast in the NIR band compared to the blue band, (2) significantly larger difference between cloudy land and cloudy ocean reflectance in the NIR band compared to the blue band, and (3) the periodic variation of fractions of clear land, clear ocean, cloudy land, and cloudy ocean in the sunlit hemisphere as Earth rotates. We found that the green vegetation contributes significantly to the NIR global average reflectance when the South and North Americas appear and disappear in the EPIC's field of view. The blue and NIR relationship can be useful for exoplanet research. Clouds impose a strong impact on global spectral reflectance, and the reflectance response to a change in cloud cover depends on whether the change is over land or over the ocean. On average, an increase of 0.1 in cloud coverage will lead to a 7% increase in spectrally integrated global average reflectance. Key Points: Blue and NIR reflectance relationship from EPIC and clouds play an important role in determining such relationshipThe response of the global reflectance to a change in cloud fraction is quantifiedThe blue and NIR relationship can be useful for exoplanet research [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vegetation cover fraction (fCover) and related quantities are basic yet critical vegetation structure variables in various disciplines and applications. Ground- and aerial-based proximal and remote sensing techniques have been widely adapted across multiple spatial extents. However, the definitions of fCover-related nomenclatures have not yet been fully standardized, leading to confusing terms and making comparing historic measures difficult. With the issues potentially arising from an increasing diversity of fCover and related quantities estimation methods and corresponding uncertainties, there is also a growing need to spread knowledge on the current advances, challenges, and perspectives, especially in the context of no such existing review for ground- and aerial- based estimation. This paper provides the current knowledge mainly concerning passive image-based methods and active light detection and ranging (LiDAR) -based methods. We first harmonized the definitions of fCover and its related quantities (e.g., effective canopy cover, crown cover, stratified vegetation cover, and canopy fraction). Secondly, the typical applications of fCover and related quantities over a range of scales, fields, and ecosystems were summarized. Thirdly yet importantly, we offered a comprehensive review of traditional non-imaging methods, image-based methods (e.g., segmentation, unmixing, and spectral retrieval), point cloud-based methods (e.g., rasterization), and LiDAR return-based methods (e.g., return number index and return intensity retrieval) across different platforms (i.e., ground, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and airplane). Our investigation of fCover and related quantities estimation touches upon various vegetation ecosystems, including agriculture cropland, grassland, wetland, and forest. Finally, the current challenges and future directions were discussed, such as image signal processing under complex heterogeneous surfaces and stratified cover and non-photosynthesis cover retrieval. We, therefore, expect that this review may offer an insight into fCover and related quantities estimation and serve as a reference for remote sensing scientists, agronomists, silviculturists, and ecologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is hard for current time series reconstruction methods to achieve the balance of high-precision time series reconstruction and explanation of the model mechanism. The goal of this paper is to improve the reconstruction accuracy with a well-explained time series model. Thus, we developed a function-based model, the CCTM (Continuous Change Tracker Model) model, that can achieve high precision in time series reconstruction by tracking the time series variation rate. The goal of this paper is to provide a new solution for high-precision time series reconstruction and related applications. To test the reconstruction effects, the model was applied to four types of datasets: normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), gross primary productivity (GPP), leaf area index (LAI), and MODIS surface reflectance (MSR). Several new observations are as follows. First, the CCTM model is well explained and based on the second-order derivative theorem, which divides the yearly time series into four variation types including uniform variations, decelerated variations, accelerated variations, and short-periodical variations, and each variation type is represented by a designed function. Second, the CCTM model provides much better reconstruction results than the Harmonic model on the NDVI, GPP, MSR, and LAI datasets for the seasonal segment reconstruction. The combined use of the Savitzky–Golay filter and the CCTM model is better than the combinations of the Savitzky–Golay filter with other models. Third, the Harmonic model has the best trend-fitting ability on the yearly time series dataset, with the highest R-Square and the lowest RMSE among the four function fitting models. However, with seasonal piecewise fitting, the four models all achieved high accuracy, and the CCTM performs the best. Fourth, the CCTM model should also be applied to time series image compression, two compression patterns with 24 coefficients and 6 coefficients respectively are proposed. The daily MSR dataset can achieve a compression ratio of 15 by using the 6-coefficients method. Finally, the CCTM model also has the potential to be applied to change detection, trend analysis, and phenology and seasonal characteristics extractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat quality is an important indicator for evaluating the biodiversity provided by ecosystem. Estimating and scenario-simulating the dynamic evolution and future development trends of habitat quality under the influence of land-use change is significant in regional biodiversity conservation, formulating land-use planning, and maintaining the ecological environmental sustainability. In this article, we included the Huaihe River Economic Belt as the area of study because of its vital location in China and applied the CA–Markov and InVEST models to analyze the spatio-temporal evolution of habitat quality and to simulate the future development trends of habitat quality under three different land-use scenarios: fast urban growth scenario, farmland conservation-oriented scenario, and ecological conservation-oriented scenario. The results showed that the land-use change in the Huaihe River Economic Belt was mostly represented by the continuous increase of the built-up area, whereas other land types all declined in area from 1995 to 2015. The land-use changes under these three abovementioned alternative future scenarios with different development orientations were considerably different. The built-up area has been shown to expand rapidly to occupy other land types on a large scale under the fast urban growth scenario. Urban land increased slightly and a large area of rural residential land would be converted into farmland under the farmland conservation-oriented scenario. The built-up area and farmland might decrease while woodland, grassland and water would increase in extent of areas under the ecological conservation-oriented scenario. Habitat quality has been shown to be generally poor, continuing to decline from 1995 to 2015, while its spatial distribution was higher in the southwest and northeast areas and lower in the central regions. The future habitat quality would display a downward trend under the fast urban growth and farmland conservation-oriented scenarios with a further deterioration of the ecological environment, while the ecological conservation-oriented scenario predicted the converse trend that the ecological environment would be improved productively. This study may be useful for understanding the impact of land-use dynamics on biodiversity. The research results can provide a scientific basis for the decision-makers to formulate biodiversity conservation and land management policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continual development of deep learning, the image processing in Internet of Things is the key technology. Nevertheless, many deep learning methods cannot deal with the special needs of Internet of Things, for example, the Internet of vehicles and ships for the traffic haze image. Particularly, haze removal in the water area, because of the influence of water vapor, is more difficult than that in the ordinary scene. And the dehazing of water area has practical value in shipping and aerial photography. Sensible dehazing effect can even ensure the safety of navigation. In this paper, a compensation textures dehazing method is presented for water alike scene. The motivation of this paper comes from the following observations. Dark channel haze removal method has a very real dehazing effect for ordinary scenes. However, due to the principle of the dark channel method, this dehazing method has a large deviation in the water alike area. Therefore, based on the classical dark channel method, this paper proposes three innovations. First, a dynamic priority method is designed. This method can calculate the priority order of patches according to the characteristics of the processed subject. Second, a compensation textures method is designed, which can compensate the special area according to the proposed priority method. Third, a new haze removal method is designed, which can effectively remove the haze of water area according to the proposed compensation textures method. The results of visual and quality experiment show that proposed method has a state-of-the-art dehazing result in the water alike area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate estimates of fractional vegetation cover (FVC) using remotely sensed images collected using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer considerable potential for field measurement. However, most existing methods, which were originally designed to extract FVC from ground-based remotely sensed images (acquired at a few meters above the ground level), cannot be directly used to process aerial images because of the presence of large quantities of mixed pixels. To alleviate the negative effects of mixed pixels, we proposed a new method for decomposing the Gaussian mixture model and estimating FVC, namely, the half-Gaussian fitting method for FVC estimation (HAGFVC). In this method, the histograms of pure vegetation pixels and pure background pixels are firstly fit using two half-Gaussian distributions in the Commission Internationale d’Eclairage (CIE) L*a*b* color space. Then, a threshold is determined based on the parameters of Gaussian distribution to generate a more accurate FVC estimate. We acquired low-altitude remote-sensing (LARS) images in three vegetative growth stages at different flight altitudes over a cornfield. The HAGFVC method successfully fitted the half-Gaussian distributions and obtained stable thresholds for FVC estimation. The results indicate that the HAGFVC method can be used to effectively and accurately derive FVC images, with a small mean bias error (MBE) and with root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 0.04 in all cases. Comparatively, other methods we tested performed poorly (RMSE of up to 0.36) because of the abundance of mixed pixels in LARS images, especially at high altitudes above ground level (AGL) or in the case of moderate vegetation coverage. The results demonstrate the importance of developing image-processing methods that specially account for mixed pixels for LARS images. Simulations indicated that the theoretical accuracy (no errors in fitting the half-Gaussian distributions) of the HAGFVC method reflected an RMSE of less than 0.07. Additionally, this method provides a useful approach to efficiently estimating FVC by using LARS images over large areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) absorbed by vegetation have been successfully generated from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data since early 2000. As the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) has inherited the scientific role of MODIS, and the development of a continuous, consistent, and well-characterized VIIRS LAI/FPAR data set is critical to continue the MODIS time series. In this paper, we build the radiative transfer-based VIIRS-specific lookup tables by achieving minimal difference with the MODIS data set and maximal spatial coverage of retrievals from the main algorithm. The theory of spectral invariants provides the configurable physical parameters, i.e., single scattering albedos (SSAs) that are optimized for VIIRS-specific characteristics. The effort finds a set of smaller red-band SSA and larger near-infrared-band SSA for VIIRS compared with the MODIS heritage. The VIIRS LAI/FPAR is evaluated through comparisons with one year of MODIS product in terms of both spatial and temporal patterns. Further validation efforts are still necessary to ensure the product quality. Current results, however, imbue confidence in the VIIRS data set and suggest that the efforts described here meet the goal of achieving the operationally consistent multisensor LAI/FPAR data sets. Moreover, the strategies of parametric adjustment and LAI/FPAR evaluation applied to SNPP-VIIRS can also be employed to the subsequent Joint Polar Satellite System VIIRS or other instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and efficient in situ measurement methods of leaf area index (LAI) and leaf angle distribution (LAD) are needed to estimate the fluxes of water and energy in agricultural settings. However, available methods: to estimate these two parameters, especially LAD, are limited. In this study, we propose a field measurement method using multi-angular digital images to estimate LAI and LAD simultaneously from the area proportions of: (i) sunlit soil; (ii) sunlit leaves; (iii) shaded soil; and (iv) shaded leaves. A new expression of the fraction of sunlit leaves is developed based on the radiative transfer theory. Coupling the measured and modeled fractions with an optimization scheme, LAI and the LAD parameters are derived from inverting a fractional model of sunlit and shaded leaves and soil. Through four tests using simulated scenes and in situ measurements for row crops, it is determined that our method performs well. The absolute error of LAI estimation is less than 0.1 when LAI is low (i.e., <1.2), and the absolute deviations of LAI estimates are approximately 0.5 when the reference LAI is 3.5. The estimation errors of LAI and the G function (a representative of LAD which quantifies the projection of unit foliage area) for in situ measurements are respectively less than 0.2 and 0.06 in general. In addition, the accuracy of estimation is even higher when leaves are simulated as randomly distributed disks or observations from multiple azimuth planes are used. One of the most interesting features of this method is its ability to estimate reasonable LAD directly from the fractions of sunlit and shaded leaves, even when LAI is high (i.e., >3), so little background soil is seen. The sensitivity and uncertainty analysis is consistent with the estimation errors. Theoretically, the application of this method is not limited to row crops or to field measurement, as the derived formulae of sunlit and shaded components can be used for other types of vegetation by introducing the clumping index and can be used in the modeling of canopy vegetation parameters (e.g., canopy reflectance). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scale effect, which is caused by a combination of model nonlinearity and surface heterogeneity, has been of interest to the remote sensing community for decades. However, there is no current analysis of scale effect in the ground-based indirect measurement of leaf area index (LAI), where model nonlinearity and surface heterogeneity also exist. This paper examines the scale effect on the indirect measurement of LAI. We built multiscale data sets based on realistic scenes and field measurements. We then implemented five representative methods of indirect LAI measurement at scales (segment lengths) that range from meters to hundreds of meters. The results show varying degrees of deviation and fluctuation that exist in all five methods when the segment length is shorter than 20 m. The retrieved LAI from either Beer's law or the gap-size distribution method shows a decreasing trend with increasing segment lengths. The length at which the LAI values begin to stabilize is about a full period of row in row crops and 100 m in broadleaf or coniferous forests. The impacts of segment length on the finite-length averaging method, the combination of gap-size distribution and finite-length methods, and the path-length distribution method are relatively small. These three methods stabilize at the segment scale longer than 20 m in all scenes. We also find that computing the average LAI of all of the short segment lengths, which is commonly done, is not as good as merging these short segments into a longer one and computing the LAI value of the merged one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple radiative transfer model based on spectral invariant properties (SIP). The canopy structure parameters, including the leaf angle distribution and multi-angular clumping index, are explicitly described in the SIP model. The SIP model has been evaluated on its bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) in the angular space at the radiation transfer model intercomparison platform, and in the spectrum space by the PROSPECT+SAIL (PROSAIL) model. The simulations of BRF by SIP agreed well with the reference values in both the angular space and spectrum space, with a root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of 0.006. When compared with the widely-used Soil-Canopy Observation of Photochemistry and Energy fluxes (SCOPE) model on fPAR, the RMSE was 0.006 and the R2 was 0.99, which shows a high accuracy. This study also suggests the newly proposed vegetation index, the near-infrared (NIR) reflectance of vegetation (NIRv), was a good linear approximation of the canopy structure parameter, the directional area scattering factor (DASF), with an R2 of 0.99. NIRv was not influenced much by the soil background contribution, but was sensitive to the leaf inclination angle. The sensitivity of NIRv to canopy structure and the robustness of NIRv to the soil background suggest NIRv is a promising index in future biophysical variable estimations with the support of the SIP model, especially for the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) observations near the hot spot directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]