• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.229-241
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• 2024

With the advancement of big data processing technology using cloud platforms, access, processing, and analysis of large-volume data such as satellite imagery have recently been significantly improved. In this study, the Change Detection Method, a relatively simple technique for retrieving soil moisture, was applied to the backscattering coefficient values of pre-processed Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery product based on Google Earth Engine (GEE), one of those platforms, to estimate the surface soil moisture for six observatories within the Yongdam Dam watershed in South Korea for the period of 2015 to 2023, as well as the watershed average. Subsequently, a correlation analysis was conducted between the estimated values and actual measurements, along with an examination of the applicability of GEE. The results revealed that the surface soil moisture estimated for small areas within the soil moisture observatories of the watershed exhibited low correlations ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 for both VH and VV polarizations, likely due to the inherent measurement accuracy of the SAR satellite imagery and variations in data characteristics. However, the surface soil moisture average, which was derived by extracting the average SAR backscattering coefficient values for the entire watershed area and applying moving averages to mitigate data uncertainties and variability, exhibited significantly improved results at the level of 0.5. The results obtained from estimating soil moisture using GEE demonstrate its utility despite limitations in directly conducting desired analyses due to preprocessed SAR data. However, the efficient processing of extensive satellite imagery data allows for the estimation and evaluation of soil moisture over broad ranges, such as long-term watershed averages. This highlights the effectiveness of GEE in handling vast satellite imagery datasets to assess soil moisture. Based on this, it is anticipated that GEE can be effectively utilized to assess long-term variations of soil moisture average in major dam watersheds, in conjunction with soil moisture observation data from various locations across the country in the future.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.999-1011
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• 2021

In spatio-temporal fusion aiming at predicting images with both high spatial and temporal resolutionsfrom multi-sensor images, the radiometric inconsistency between input multi-sensor images may affect prediction performance. This study investigates the effect of radiometric correction, which compensate different spectral responses of multi-sensor satellite images, on the spatio-temporal fusion results. The effect of relative radiometric correction of input images was quantitatively analyzed through the case studies using Sentinel-2, PlanetScope, and RapidEye images obtained from two croplands. Prediction performance was improved when radiometrically corrected multi-sensor images were used asinput. In particular, the improvement in prediction performance wassubstantial when the correlation between input images was relatively low. Prediction performance could be improved by transforming multi-sensor images with different spectral responses into images with similar spectral responses and high correlation. These results indicate that radiometric correction is required to improve prediction performance in spatio-temporal fusion of multi-sensor satellite images with low correlation.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_1
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• pp.807-821
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• 2020

The objective of this study is to evaluate the applicability of representative spatio-temporal fusion models developed for the fusion of mid- and low-resolution satellite images in order to construct a set of time-series high-resolution images for crop monitoring. Particularly, the effects of the characteristics of input image pairs on the prediction performance are investigated by considering the principle of spatio-temporal fusion. An experiment on the fusion of multi-temporal Sentinel-2 and RapidEye images in agricultural fields was conducted to evaluate the prediction performance. Three representative fusion models, including Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM), SParse-representation-based SpatioTemporal reflectance Fusion Model (SPSTFM), and Flexible Spatiotemporal DAta Fusion (FSDAF), were applied to this comparative experiment. The three spatio-temporal fusion models exhibited different prediction performance in terms of prediction errors and spatial similarity. However, regardless of the model types, the correlation between coarse resolution images acquired on the pair dates and the prediction date was more significant than the difference between the pair dates and the prediction date to improve the prediction performance. In addition, using vegetation index as input for spatio-temporal fusion showed better prediction performance by alleviating error propagation problems, compared with using fused reflectance values in the calculation of vegetation index. These experimental results can be used as basic information for both the selection of optimal image pairs and input types, and the development of an advanced model in spatio-temporal fusion for crop monitoring.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.463-472
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• 2023

The amount of damage and the area of damage to forest fires are increasing globally, and the effectiveness analysis of the restoration method after the damage is performed insufficient. This study calculated the area of forest fire damage was calculated using Sentinel-2B satellite images and stack map and the intensity of forest fire damage is analyzed according to the forest type. In addition, the vegetation index was calculated using various wavelength bands. Based on the results, the vegetation resilience by the restoration method was quantitatively. As results, areas with a high proportion of coniferous forests suffered high intensity forest fire damage, and areas with a relatively high ratio of mixed and broad-leaved forests tended to have low forest fire damage. Also, artificial forests showed a recovery of about 92.7% compared to before forest fires and natural forests showed a recovery of about 99.6% from the result of analyzing vegetation resilience in artificial and natural forests after forest fires. Accordingly, it was confirmed that natural forests after forest fire damage had superior vegetation resilience compared to artificial forests. It can be proposed that this study is meaningful in providing important information for efficiently restoring the affected target site and the selection criteria for trees to reduce forest fire damage through the evaluation of vegetation resilience by the intensity of forest fire damage and restoration methods.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.321-332
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• 2024

Understanding the status of surface cover in riparian zones is essential for river management and flood disaster prevention. Traditional survey methods rely on expert interpretation of vegetation through vegetation mapping or indices. However, these methods are limited by their ability to accurately reflect dynamically changing river environments. Against this backdrop, this study utilized satellite imagery to apply the Random Forest method to assess the distribution of vegetation in rivers over multiple years, focusing on the Naeseong Stream as a case study. Remote sensing data from Sentinel-2 imagery were combined with ground truth data from the Naeseong Stream surface cover in 2016. The Random Forest machine learning algorithm was used to extract and train 1,000 samples per surface cover from ten predetermined sampling areas, followed by validation. A sensitivity analysis, annual surface cover analysis, and accuracy assessment were conducted to evaluate their applicability. The results showed an accuracy of 85.1% based on the validation data. Sensitivity analysis indicated the highest efficiency in 30 trees, 800 samples, and the downstream river section. Surface cover analysis accurately reflects the actual river environment. The accuracy analysis identified 14.9% boundary and internal errors, with high accuracy observed in six categories, excluding scattered and herbaceous vegetation. Although this study focused on a single river, applying the surface cover classification method to multiple rivers is necessary to obtain more accurate and comprehensive data.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.6_1
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• pp.1119-1130
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• 2018

Soyang Lake has been contributing to economic growth by preventing flood damage in the metropolitan area, the water level in the middle to upper flow of lake has been greatly decreased due to the drought in 2015. In order to restore the existing flow rate, Bupyungbo has been built in Bupyeong-ri, Shin Nam-myeon, Inje-gun to cause artificial changes on the sedimentary environment of Bupyeong freshwater region. Therefore, this study intends to confirm the changes of sedimentary environment since Bupyeongbo has been utilized. For this study, we used the Sentinel-2 satellite image data periodically to measure the dimension of water according to the volume of water kept near Bupyung district and analyzed the particle size and the percentage of water content of the sediments through field study. The Sentnel-2 satellite images showed us how the water surface has been changed and that during the period from September 2017 to October 2018, the minimum and maximum area of water surface was observed in June 2018 and in January 2018, respectively. In addition, we find that the smaller being the particle size, the higher having the water content and that there is higher the correlation between the water content and the grain size of the sediment layer. Hereafter, if we will acquire the drone images at Bupyung district, we expect that we will be able to measure the distribution of sediments in the same area according to different time periods and observe various kinds of sediment through field work.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.81-91
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• 2021

Synthetic Apreture Radar (SAR) is attracting attentions with its possibility of producing high resolution data that can be used for soil moisture estimation. High resolution soil moisture data enables more specific observation of soil moisture than existing soil moisture products from other satellites. It can also be used for studies of wildfire, landslide, and flood. The SAR based soil moisture estimation should be conducted considering vegetation, which affects backscattering signals from the SAR sensor. In this study, a SAR based soil moisture estimation at regions covered with various vegetation types on the middle area of Korea (Cropland, Grassland, Forest) is conducted. The representative backscattering model, Water Cloud Model (WCM) is used for soil moisture estimation over vegetated areas. Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) and in-situ soil moisture data are used as input factors for the model. Total 6 study areas are selected for 3 vegetation types according to land cover classification with 2 sites per each vegetation type. Soil moisture evaluation result shows that the accuracy of each site stands out in the order of grassland, forest, and cropland. Forested area shows correlation coefficient value higher than 0.5 even with the most dense vegetation, while cropland shows correlation coefficient value lower than 0.3. The proper vegetation and soil moisture conditions for SAR based soil moisture estimation are suggested through the results of the study. Future study, which utilizes additional ancillary vegetation data (vegetation height, vegetation type) is thought to be necessary.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.515-530
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• 2021

This study is to estimate soil moisture (SM) using Sentinel-1A/B C-band SAR (synthetic aperture radar) images and Multiple Linear Regression Model(MLRM) in the Yongdam-Dam watershed of South Korea. Both the Sentinel-1A and -1B images (6 days interval and 10 m resolution) were collected for 5 years from 2015 to 2019. The geometric, radiometric, and noise corrections were performed using the SNAP (SentiNel Application Platform) software and converted to backscattering coefficient of VV and VH polarization. The in-situ SM data measured at 6 locations using TDR were used to validate the estimated SM results. The 5 days antecedent precipitation data were also collected to overcome the estimation difficulty for the vegetated area not reaching the ground. The MLRM modeling was performed using yearly data and seasonal data set, and correlation analysis was performed according to the number of the independent variable. The estimated SM was verified with observed SM using the coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE). As a result of SM modeling using only BSC in the grass area, R² was 0.13 and RMSE was 4.83%. When 5 days of antecedent precipitation data was used, R² was 0.37 and RMSE was 4.11%. With the use of dry days and seasonal regression equation to reflect the decrease pattern and seasonal variability of SM, the correlation increased significantly with R² of 0.69 and RMSE of 2.88%.

• 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.36 no.5_3
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• pp.1109-1123
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• 2020

In South Korea with forest as a major land cover class (over 60% of the country), many wildfires occur every year. Wildfires weaken the shear strength of the soil, forming a layer of soil that is vulnerable to landslides. It is important to identify the severity of a wildfire as well as the burned area to sustainably manage the forest. Although satellite remote sensing has been widely used to map wildfire severity, it is often difficult to determine the severity using only the temporal change of satellite-derived indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR). In this study, we proposed an approach for determining wildfire severity based on machine learning through the synergistic use of Sentinel-1A Synthetic Aperture Radar-C data and Sentinel-2A Multi Spectral Instrument data. Three wildfire cases-Samcheok in May 2017, Gangreung·Donghae in April 2019, and Gosung·Sokcho in April 2019-were used for developing wildfire severity mapping models with three machine learning algorithms (i.e., Random Forest, Logistic Regression, and Support Vector Machine). The results showed that the random forest model yielded the best performance, resulting in an overall accuracy of 82.3%. The cross-site validation to examine the spatiotemporal transferability of the machine learning models showed that the models were highly sensitive to temporal differences between the training and validation sites, especially in the early growing season. This implies that a more robust model with high spatiotemporal transferability can be developed when more wildfire cases with different seasons and areas are added in the future.