Open water, inundated vegetation and upland vegetation discriminated through a disturbing atmosphere

[摘要] Methane is an important greenhouse gas. The areal extent of Borealwetlands, source areas for methane, is poorly known. At timesestimates have differed by as much as seven fold, whichcontributes uncertainty to present day energy and carbon budgetsand to projections of future climates.

In this research we applied optical remote sensing technology toidentify methane source areas in POLDER imagery collected fromboth aircraft and satellite. Our approach takes advantage of thespecular reflecting properties of surface waters in order todifferentiate inundated wetlands (with emergent vegetation), openwater (without emergent vegetation) and non-inundated cover types.

Unlike our previous research, here we account for the affects ofthe disturbing atmosphere, presenting a radiative transfer modelthat represents an atmosphere above a mixed pixel that includesvarious proportions of open water, inundated vegetation and uplandvegetation. The results show that our algorithm accuratelyidentified these three cover types in both aircraft and satellitedata. The results point to the probable importance of atmosphericcorrection to the discrimination procedure.

[学科分类] 电子、光学、磁材料