Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Remote Sensing
Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution
Published: 2024-12-20
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Forests are in decline worldwide due to human activities such as agricultural expansion, urbanization, and mineral extraction. Forest loss due to generally temporary causes, such as wildfire and forest management, is important to distinguish from permanent land use conversion due to the differing ecological and climate impacts of these disturbances and for the purposes of developing effective [...]
Sensing the dynamic nature of fragmented croplands in India through earth observation: a comprehensive review
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Fragmentation or the breakdown of landholdings to smaller parcels has an adverse impact on crop yields and productivity because of its uneconomic operational sizes. This comprehensive review reflects the insights into the complex dynamics of small landholding (SLs) in India by leveraging earth observation (EO) based sensing technology through synthesizing existing literature, methodologies and [...]
ml4xcube: Machine Learning Toolkits for Earth System Data Cubes
Published: 2024-10-09
Subjects: Computer and Systems Architecture, Computer Engineering, Engineering, Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Rapidly changing climate conditions and the increase in extreme events are posing severe challenges to human life and infrastructure, requiring sophisticated analytical capabilities for hazard prediction and disaster risk management. Earth System Data Cubes (ESDCs) have become an essential tool in Earth System Sciences (ESS) by organizing large-scale, multivariate environmental datasets into a [...]
Virtual laser scanning of dynamic scenes (VLS-4D): Current approaches and future perspectives in remote sensing
Published: 2024-10-07
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Virtual laser scanning (VLS) has proven to be a useful tool for survey planning, method development and training data generation in a variety of areas of Earth and environmental sciences. Until recently, most applications have used static representations of the real or a fictive environment, neglecting the inherent dynamics of our world, that also affect Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) [...]
Remote sensing and spatial analysis reveal unprecedented cyanobacteria bloom dynamics associated with elephant mass mortality
Published: 2024-05-07
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The 2020 mass mortality of 350 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Botswana sparked global concern, with cyanotoxins in watering holes (pans) being a suspected cause, though evidence remains inconclusive. Combining remote sensing and spatial analysis, we examined the relationship between the ecohydrology of ~3,000 pans and the locations of deceased elephants. Our analysis revealed a [...]
WRI: A New Spectral Index for Mapping Aquatic Surfaces in Urban Contexts
Published: 2024-04-19
Subjects: Remote Sensing
This paper proposes a modification of MNDWI called Rescaled Water Index (RWI), aiming to enhance the delineation and performance of water body mapping in urban areas using satellite imagery. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed index, we compare its performance in mapping water surfaces (WSs) in different cities in South America with the results obtained by other well-known water indices [...]
Can multi-scale thermal infrared imaging help validate and monitor water stress in alluvial forests?
Published: 2024-04-13
Subjects: Geomorphology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Alluvial forests are fragile and sensitive to drought induced by climate change and exacerbated by altered flow regimes. Our ability to detect and map their sensitivity to drought is therefore crucial to evaluate the effects of climate change and adjust management practices. In such a context, we explore the potential of multi-scale thermal infrared imagery (TIR) to diagnose the sensitivity of [...]
Satellite-based surveys reveal substantial methane point-source emissions in major oil & gas basins of North America during 2022-2023
Published: 2024-02-28
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Remote Sensing
Utilizing imaging spectroscopy technology to identify methane super-emitters plays a vital role in mitigating methane emissions in the Oil & Gas (O&G) sector. While earlier research has uncovered significant point-source methane emissions from O&G production in the US and Canada, which are key regions with large methane emissions, a comprehensive post-COVID-19 survey has been notably [...]
Land transformation on multi-decadal timescales reveals expanding croplands and settlements at the expense of tree-covered areas and mangroves in Nigeria
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Evaluating how land-cover is being transformed is essential to identify patterns necessary to infer the change trajectories and the driving factors. This study considers the case of Nigeria, where various natural ecosystems are being converted and for which a current national scale assessment is lacking. Producing Landsat-based time-series, we analyze change among land-cover types (i.e., [...]
Information Sharing: The Missing Ingredient in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of Pakistan-Agriculture Perspective
Published: 2023-08-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the important role of information sharing in advancing innovation that is presently missing in National Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Policy of Pakistan approved in 2012. Information is a key resource for making innovations in science, technology and policies. Like other countries of the world, almost all government departments in Pakistan [...]
Assessing vertical accuracy and spatial coverage of ICESat-2 and GEDI spaceborne lidar for creating global terrain models
Published: 2023-07-06
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Geomorphology, Remote Sensing
Digital elevation models (DEMs) are a necessity for modelling many large-scale environmental processes. In this study, we investigate the potential of data from two spaceborne lidar altimetry missions, ICESat-2 and GEDI—with respect to their vertical accuracies and planimetric data collection patterns—as sources for rasterisation towards global DEMs. We validate the terrain [...]
Lidar-based MaxEnt models to support conservation planning for endangered Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in urbanizing environments
Published: 2023-05-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Sensitive and intensively managed species require carefully thought-out management plans to promote and maintain specific habitat conditions. Urban features and land-use change must be assimilated into these habitat management plans, as they become increasingly present globally. As a case study, several MaxEnt species distribution models were developed that could enable habitat management efforts [...]
Spatiotemporal inconsistencies in Landsat satellite observations bias environmental-change analyses and monitoring
Published: 2023-05-19
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
Satellite remote sensing is vital for research, monitoring, and policy addressing environmental-change and sustainability issues from climate and ecosystem changes to food and water security. Here, Landsat satellite data play a crucial role, thanks to their unique global, long-term, and high-resolution coverage. Yet, spatial and temporal data gaps in the Landsat archive may propagate into derived [...]
Estimating cooling capacities from aerial images using convolutional neural networks
Published: 2023-04-17
Subjects: Remote Sensing
In recent decades, the global cooling demand has significantly increased and is expected to grow even further in the future. However, knowledge regarding the spatial distribution of cooling demand is sparse. Most existing studies are based on statistical modelling, which lack in small-scale details and cannot accurately identify individual large cooling producers. In this study, we implement and [...]
A high-resolution temporal framework to understand the reach-scale controls on wood budgeting
Published: 2023-04-07
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Large active channels usually store more wood than channels with a narrow flow because of the availability of large unvegetated bars for wood deposition and inner functioning that usually supplies more wood through channel shifting. However, the dynamics of the wood supply (wood input, output, or stability) can vary substantially over time and the drivers are largely unknown. To explore them, we [...]