remotesensing-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Engineering Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 30245

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Remote Sensing Laboratory, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boker Campus 84990, Israel
Interests: remote sensing; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); field spectroscopy; and image processing applications for desertification and climate change processes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
CNES, UMR CESBIO, 18 av. Edouard Belin, Toulouse, France
Interests: remote sensing time series for agriculture, agro-ecology and environment monitoring; development of applications with actors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère (CESBIO), 18 avenue E.Belin, 31401 Toulous, France
Interests: optical remote sensing; earth observation; analysis ready data; absolute calibration; cloud detection; atmospheric correction; land surface monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Vegetation and Environment New Micro Satellite (VENµS) is a joint venture of ‎the Israeli and French space agencies for developing and operating an ‎advanced space system. The satellite was launched on 1 August 2017, and since ‎November 2017 has acquired images of 159 sites worldwide. The system is ‎characterized by high spatial (5.3 m), spectral (12 spectral bands in the visible–‎near-infrared), and temporal (2-day revisit time) resolutions. The tilting ‎capability reaches up to 30° along and across track, and all data for ‎a given site is acquired with the same observation angle and at the same local ‎time in order to minimize directional effects. ‎Due to these combined unique capabilities, the scientific mission provides data ‎for scientific and applied studies dealing with the monitoring, analysis, and ‎modeling of land surface functioning under the influences of environmental ‎factors as well as human activities. The primary scientific mission objective is ‎vegetation monitoring. Moreover, it is especially suitable for precision ‎agriculture tasks such as site-specific management and/or decision support ‎systems. Four spectral bands along the red edge are unique to this system, and ‎improve the ability to detect different vegetation properties. Secondary ‎objectives include water quality monitoring along the coastal zone and in small ‎inland water bodies. One of the bands, at 620 nm, is duplicated, and both ‎bands are positioned at the extremes of the angular field in the scan direction. ‎The 1.5° difference in look angle between these two allows three-dimensional ‎imaging that enables the construction of a digital elevation model (DEM) of the Earth’s ‎surface and the assessment of cloud heights. The current Special Issue invites original manuscripts on innovative image ‎processing techniques and applications using VENµS data.

Prof. Arnon Karnieli
Dr. Gérard Dedieu
Dr. Olivier Hagolle
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • VENµS
  • agriculture
  • ecosystem
  • water quality
  • time series analysis
  • change detection
  • BRDF

Published Papers (10 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Other

45 pages, 23026 KiB  
Article
VENμS: Mission Characteristics, Final Evaluation of the First Phase and Data Production
by Arthur Dick, Jean-Louis Raynaud, Amandine Rolland, Sophie Pelou, Sophie Coustance, Gérard Dedieu, Olivier Hagolle, Jean-Pascal Burochin, Renaud Binet and Agathe Moreau
Remote Sens. 2022, 14(14), 3281; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14143281 - 07 Jul 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1627
Abstract
VENμS (Vegetation and Environment New micro (μ) Satellite) is a micro satellite launched in 2017 by the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) and the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). VENμS is a research satellite containing two very different devices: an electric Hall effect [...] Read more.
VENμS (Vegetation and Environment New micro (μ) Satellite) is a micro satellite launched in 2017 by the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) and the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). VENμS is a research satellite containing two very different devices: an electric Hall effect thruster and a multispectral optical camera. This paper focuses on the multispectral camera. The camera provides images at a resolution of 5 m, with a field of view of 27 km, and the orbit of the satellite was chosen to allow us to revisit of each observed site with constant angles every second day. In November 2020, VENμS ended the first phase of its mission. This phase, called VM01, allowed us to provide about 150 accurate time series over selected scientific sites over almost three years. Extensive work was conducted to calibrate the camera and assess the quality of the products. Not everything worked as planned before launch and a large amount of work was necessary to correct some defects of the camera or to improve the geometric registration of images. This article establishes the image quality VM01 final assessment including the presentation of radiometric and geometric calibration methods, the estimation of instrument performances and their associated temporal stabilities and the monitoring activities. In addition, it highlights the whole mechanism of data programming, reception and production. The end of VM01 phase is not the end of the VENμS mission, and a new phase started on a one-day repeat orbit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Figure 1

29 pages, 49548 KiB  
Article
Processing of VENµS Images of High Mountains: A Case Study for Cryospheric and Hydro-Climatic Applications in the Everest Region (Nepal)
by Zoé Bessin, Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Yves Arnaud, Patrick Wagnon, Fanny Brun, Michel Esteves, Baker Perry and Tom Matthews
Remote Sens. 2022, 14(5), 1098; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14051098 - 23 Feb 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1899
Abstract
In the Central Himalayas, glaciers and snowmelt play an important hydrological role, as they ensure the availability of surface water outside the monsoon period. To compensate for the lack of field measurements in glaciology and hydrology, high temporal and spatial resolution optical remotely [...] Read more.
In the Central Himalayas, glaciers and snowmelt play an important hydrological role, as they ensure the availability of surface water outside the monsoon period. To compensate for the lack of field measurements in glaciology and hydrology, high temporal and spatial resolution optical remotely sensed data are necessary. The French–Israeli VENµS Earth observation mission has been able to complement field measurements since 2017. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of different reflectance products over the Everest region for constraining the energy balance of glaciers and for cloud and snow cover mapping applied to hydrology. Firstly, the results indicate that a complete radiometric correction of slope effects such as the Gamma one (direct and diffuse illumination) provides better temporal and statistical metrics (R2 = 0.73 and RMSE = 0.11) versus ground albedo datasets than a single cosine correction, even processed under a fine-resolution digital elevation model (DEM). Secondly, a mixed spectral-textural approach on the VENµS images strongly improves the cloud mapping by 15% compared with a spectral mask thresholding process. These findings will improve the accuracy of snow cover mapping over the watershed areas downstream of the Everest region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 5999 KiB  
Article
Optimizing Top Dressing Nitrogen Fertilization Using VENμS and Sentinel-2 L1 Data
by David J. Bonfil, Yaron Michael, Shilo Shiff and Itamar M. Lensky
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(19), 3934; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13193934 - 30 Sep 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2177
Abstract
Environmental and economic constraints are forcing farmers to be more precise in the rates and timing of nitrogen (N) fertilizer application to wheat. In practice, N is frequently applied without knowledge of the precise amount needed or the likelihood of significant protein enhancement. [...] Read more.
Environmental and economic constraints are forcing farmers to be more precise in the rates and timing of nitrogen (N) fertilizer application to wheat. In practice, N is frequently applied without knowledge of the precise amount needed or the likelihood of significant protein enhancement. The objective of this study was to help farmers optimize top dress N application by adopting the use of within-field reference N strips. We developed an assisting app on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to map the spatial variability of four different vegetation indices (VIs) in each field by calculating the mean VI, masking extreme values (three standard deviations, 3σ) of each field, and presenting the anomaly as a deviation of ±σ and ±2σ or deviation of percentage. VIs based on red-edge bands (REIP, NDRE, ICCI) were very useful for the detection of wheat above ground N uptake and in-field anomalies. VENµS high temporal and spatial resolutions provide advantages over Sentinel-2 in monitoring agricultural fields during the growing season, representing the within-field variations and for decision making, but the spatial coverage and accessibility of Sentinel-2 data are much better. Sentinel-2 data is already available on the GEE platform and was found to be of much help for the farmers in optimizing topdressing N application to wheat, applying it only where it will increase grain yield and/or grain quality. Therefore, the GEE anomaly app can be used for top-N dressing application decisions. Nevertheless, there are some issues that must be tested, and more research is required. To conclude, satellite images can be used in the GEE platform for anomaly detection, rendering results within a few seconds. The ability to use L1 VENµS or Sentinel-2 data without atmospheric correction through GEE opens the opportunity to use these data for several applications by farmers and others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Figure 1

23 pages, 4272 KiB  
Article
Deep Learning-Based Phenological Event Modeling for Classification of Crops
by Pattathal V. Arun and Arnon Karnieli
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(13), 2477; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13132477 - 25 Jun 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2532
Abstract
Classification of crops using time-series vegetation index (VI) curves requires appropriate modeling of phenological events and their characteristics. The current study explores the use of capsules, a group of neurons having an activation vector, to learn the characteristic features of the phenological curves. [...] Read more.
Classification of crops using time-series vegetation index (VI) curves requires appropriate modeling of phenological events and their characteristics. The current study explores the use of capsules, a group of neurons having an activation vector, to learn the characteristic features of the phenological curves. In addition, joint optimization of denoising and classification is adopted to improve the generalizability of the approach and to make it resilient to noise. The proposed approach employs reconstruction loss as a regularizer for classification, whereas the crop-type label is used as prior information for denoising. The activity vector of the class capsule is applied to sample the latent space conditioned on the cell state of a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) that integrates the sequences of the phenological events. Learning of significant phenological characteristics is facilitated by adversarial variational encoding in conjunction with constraints to regulate latent representations and embed label information. The proposed architecture, called the variational capsule network (VCapsNet), significantly improves the classification and denoising results. The performance of VCapsNet can be attributed to the suitable modeling of phenological events and the resilience to outliers and noise. The maxpooling-based capsule implementation yields better results, particularly with limited training samples, compared to the conventional implementations. In addition to the confusion matrix-based accuracy measures, this study illustrates the use of interpretability-based evaluation measures. Moreover, the proposed approach is less sensitive to noise and yields good results, even at shallower depths, compared to the main existing approaches. The performance of VCapsNet in accurately classifying wheat and barley crops indicates that the approach addresses the issues in crop-type classification. The approach is generic and effectively models the crop-specific phenological features and events. The interpretability-based evaluation measures further indicate that the approach successfully identifies the crop transitions, in addition to the planting, heading, and harvesting dates. Due to its effectiveness in crop-type classification, the proposed approach is applicable to acreage estimation and other applications in different scales. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

27 pages, 13272 KiB  
Article
The Impacts of Spatial Resolution, Viewing Angle, and Spectral Vegetation Indices on the Quantification of Woody Mediterranean Species Seasonality Using Remote Sensing
by Shelly Elbaz, Efrat Sheffer, Itamar M. Lensky and Noam Levin
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(10), 1958; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13101958 - 18 May 2021
Viewed by 2912
Abstract
Discriminating between woody plant species using a single image is not straightforward due to similarity in their spectral signatures, and limitations in the spatial resolution of many sensors. Seasonal changes in vegetation indices can potentially improve vegetation mapping; however, for mapping at the [...] Read more.
Discriminating between woody plant species using a single image is not straightforward due to similarity in their spectral signatures, and limitations in the spatial resolution of many sensors. Seasonal changes in vegetation indices can potentially improve vegetation mapping; however, for mapping at the individual species level, very high spatial resolution is needed. In this study we examined the ability of the Israel/French satellite of VENμS and other sensors with higher spatial resolutions, for identifying woody Mediterranean species, based on the seasonal patterns of vegetation indices (VIs). For the study area, we chose a site with natural and highly heterogeneous vegetation in the Judean Mountains (Israel), which well represents the Mediterranean maquis vegetation of the region. We used three sensors from which the indices were derived: a consumer-grade ground-based camera (weekly images at VIS-NIR; six VIs; 547 individual plants), UAV imagery (11 images, five bands, seven VIs) resampled to 14, 30, 125, and 500 cm to simulate the spatial resolutions available from some satellites, and VENμS Level 1 product (with a nominal spatial resolution of 5.3 m at nadir; seven VIs; 1551 individual plants). The various sensors described seasonal changes in the species’ VIs at different levels of success. Strong correlations between the near-surface sensors for a given VI and species mostly persisted for all spatial resolutions ≤125 cm. The UAV ExG index presented high correlations with the ground camera data in most species (pixel size ≤125 cm; 9 of 12 species with R ≥ 0.85; p < 0.001), and high classification accuracies (pixel size ≤30 cm; 8 species with >70%), demonstrating the possibility for detailed species mapping from space. The seasonal dynamics of the species obtained from VENμS demonstrated the dominant role of ephemeral herbaceous vegetation on the signal recorded by the sensor. The low variance between the species as observed from VENμS may be explained by its coarse spatial resolution (effective ground spatial resolution of 7.5) and its non-nadir viewing angle (29.7°) over the study area. However, considering the challenging characteristics of the research site, it may be that using a VENμS type sensor (with a spatial resolution of ~1 m) from a nadir point of view and in more homogeneous and dense areas would allow for detailed mapping of Mediterranean species based on their seasonality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

22 pages, 6017 KiB  
Article
Detecting Cover Crop End-Of-Season Using VENµS and Sentinel-2 Satellite Imagery
by Feng Gao, Martha C. Anderson and W. Dean Hively
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(21), 3524; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213524 - 28 Oct 2020
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4330
Abstract
Cover crops are planted during the off-season to protect the soil and improve watershed management. The ability to map cover crop termination dates over agricultural landscapes is essential for quantifying conservation practice implementation, and enabling estimation of biomass accumulation during the active cover [...] Read more.
Cover crops are planted during the off-season to protect the soil and improve watershed management. The ability to map cover crop termination dates over agricultural landscapes is essential for quantifying conservation practice implementation, and enabling estimation of biomass accumulation during the active cover period. Remote sensing detection of end-of-season (termination) for cover crops has been limited by the lack of high spatial and temporal resolution observations and methods. In this paper, a new within-season termination (WIST) algorithm was developed to map cover crop termination dates using the Vegetation and Environment monitoring New Micro Satellite (VENµS) imagery (5 m, 2 days revisit). The WIST algorithm first detects the downward trend (senescent period) in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series and then refines the estimate to the two dates with the most rapid rate of decrease in NDVI during the senescent period. The WIST algorithm was assessed using farm operation records for experimental fields at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). The crop termination dates extracted from VENµS and Sentinel-2 time-series in 2019 and 2020 were compared to the recorded termination operation dates. The results show that the termination dates detected from the VENµS time-series (aggregated to 10 m) agree with the recorded harvest dates with a mean absolute difference of 2 days and uncertainty of 4 days. The operational Sentinel-2 time-series (10 m, 4–5 days revisit) also detected termination dates at BARC but had 7% missing and 10% false detections due to less frequent temporal observations. Near-real-time simulation using the VENµS time-series shows that the average lag times of termination detection are about 4 days for VENµS and 8 days for Sentinel-2, not including satellite data latency. The study demonstrates the potential for operational mapping of cover crop termination using high temporal and spatial resolution remote sensing data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

19 pages, 6420 KiB  
Article
Using LANDSAT 8 and VENµS Data to Study the Effect of Geodiversity on Soil Moisture Dynamics in a Semiarid Shrubland
by Vladislav Dubinin, Tal Svoray, Ilan Stavi and Hezi Yizhaq
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(20), 3377; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12203377 - 15 Oct 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2528
Abstract
Soil moisture content (SMC) is a limiting factor to ecosystem productivity in semiarid shrublands. Long-term droughts due to climatic changes may increase the water stress imposed on these lands. Recent observations demonstrate positive relations between geodiversity—expressed by the degree of soil stoniness—and SMC [...] Read more.
Soil moisture content (SMC) is a limiting factor to ecosystem productivity in semiarid shrublands. Long-term droughts due to climatic changes may increase the water stress imposed on these lands. Recent observations demonstrate positive relations between geodiversity—expressed by the degree of soil stoniness—and SMC in the upper soil layers. This suggests that areas of high geodiversity can potentially provide a haven for plant survival under water scarcity conditions. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of geodiversity on the dynamics of SMC in semiarid environments, which so far has not been fully investigated. The optical trapezoid model (OPTRAM) applied to six-year time series data (November 2013–July 2018), obtained from LANDSAT 8 and highly correlated with field measurements (R2 = 0.96), shows here that the SMC in hillslopes with high geodiversity is consistently greater than that in hillslopes with low geodiversity. During winter periods (December–March), the difference between the two hillslope types was ~7%, while during summer periods (June–September) it reduced to ~4%. By using the high-resolution spectral-spatiotemporal VENµS data, we further studied the geodiversity mechanism during summertime, and at a smaller spatial scale. The VENµS-based Crop Water Content Index (CWCI) was compared with the OPTRAM measurements (R2 = 0.71). The Augmented Dickey–Fuller test showed that water loss in the high-geodiversity areas during summers was very small (p-value > 0.1). Furthermore, the biocrust index based on the VENµS data showed that biological crust activity in the high-geodiversity hillslopes during summers is high and almost stationary (ADF p-value > 0.1). We suggest that the mechanism responsible for the high SMC in the high-geodiversity areas may be related to lower evaporation rates in the dry season and high runoff rates in the wet season, both of which are the combined result of the greater presence of developed biocrusts and stoniness in the areas of higher geodiversity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

24 pages, 25578 KiB  
Article
Bayesian Calibration of the Aquacrop-OS Model for Durum Wheat by Assimilation of Canopy Cover Retrieved from VENµS Satellite Data
by Deepak Upreti, Stefano Pignatti, Simone Pascucci, Massimo Tolomio, Wenjiang Huang and Raffaele Casa
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(16), 2666; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12162666 - 18 Aug 2020
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5453
Abstract
Crop growth models play an important role in agriculture management, allowing, for example, the spatialized estimation of crop yield information. However, crop model parameter calibration is a mandatory step for their application. The present work focused on the regional calibration of the Aquacrop-OS [...] Read more.
Crop growth models play an important role in agriculture management, allowing, for example, the spatialized estimation of crop yield information. However, crop model parameter calibration is a mandatory step for their application. The present work focused on the regional calibration of the Aquacrop-OS model for durum wheat by assimilating high spatial and temporal resolution canopy cover data retrieved from VENµS satellite images. The assimilation procedure was implemented using the Bayesian approach with the recent implementation of the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm DREAM(KZS). The fraction of vegetation cover (fvc) was retrieved from the VENµS satellite images for two years, during the durum wheat growing seasons of 2018 and 2019 in Central Italy. The retrieval was based on a hybrid method using PROSAIL Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) simulations for training a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) algorithm, combined with Active Learning to reduce the computational cost. The Aquacrop-OS model was calibrated with the fvc data of 2017–2018 for the Maccarese farm in Central Italy and validated with the 2018–2019 data. The retrieval accuracy of the fvc from the VENµS images were the Coefficient of Determination (R2) = 0.76, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) = 0.09, and Relative Root Mean Square Error (RRMSE) = 11.6%, when compared with the ground-measured fvc. The MCMC results are presented in terms of Gelman–Rubin R statistics and MR statistics, Markov chains, and marginal posterior distribution functions, which are summarized with the mean values for the most sensitive crop parameters of the Aquacrop-OS model subjected to calibration. When validating for the fvc, the R2 of the model for year (2018–2019) ranged from 0.69 to 0.86. The RMSE, Relative Error (RE), Relative Variability (α), and Relative Bias (β) ranged from 0.15 to 0.44, 0.19 to 2.79, 0.84 to 1.45, and 0.91 to 1.95, respectively. The present work shows the importance of the calibration of the Aquacrop-OS (AOS) crop water productivity model for durum wheat by assimilating remote sensing information from VENµS satellite data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Other

Jump to: Research

10 pages, 3280 KiB  
Technical Note
VENµS-Derived NDVI and REIP at Different View Azimuth Angles
by Manuel Salvoldi, Yaniv Tubul, Arnon Karnieli and Ittai Herrmann
Remote Sens. 2022, 14(1), 184; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14010184 - 01 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2056
Abstract
The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is crucial in determining the quantity of reflected light on the earth’s surface as a function of solar and view angles (i.e., azimuth and zenith angles). The Vegetation and ENvironment monitoring Micro-Satellite (VENµS) provides a unique opportunity [...] Read more.
The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is crucial in determining the quantity of reflected light on the earth’s surface as a function of solar and view angles (i.e., azimuth and zenith angles). The Vegetation and ENvironment monitoring Micro-Satellite (VENµS) provides a unique opportunity to acquire data from the same site, with the same sensor, with almost constant solar and view zenith angles from two (or more) view azimuth angles. The present study was aimed at exploring the view angles’ effect on the stability of the values of albedo and of two vegetation indices (VIs): the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the red-edge inflection point (REIP). These products were calculated over three polygons representing urban and cultivated areas in April, June, and September 2018, under a minimal time difference of less than two minutes. Arithmetic differences of VIs and a change vector analysis (CVA) were performed. The results show that in urban areas, there was no difference between the VIs, whereas in the well-developed field crop canopy, the REIP was less affected by the view azimuth angle than the NDVI. Results suggest that REIP is a more appropriate index than NDVI for field crop studies and monitoring. This conclusion can be applied in a constellation of satellites that monitor ground features simultaneously but from different view azimuth angles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

11 pages, 1570 KiB  
Letter
Evaluation of Methods for Mapping the Snow Cover Area at High Spatio-Temporal Resolution with VENμS
by Mohamed Wassim Baba, Simon Gascoin, Olivier Hagolle, Elsa Bourgeois, Camille Desjardins and Gérard Dedieu
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(18), 3058; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12183058 - 18 Sep 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2933
Abstract
The VENμS mission launched in 2017 provides multispectral optical images of the land surface with a 2-day revisit time at 5 m resolution for over 100 selected sites. A few sites are subject to seasonal snow accumulation, which gives the opportunity [...] Read more.
The VENμS mission launched in 2017 provides multispectral optical images of the land surface with a 2-day revisit time at 5 m resolution for over 100 selected sites. A few sites are subject to seasonal snow accumulation, which gives the opportunity to monitor the variations of the snow cover area at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. However, the 12 spectral bands of VENμS only cover the visible and near-infrared region of the spectra while existing snow detection algorithms typically make use of a shortwave infrared band to determine the presence of snow. Here, we evaluate two alternative snow detection algorithms. The first one is based on a normalized difference index between the near-infrared and the visible bands, and the second one is based on a machine learning approach using the Theia Sentinel-2 snow products as training data. Both approaches are tested using Sentinel-2 data (as surrogate of VENμS data) as well as actual VENμS in the Pyrenees and the High Atlas. The results confirm the possibility of retrieving snow cover without SWIR with a slight loss in performance. As expected, the results confirm that the machine learning method provides better results than the index-based approach (e.g., an RMSE equal to the learning method 1.35% and for the index-based method 10.80% in the High Atlas.). The improvement is more evident in the Pyrenees probably due to the presence of vegetation which complicates the spectral signature of the snow cover area in VENμS images. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue VENµS Image Processing Techniques and Applications)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Back to TopTop