• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.233-243
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• 2021

Photovoltaic panels are hazardous electronic waste that has heavy metal as one of the hazardous components. Each year, hazardous electronic waste is increasing worldwide and every heavy rainfall exposes the photovoltaic panel to become the source of heavy metal soil contamination. the development needs a monitoring technology for this hazardous exposure. this research use relationships between SAR temporal baseline and coherence of Sentinel-1 satellite to detected photovoltaic panel. Also, the photovoltaic plant detection tested using the difference between that photovoltaic panel and the other difference surface of coherence. The author tested the photovoltaic panel and its environment to calculate differences in coherence relationships. As a result of the experiment, the coherence of the photovoltaic panel, which is assumed to be a permanent scatterer, shows a bias that is biased toward a median value of 0.53 with a distribution of 0.50 to 0.65. Therefore, further research is needed to improve errors that may occur during processing. Additionally, the author found that the change detection using a temporal baseline is possible as the rate of reduction of coherence of photovoltaic panels differs from those of artificial objects such as buildings. This result could be an efficient way to continuously monitor regardless of weather conditions, which was a limitation of the existing optical satellite image-based photovoltaic panel detection research and to understand the spatial distribution in situations such as photovoltaic panel loss.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.6_1
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• pp.947-960
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• 2017

Soil moisture plays an important role to affect the Earth's radiative energy balance and water cycle. In general, satellite observations are useful for estimating the soil moisture content. Passive microwave satellites have an advantage of direct sensitivity on surface soil moisture. However, their coarse spatial resolutions (10-36 km) are not suitable for regional-scale hydrological applications. Meanwhile, in-situ ground observations of point-based soil moisture content have the disadvantage of spatially discontinuous information. This paper presents an experimental soil moisture retrieval using Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) with 10m spatial resolution for cropland in South Korea. We developed a soil moisture retrieval algorithm based on the technique of linear regression and SVR (support vector regression) using the ground observations at five in-situ sites and Sentinel-1 SAR data from April to October in 2015-2017 period. Our results showed the polarization dependency on the different soil sensitivities at backscattered signals, but no polarization dependence on the accuracies. No particular seasonal characteristics of the soil moisture retrieval imply that soil moisture is generally more affected by hydro-meteorology and land surface characteristics than by phenological factors. At the narrower range of incidence angles, the relationship between the backscattered signal and soil moisture content was more distinct because the decreasing surface interference increased the retrieval accuracies under the condition of evenly distributed soil moisture (during the raining period or on the paddy field). We had an overall error estimate of RMSE (root mean square error) of approximately 6.5%. Our soil moisture retrieval algorithm will be improved if the effects of surface roughness, geomorphology, and soil properties would be considered in the future works.

• 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.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_2
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• pp.793-810
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• 2022

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is considered to be suitable for near real-time inundation monitoring. The distinctly different intensity between water and land makes it adequate for waterbody detection, but the intrinsic speckle noise and variable intensity of SAR images decrease the accuracy of waterbody detection. In this study, we suggest two modules, named 'morphology module' and 'edge-enhanced module', which are the combinations of pooling layers and convolutional layers, improving the accuracy of waterbody detection. The morphology module is composed of min-pooling layers and max-pooling layers, which shows the effect of morphological transformation. The edge-enhanced module is composed of convolution layers, which has the fixed weights of the traditional edge detection algorithm. After comparing the accuracy of various versions of each module for U-Net, we found that the optimal combination is the case that the morphology module of min-pooling and successive layers of min-pooling and max-pooling, and the edge-enhanced module of Scharr filter were the inputs of conv9. This morphologic and edge-enhanced U-Net improved the F1-score by 9.81% than the original U-Net. Qualitative inspection showed that our model has capability of detecting small-sized waterbody and detailed edge of water, which are the distinct advancement of the model presented in this research, compared to the original U-Net.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_1
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• pp.1041-1053
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• 2018

In this study, a real-time storage level and capacity monitoring and forecasting system for Yongdam Dam watershed was developed using high resolution satellite image. The drought indices such as Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) from satellite data were used for storage level monitoring in case of drought. Moreover, to predict storage volume we used a statistical method based on Principle Component Analysis (PCA) of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA). According to this study, correlation coefficient between storage level and SPI (3) was highly calculated with CC=0.78, and the monitoring and predictability of storage level was diagnosed using the drought index calculated from satellite data. As a result of analysis of principal component analysis by SSA, correlation between SPI (3) and each Reconstructed Components (RCs) data were highly correlated with CC=0.87 to 0.99. And also, the correlations of RC data with Normalized Water Surface Level (N-W.S.L.) were confirmed that has highly correlated with CC=0.83 to 0.97. In terms of high resolution satellite image we developed a water detection algorithm by applying an exponential method to monitor the change of storage level by using Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) sensor of Sentinel-2 satellite. The materials of satellite image for water surface area detection in Yongdam dam watershed was considered from 2016 to 2018, respectively. Based on this, we proposed the possibility of real-time drought monitoring system using high resolution water surface area detection by Sentinel-2 satellite image. The results of this study can be applied to estimate of the reservoir volume calculated from various satellite observations, which can be used for monitoring and estimating hydrological droughts in an unmeasured area.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.409-418
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• 2021

The land cover map is a very important data that is used as a basis for decision-making for land policy and environmental policy. The land cover map is mapped using remote sensing data, and the classification results may vary depending on the acquisition time of the data used even for the same area. In this study, to overcome the classification accuracy limit of single-period data, multi-series satellite images were used to learn the difference in the spectral reflectance characteristics of the land surface according to seasons on a U-Net model, one of the deep learning algorithms, to improve classification accuracy. In addition, the degree of improvement in classification accuracy is compared by comparing the accuracy of single-period data. Seoul, which consists of various land covers including 30% of green space and the Han River within the area, was set as the research target and quarterly Sentinel-2 satellite images for 2020 were aquired. The U-Net model was trained using the sub-class land cover map mapped by the Korean Ministry of Environment. As a result of learning and classifying the model into single-period, double-series, triple-series, and quadruple-series through the learned U-Net model, it showed an accuracy of 81%, 82% and 79%, which exceeds the standard for securing land cover classification accuracy of 75%, except for a single-period. Through this, it was confirmed that classification accuracy can be improved through multi-series classification.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.158-174
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• 2018

The leaf area index (LAI) is a major factor explaining the photosynthesis of vegetation, evapotranspiration, and energy exchange between the earth surface and atmosphere, and there have been studies on accurate and applicable LAI estimation methods. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the actual LAI data, UAV image-based vegetation index, canopy height and satellite image (Sentinel-2) LAI and to present an effective LAI estimation method using UAV. As a result, among the six vegetation indices in this study, NDRE ($R^2=0.496$) and CIRE ($R^2=0.443$), which contained red-edge band, showed a high correlation. The application of the canopy height model data to the vegetation index improved the explanatory power of the LAI. In addition, in the case of NDVI, the saturation problem caused by the linear relationship with LAI was addressed. In this study, it was possible to estimate high resolution LAI using UAV images. It is expected that the applicability of such data will be improved if calibration and correction steps are carried out for various vegetation and seasonal images.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.26-67
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• 2020

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) is able to photograph the earth's surface regardless of weather conditions, day and night. Because of its possibility to search for hydrological factors such as soil moisture and groundwater, and its importance is gradually increasing in the field of water resources. SAR began to be mounted on satellites in the 1970s, and about 15 or more satellites were launched as of 2020, which around 10 satellites will be launched within the next 5 years. Recently, various types of SAR technologies such as enhancement of observation width and resolution, multiple polarization and multiple frequencies, and diversification of observation angles were being developed and utilized. In this paper, a brief history of the SAR system, as well as studies for estimating soil moisture and hydrological components were investigated. Up to now hydrological components that can be estimated using SAR satellites include soil moisture, subsurface groundwater discharge, precipitation, snow cover area, leaf area index(LAI), and normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) and among them, soil moisture is being studied in 17 countries in South Korea, North America, Europe, and India by using the physical model, the IEM(Integral Equation Model) and the artificial intelligence-based ANN(Artificial Neural Network). RADARSAT-1, ENVISAT, ASAR, and ERS-1/2 were the most widely used satellite, but the operation has ended, and utilization of RADARSAT-2, Sentinel-1, and SMAP, which are currently in operation, is gradually increasing. Since Korea is developing a medium-sized satellite for water resources and water disasters equipped with C-band SAR with the goal of launching in 2025, various hydrological components estimation researches using SAR are expected to be active.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.311-326
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• 2022

The Compact Advanced Satellite 500-4 (CAS500-4) is under development to efficiently manage and monitor forests in Korea and is scheduled to launch in 2025. The National Institute of Forest Science is developing 36 types of forestry applications to utilize the CAS500-4 efficiently. The products derived using the remote sensing method require validation with ground reference data, and the quality monitoring results for the products must be continuously reported. Due to it being the first time developing the national forestry satellite, there is no official calibration and validation site for forestry products in Korea. Accordingly, the author designed a calibration and validation site for the forestry products following international standards. In addition, to install calibration and validation sites nationwide, the authors selected appropriate sensors and evaluated the applicability of the sensors. As a result, the difference between the ground observation data and the Sentinel-2 image was observed to be within ±5%, confirming that the sensor could be used for nationwide expansion.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_1
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• pp.1343-1356
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• 2022

Clouds or shadows are the most problematic when monitoring crops using optical satellite images. To reduce this effect, a composite algorithm was used to select the maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for a certain period. This Maximum NDVI Composite (MNC) method reduces the influence of clouds, but since only the maximum NDVI value is used for a certain period, it is difficult to show the phenomenon immediately when the NDVI decreases. As a way to maintain the spectral information of crop as much as possible while minimizing the influence of clouds, a Score-Based Composite (SBC) algorithm was proposed, which is a method of selecting the most suitable pixels by defining various environmental factors and assigning scores to them when compositing. In this study, the Sentinel-2A/B Level 2A reflectance image and cloud, shadow, Aerosol Optical Thickness(AOT), obtainging date, sensor zenith angle provided as additional information were used for the SBC algorithm. As a result of applying the SBC algorithm with a 15-day and a monthly period for Dangjin rice fields and Taebaek highland cabbage fields in 2021, the 15-day period composited data showed faster detailed changes in NDVI than the monthly composited results, except for the rainy season affected by clouds. In certain images, a spatially heterogeneous part is seen due to partial date-by-date differences in the composited NDVI image, which is considered to be due to the inaccuracy of the cloud and shadow information used. In the future, we plan to improve the accuracy of input information and perform quantitative comparison with MNC-based composite algorithm.