• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.449-460
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• 2020

Super-resolution is a technique used to reconstruct an image with low-resolution into that of high-resolution. Recently, deep-learning based super resolution has become the mainstream, and applications of these methods are widely used in the remote sensing field. In this paper, we propose a super-resolution method based on the deep back-projection network model to improve the satellite image resolution by the factor of four. In the process, we customized the loss function with the edge loss to result in a more detailed feature of the boundary of each object and to improve the stability of the model training using generative adversarial network based on Wasserstein distance loss. Also, we have applied the detail preserving image down-scaling method to enhance the naturalness of the training output. Finally, by including the modified-residual learning with a panchromatic feature in the final step of the training process. Our proposed method is able to reconstruct fine features and high frequency information. Comparing the results of our method with that of the others, we propose that the super-resolution method improves the sharpness and the clarity of WorldView-3 and KOMPSAT-2 images.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.467-480
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• 2011

Spatial and temporal variabilities of NPP(Net Primary Production) retrieved from two satellite instruments, AVHRR(Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, 1981-2000) and MODIS(MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, 2000-2006), were investigated. The range of mean NPP from A VHRR and MODIS were estimated to be 894-1068 $g{\cdot}C/m^2$/yr and 610-694.90 $g{\cdot}C/m^2$/yr, respectively. The discrepancy of NPP between the two instruments is about 325 $g{\cdot}C/m^2$/yr, and MODIS product is generally closer to the ground measurement than AVHRR despite the limitation in direct comparison such as spatial resolution and vegetation classification. The higher NPP values over South Korea are related to the regions with higher biomass (e.g., mountains) and higher annual temperature. The interannual NPP trends from the two satellite products were computed, and both mean annual trends show continuous NPP increase; 2.14 $g{\cdot}C/m^2$/yr from AVHRR(1981-2000) and 6.08 $g{\cdot}C/m^2$/yr from MODIS (2000-2006) over South Korea. Specifically, the higher increasing trends over the Southwestern region are likely due to the increasing productivity of crop fields from sufficient irrigation and fertilizer use. The retrieved NPP shows a closer relationship between monthly temperature and precipitation, which results in maximum correlation during summer monsoons. The difference in the detection wavelength and model schemes during the retrieval can make a significant difference in the satellite products, and a better accuracy in the meterological and land use data and modeling applications will be necessary to improve the satellite-based NPP data.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.125-137
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• 2008

This research aims to produce basic data for developing habitat suitability models on the breeding sites of Oriental White Storks(Ciconia boyciana) which will be reintroduced to the wild in the future. The habitat characteristics of ten historical nesting sites of the Oriental White Storks at Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in South Korea were analyzed with 1970's land use maps and Landsat MSS. The range of altitude on nesting sites was 40~116.38m. The mean distance from nesting sites to rice fields, to 30m wider river, and to reservoirs was $54.8{\pm}84.48m$, $869.8{\pm}708.01m$, and $1721.2{\pm}906.05m$ respectively. Historical nesting sites were located close to human settlements, and the mean distance of nesting sites to human settlements was $144.1{\pm}182.97m$. The land types within 5km radius from ten historical nesting sites consisted of 53.7% forest, 28.3% rice fields, 16.7% grasslands, 0.8% water bodies, and 0.6% human settlements. The composition of four land types(forest, rice fields, grasslands, and human settlements) was significantly differed between 93 random points and 10 historical nesting sites.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.571-585
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• 2022

As the threat of natural disasters such as droughts, floods, forest fires, and landslides increases due to climate change, social demand for high-resolution soil moisture retrieval, such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), is also increasing. However, the domestic environment has a high proportion of mountainous topography, making it challenging to retrieve soil moisture from SAR data. This study evaluated the usability of Sentinel-1 SAR, which is applied with the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique, to retrieve soil moisture. It was confirmed that the backscattering coefficient obtained from Sentinel-1 significantly correlated with soil moisture behavior, and the possibility of stand-alone use to correct vegetation effects without using auxiliary data observed from other satellites or observatories. However, there was a large difference in the characteristics of each site and topographic group. In particular, when the model learned on the mountain and at flat land cross-applied, the soil moisture could not be properly simulated. In addition, when the number of learning points was increased to solve this problem, the soil moisture retrieval model was smoothed. As a result, the overall correlation coefficient of all sites improved, but errors at individual sites gradually increased. Therefore, systematic research must be conducted in order to widely apply high-resolution SAR soil moisture data. It is expected that it can be effectively used in various fields if the scope of learning sites and application targets are specifically limited.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.29-42
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• 2017

As the "Guidelines for GHG Environmental Assessment" was revised, it pointed out that the developers should evaluate GHG sequestration and storage of the developing site. However, the current guidelines only taking into account the quantitative reduction lost within the development site, and did not consider the qualitative decrease in the carbon sequestration capacity of forest edge produced by developments. In order to assess the quantitative and qualitative effects of vegetation carbon uptake, the CASA-NPP model and satellite image spatial-temporal fusion were used to estimate the annual net primary production in 2005 and 2015. The development projects between 2006 and 2014 were examined for evaluate quantitative changes in development site and qualitative changes in surroundings by development types. The RMSE value of the satellite image fusion results is less than 0.1 and approaches 0, and the correlation coefficient is more than 0.6, which shows relatively high prediction accuracy. The NPP estimation results range from 0 to $1335.53g\;C/m^2$ year before development and from 0 to $1333.77g\;C/m^2$ year after development. As a result of analyzing NPP reduction amount within the development area by type of forest development, the difference is not significant by type of development but it shows the lowest change in the sports facilities development. It was also found that the vegetation was most affected by the edge vegetation of industrial development. This suggests that the industrial development causes additional development in the surrounding area and indirectly influences the carbon sequestration function of edge vegetaion due to the increase of the edge and influx of disturbed species. The NPP calculation method and results presented in this study can be applied to quantitative and qualitative impact assessment of before and after development, and it can be applied to policies related to greenhouse gas in environmental impact assessment.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-15
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• 1994

Since Seasat SAR mission in 1978, SAR has become one of the most important surface imaging tools in satellite remote sensing SAR achieves high resolution by signal processing synthesizing a larger aperture. Therefore, SAR signal processing along with antenna technology has been centered upon SAR technologies. Thus interpreters of SAR imagery as well as those who involved in signal processing require the knowledge of the principal SAR processing algorithm. Although the conventional range-Doppler approach has been widely adopted by many SAR processors, azimuth compression including the range migration has been problematic. The recent development of the wavenumber domain approace is able to provide high precision SAR focusing algorithm. Compared with the wavenumber domain algorithm derived by applying Born (first) approximation, the transfer function of the conventional range-Doppler algorithm accounts only for the first order approximation of the exact transfer function. The results of a simulation and an actual test using airborne C-band SAR configuration demonstrate the dxcellent performance of the wavenumber domain algorithm.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_3
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• pp.1747-1761
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• 2023

Wetlands, defined as lands periodically inundated or exposed during the year, are crucial for sustaining biodiversity and filtering environmental pollutants. The importance of mapping and monitoring their topographical changes is therefore paramount. This study focuses on the topographical variations at the Incheon River estuary wetland post-restoration, noting a lack of adequate prior measurements. Using a multi-temporal Sentinel-1 dataset from October 2014 to March 2023, we mapped long-term variations in water bodies and detected topographical change anomalies using a pixel-frequency approach. Our analysis, based on 196 Sentinel-1 acquisitions from an ascending orbit, revealed significant topography changes. Since 2020, employing the pixel-frequency technique, we observed area increases of +0.0195, 0.0016, 0.0075, and 0.0163 km² in water level sections at depths of 2-3 m, 1-2 m, 0-1 m, and less than 0 m, respectively. These findings underscore the effectiveness of the wetland restoration efforts in the area.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.447-460
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• 2022

It is well known that satellite synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) has been widely used for the observation of surface displacement owing to earthquakes, volcanoes, and subsidence very precisely. In wetlands where vegetation exists on the surface of the water, it is possible to create a water level change map with high spatial resolution over a wide area using the InSAR technique. Currently, a number of imaging radar satellites are in operation, and most of them support a ScanSAR mode observation to gather information over a large area at once. The Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta (CGSM) wetland, located in northern Colombia, is a vast wetland developed along the Caribbean coast. The CGSM wetlands face serious environmental threats from human activities such as reclamation for agricultural uses and residential purposes as well as natural causes such as sea level rise owing to climate change. Various restoration and protection plans have been conducted to conserve these invaluable environments in recognition of the ecological importance of the CGSM wetlands. Monitoring of water level changes in wetland is very important resources to understand the hydrologic characteristics and the in-situ water level gauge stations are usually utilized to measure the water level. Although it can provide very good temporal resolution of water level information, it is limited to fully understand flow pattern owing to its very coarse spatial resolution. In this study, we evaluate the L-band ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 ScanSAR mode to observe the water level change over the wide wetland area using the radar interferometric technique. In order to assess the quality of the interferometric product in the aspect of spatial resolution and coherence, we also utilized ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 stripmap high-resolution mode observations.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.185-205
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• 2014

SAR ground moving target indicator (GMTI) has long been an important issue for SAR advanced applications. As spatial resolution of space-borne SAR system has been significantly improved recently, the GMTI becomes a very useful tool. Various GMTI techniques have been developed particularly using multi-channel SAR systems. It is, however, still problematic to detect ground moving targets within single channel SAR images while it is not practical to access high resolution multi-channel space-borne SAR systems. Once a ground moving target is detected, it is possible to retrieve twodimensional velocities of the target from single channel space-borne SAR with an accuracy of about 5 % if moving faster than 3 m/s. This paper presents a quick-and-dirty method for detecting ground moving targets from single channel SAR single-look complex (SLC) images by differentiation. Since the signal powers of derivatives present Doppler centroid and rate, it is very efficient and effective for detection of non-stationary targets. The derivatives correlate well with velocities retrieved by a precise method with a correlation coefficient $R^2$ of 0.62, which is well enough to detect the ground moving targets. While the approach is theoretically straightforward, it is necessary to remove the effects of residual Doppler rate before finalizing the ground moving target candidates. The confidence level of results largely depends on the efficiency and effectiveness of the residual Doppler rate removal method. Application results using TerraSAR-X and truck-mounted corner reflectors validated the efficiency of the method. While the derivatives of moving targets remain easily detectable, the signal energy of stationary corner reflectors was suppressed by about 18.5 dB. It results in an easy detection of ground targets moving faster than 8.8 km/h. The proposed method is applicable to any high resolution single channel SAR systems including KOMPSAT-5.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.420-433
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to improve the calibration matrixes of 2-D and 3-D convective rainfall rates (CRR) using the brightness temperature of the infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ channel (IR), the difference of brightness temperatures between infrared $10.8{\mu}m$ and vapor $6.7{\mu}m$ channels (IR-WV), and the normalized reflectance of the visible channel (VIS) from the COMS satellite and rainfall rate from the weather radar for the period of 75 rainy days from April 22, 2011 to October 22, 2011 in Korea. Especially, the rainfall rate data of the weather radar are used to validate the new 2-D and 3-DCRR calibration matrixes suitable for the Korean peninsula for the period of 24 rainy days in 2011. The 2D and 3D calibration matrixes provide the basic and maximum CRR values ($mm\;h^{-1}$) by multiplying the rain probability matrix, which is calculated by using the number of rainy and no-rainy pixels with associated 2-D (IR, IR-WV) and 3-D (IR, IR-WV, VIS) matrixes, by the mean and maximum rainfall rate matrixes, respectively, which is calculated by dividing the accumulated rainfall rate by the number of rainy pixels and by the product of the maximum rain rate for the calibration period by the number of rain occurrences. Finally, new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibration matrixes are obtained experimentally from the regression analysis of both basic and maximum rainfall rate matrixes. As a result, an area of rainfall rate more than 10 mm/h is magnified in the new ones as well as CRR is shown in lower class ranges in matrixes between IR brightness temperature and IR-WV brightness temperature difference than the existing ones. Accuracy and categorical statistics are computed for the data of CRR events occurred during the given period. The mean error (ME), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean squire error (RMSE) in new 2-D and 3-D CRR calibrations led to smaller than in the existing ones, where false alarm ratio had decreased, probability of detection had increased a bit, and critical success index scores had improved. To take into account the strong rainfall rate in the weather events such as thunderstorms and typhoon, a moisture correction factor is corrected. This factor is defined as the product of the total precipitable waterby the relative humidity (PW RH), a mean value between surface and 500 hPa level, obtained from a numerical model or the COMS retrieval data. In this study, when the IR cloud top brightness temperature is lower than 210 K and the relative humidity is greater than 40%, the moisture correction factor is empirically scaled from 1.0 to 2.0 basing on PW RH values. Consequently, in applying to this factor in new 2D and 2D CRR calibrations, the ME, MAE, and RMSE are smaller than the new ones.