• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.120-132
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• 2008

Remotely sensed images from a satellite can be applied for detecting and quantifying spatial and temporal variations in terms of landuse & landcover, crop growth, and disaster for agricultural applications. The purposes of this study were to analyze topography using DEM(digital elevation model) and classify landuse & landcover into 10 classes-paddy field, dry field, forest, bare land, grass & bush, water body, reclaimed land, salt farm, residence & building, and others-using Landsat TM images in North Korea. Elevation was greater than 1,000 meters in the eastern part of North Korea around Ranggang-do where Kaemagowon was located. Pyeongnam and Hwangnam in the western part of North Korea were low in elevation. Topography of North Korea showed typical 'east-high and west-low' landform characteristics. Landcover classification of North Korea using spectral reflectance of multi-temporal Landsat TM images was performed and the statistics of each landcover by administrative district, slope, and agroclimatic zone were calculated in terms of area. Forest areas accounted for 69.6 percent of the whole area while the areas of dry fields and paddy fields were 15.7 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. Bare land and water body occupied 6.6 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively. Residence & building reached less than 1 percent of the country. Paddy field areas concentrated in the A slope ranged from 0 to 2 percent(greater than 80 percent). The dry field areas were shown in the A slope the most, followed by D, E, C, B, and F slopes. According to the statistics by agroclimatic zone, paddy and dry fields were mainly distributed in the North plain region(N-6) and North western coastal region(N-7). Forest areas were evenly distributed all over the agroclimatic regions. Periodic landcover analysis of North Korea based on remote sensing technique using satellite imagery can produce spatial and temporal statistics information for future landuse management and planning of North Korea.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_2
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• pp.699-708
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• 2017

The present study was to develop an approach for predicting soybean yield using a crop growth simulation model at the regional level where the detailed and site-specific information on cultivation management practices is not easily accessible for model input. CROPGRO-Soybean model included in Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) was employed for this study, and Illinois which is a major soybean production region of USA was selected as a study region. As a first step to predict soybean yield of Illinois using CROPGRO-Soybean model, genetic coefficients representative for each soybean maturity group (MG I~VI) were estimated through sowing date experiments using domestic and foreign cultivars with diverse maturity in Seoul National University Farm ($37.27^{\circ}N$, $126.99^{\circ}E$) for two years. The model using the representative genetic coefficients simulated the developmental stages of cultivars within each maturity group fairly well. Soybean yields for the grids of $10km{\times}10km$ in Illinois state were simulated from 2,000 to 2,011 with weather data under 18 simulation conditions including the combinations of three maturity groups, three seeding dates and two irrigation regimes. Planting dates and maturity groups were assigned differently to the three sub-regions divided longitudinally. The yearly state yields that were estimated by averaging all the grid yields simulated under non-irrigated and fully-Irrigated conditions showed a big difference from the statistical yields and did not explain the annual trend of yield increase due to the improved cultivation technologies. Using the grain yield data of 9 agricultural districts in Illinois observed and estimated from the simulated grid yield under 18 simulation conditions, a multiple regression model was constructed to estimate soybean yield at agricultural district level. In this model a year variable was also added to reflect the yearly yield trend. This model explained the yearly and district yield variation fairly well with a determination coefficients of $R^2=0.61$ (n = 108). Yearly state yields which were calculated by weighting the model-estimated yearly average agricultural district yield by the cultivation area of each agricultural district showed very close correspondence ($R^2=0.80$) to the yearly statistical state yields. Furthermore, the model predicted state yield fairly well in 2012 in which data were not used for the model construction and severe yield reduction was recorded due to drought.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_1
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• pp.571-585
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• 2017

The number of spaceborne optical sensors including red-edge band has been increasing since red-edge band is known to be effective to enhance the information content on biophysical characteristics of vegetation. Considering that the Agriculture and Forestry Satellite is planning to carry an imaging sensor having red-edge band, we tried to analyze the current status and potential of red-edge band. As a case study, we analyzed the effect of using red-edge band and tried to find the optimum band width and wavelength region of the red-edge band to estimate leaf area index (LAI) of very dense tree canopy. Field spectral measurements were conducted from April to October over two tree species (white oak and pitch pine) having high LAI. Using the spectral measurement data, total 355 red-edge bands reflectance were simulated by varying five band width (10 nm, 20 nm, 30 nm, 40 nm, 50 nm) and 71 central wavelength. Two red-edge based spectral indices(NDRE, CIRE) were derived using the simulated red-edge band and compared with the LAI of two tree species. Both NDRE and CIRE showed higher correlation coefficients with the LAI than NDVI. This would be an alternative to overcome the limitation of the NDVI saturation problem that NDVI has not been effective to estimate LAI over very dense canopy situation. There was no significant difference among five band widths of red-edge band in relation to LAI. The highest correlation coefficients were obtained at the red-edge band of center wavelength near the 720 nm for the white oak and 710 nm for the pitch pine. To select the optimum band width and wavelength region of the red-edge band, further studies are necessary to examine the relationship with other biophysical variables, such as chlorophyll, nitrogen, water content, and biomass.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_2
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• pp.351-363
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• 2020

It is well known that alluvial sediment located in coastal region has been easily affected by geohazard like ground subsidence, marine or meteorological disasters which threaten invaluable lives and properties. The subsidence is a sinking of the ground due to underground material movement that mostly related to soil compaction by water extraction. Thus, continuous monitoring is essential to protect possible damage from the ground subsidence in the coastal region. Radar interferometric application has been widely used to estimate surface displacement from phase information of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Thanks to advanced SAR technique like the Small BAseline Subset (SBAS), a time-series of surface displacement could be successfully calculated with a large amount of SAR observations (>20). Because the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 L-band observations maintain higher coherence compared with other shorter wavelength like X- or C-band, it has been regarded as one of the best resources for Earth science. However, the number of ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 observations might be not enough for the SBAS application due to its global monitoring observation scenario. Unfortunately, the number of the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 Stripmap images in area of our interest, Busan which located in the Southeastern Korea, is only 11 which is insufficient to apply the SBAS time-series analysis. Although it is common that the radar interferometry utilizes multiple SAR images collected from same acquisition mode, it has been reported that the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 Stripmap-ScanSAR interferometric application could be possible under specific acquisition mode. In case that we can apply the Stripmap-ScanSAR interferometry with the other 18 ScanSAR observations over Busan, an enhanced time-series surface displacement with better temporal resolution could be estimated. In this study, we evaluated feasibility of the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 Stripmap-ScanSAR interferometric application using Gamma software considering differences of chirp bandwidth and pulse repetition frequency (PRF) between two acquisition modes. In addition, we analyzed the interferograms with respect to spectral shift of radar carrier frequency and common band filtering. Even though it shows similar level of coherence regardless of spectral shift in the radar carrier frequency, we found periodic spectral noises in azimuth direction and significant degradation of coherence in azimuth direction after common band filtering. Therefore, the characteristics of spectral bandwidth in the range and azimuth direction should be considered cautiously for the ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 Stripmap-ScanSAR interferometry.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.385-394
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• 2015

Pine wilt disease has greatly damaged pine forests not only in East Asia including South Korea and China, but also in European region. The damage caused by pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) is expressed in bundles within stands and rapidly spreading, however, present field survey methods have limitations to detecting damaged trees at regional level. This study extracted the damaged trees by pine wilt disease using time series hyperspectral aerial photographs, and analyzed their distribution characteristics. Hyperspectral aerial photographs of 1 meter spatial resolution were obtained in June, September, and October. Damaged trees by pine wilt disease were extracted using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Vegetation Index green (VIgreen) of the September photograph. Among extracted damaged trees, dead trees with leaves and without leaves were classified, and the spectral reflectance values from the photographs obtained in June, September, and October were compared to extract new outbreaks in September and October. Based on the time series dispersion of extracted damaged trees, nearest neighbor analysis was conducted to analyze distribution characteristics of the damaged trees within the region where hyperspectral aerial photographs were acquired. As a result, 2,262 damaged trees were extracted in the study area, and 604 dead trees (dead trees in last year) with leaves in relation to the damaged time and 300 and 101 newly damaged trees in September and October were classified. The result of nearest neighbor analysis using the data shows that aggregated distribution was the dominant pattern both previous and current year in the study area. Also, 80% of the damaged trees in current year were found within 60 m of dead trees in previous year.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_2
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• pp.1165-1178
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• 2018

Collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf and its flow velocity changes has the potential to reduce the restraining stress to the seaward flow of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which can cause sea level rising. In this study, variations in ice velocity from 2000 to 2017 for the Nansen Ice Shelf in East Antarctica that experienced a large-scale collapse in April 2016 were analyzed using Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images. To extract ice velocity, image matching based on orientation correlation was applied to the image pairs of blue, green, red, near-infrared, panchromatic, and the first principal component image of the Landsat multispectral data, from which the results were combined. The Landsat multispectral image matching produced reliable ice velocities for at least 14% wider area on the Nansen Ice Shelf than for the case of using single band (i.e., panchromatic) image matching. The ice velocities derived from the Landsat multispectral image matching have the error of $2.1m\;a^{-1}$ compared to the in situ Global Positioning System (GPS) observation data. The region adjacent to the Drygalski Ice Tongue showed the fastest increase in ice velocity between 2000 and 2017. The ice velocity along the central flow line of the Nansen Ice Shelf was stable before 2010 (${\sim}228m\;a^{-1}$). In 2011-2012, when a rift began to develop near the ice front, the ice flow was accelerated (${\sim}255m\;a^{-1}$) but the velocity was only about 11% faster than 2010. Since 2014, the massive rift had been fully developed, and the ice velocity of the upper region of the rift slightly decreased (${\sim}225m\;a^{-1}$) and stabilized. This means that the development of the rift and the resulting collapse of the ice front had little effect on the ice velocity of the Nansen Ice Shelf.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.283-295
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• 2023

With the development of sensor and satellite technology, numerous high-resolution and multi-spectral satellite images have been available. Due to their wavelength-dependent reflection, transmission, and scattering characteristics, multi-spectral satellite images can provide complementary information for earth observation. In particular, the short-wave infrared (SWIR) band can penetrate certain types of atmospheric aerosols from the benefit of the reduced Rayleigh scattering effect, which allows for a clearer view and more detailed information to be captured from hazed surfaces compared to the visible band. In this study, we proposed a multi-resolution transform-based image fusion method to combine visible and SWIR satellite images. The purpose of the fusion method is to generate a single integrated image that incorporates complementary information such as detailed background information from the visible band and land cover information in the haze region from the SWIR band. For this purpose, this study applied the Laplacian pyramid-based multi-resolution transform method, which is a representative image decomposition approach for image fusion. Additionally, we modified the multiresolution fusion method by combining a haze-guided weight map based on the prior knowledge that SWIR bands contain more information in pixels from the haze region. The proposed method was validated using very high-resolution satellite images from Worldview-3, containing multi-spectral visible and SWIR bands. The experimental data including hazed areas with limited visibility caused by smoke from wildfires was utilized to validate the penetration properties of the proposed fusion method. Both quantitative and visual evaluations were conducted using image quality assessment indices. The results showed that the bright features from the SWIR bands in the hazed areas were successfully fused into the integrated feature maps without any loss of detailed information from the visible bands.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.169-181
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• 2023

Recently, in order to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, which is the main cause of global warming, Korea has declared carbon emission reduction targets and carbon neutral. Accurate assessment of regional emissions and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations is becoming important as a result. In this study, we identified the spatiotemporal differences between satellite-based atmospheric CO₂ concentration and CO₂ emissions for the Korean Peninsula region using column-averaged CO₂ dry-air mole fraction from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and emission inventory. And we explained these differences using solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), a photosynthetic reaction index according to vegetation growth. The Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Research Center (GIR) and Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) emissions continued to increase in Korea from 2014 to 2018, but the satellite-based atmospheric CO₂ concentration decreased in 2018, respectively. Regionally, GIR and EDGAR emissions increased in 2018 in Gyeonggi-do and Chungcheongbuk-do, but satellite-based CO₂ concentrations decreased for the corresponding years. In addition, the correlation analysis between emissions and satellite-based CO₂ concentration showed a low correlation of 0.22 (GIR) and 0.16 (EDGAR) in Seoul and Gangwon-do. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations showed a different correlation with SIF by region. In the CO₂-SIF correlation analysis for the growing season (May to September), Seoul and Gyeonggi-do showed a negative correlation coefficient of -0.26, Chungcheongbuk-do and Gangwon-do showed a positive correlation coefficient of 0.46. Therefore, it can be suggested that consideration of the CO₂ absorption process is necessary for analyzing the relationship between the atmospheric CO₂ concentration and emission inventory.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.1029-1042
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• 2021

As part of the next-generation Compact Advanced Satellite 500 (CAS500) project, CAS500-4 is scheduled to be launched in 2025 focusing on the remote sensing of agriculture and forestry. To obtain quantitative information on vegetation from satellite images, it is necessary to acquire surface reflectance through atmospheric correction. Thus, it is essential to develop an atmospheric correction method suitable for CAS500-4. Since the absorption and scattering characteristics in the atmosphere vary depending on the wavelength, it is needed to analyze the sensitivity of atmospheric correction parameters such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) and water vapor (WV) considering the wavelengths of CAS500-4. In addition, as CAS500-4 has only five channels (blue, green, red, red edge, and near-infrared), making it difficult to directly calculate key parameters for atmospheric correction, external parameter data should be used. Therefore, thisstudy performed a sensitivity analysis of the key parameters (AOD, WV, and O₃) using the simulated images based on Sentinel-2 satellite data, which has similar wavelength specifications to CAS500-4, and examined the possibility of using the products of GEO-KOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) as atmospheric parameters. The sensitivity analysisshowed that AOD wasthe most important parameter with greater sensitivity in visible channels than in the near-infrared region. In particular, since AOD change of 20% causes about a 100% error rate in the blue channel surface reflectance in forests, a highly reliable AOD is needed to obtain accurate surface reflectance. The atmospherically corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD and WV was compared with the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data through the separability index of the known land cover pixels. The result showed that two corrected surface reflectance had similar Seperability index (SI) values, the atmospheric corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD showed higher SI than the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data in short-wavelength channels. Thus, it is judged that the parameters provided by GK2A can be fully utilized for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4. The research findings will provide a basis for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4 in the future.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.531-542
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• 2021

Open-pit mines require constant monitoring as they can cause surface changes and environmental disturbances. In open-pit mines, there is little vegetation at the mining site and can be monitored using InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) coherence imageries. In this study, activities occurring in mine were analyzed by applying the recently developed InSAR coherence-based NDAI (Normalized Difference Activity Index). The March 5 Youth Mine is a North Korean mine whose development has been expanded since 2008. NDAI analysis was performed with InSAR coherence imageries obtained using Sentinel-1 SAR images taken at 12-day intervals in the March 5 Youth Mine. First, the area where the elevation decreased by about 75.24 m and increased by about 9.85 m over the 14 years from 2000 was defined as the mining site and the tailings piles. Then, the NDAI images were used for time series analysis at various time intervals. Over the entire period (2017-2019), average mining activity was relatively active at the center of the mining area. In order to find out more detailed changes in the surface activity of the mine, the time interval was reduced and the activity was observed over a 1-year period. In 2017, we analyzed changes in mining operations before and after artificial earthquakes based on seismic data and NDAI images. After the large-scale blasting that occurred on 30 April 2017, activity was detected west of the mining area. It is estimated that the size of the mining area was enlarged by two blasts on 30 September 2017. The time-averaged NDAI images used to perform detailed time-series analysis were generated over a period of 1 year and 4 months, and then composited into RGB images. Annual analysis of activity confirmed an active region in the northeast of the mining area in 2018 and found the characteristic activity of the expansion of tailings piles in 2019. Time series analysis using NDAI was able to detect random surface changes in open-pit mines that are difficult to identify with optical images. Especially in areas where in situ data is not available, remote sensing can effectively perform mining activity analysis.