ABSTRACT Monitoring and classifying disturbed forests can provide information support for not only sustainable forest management but also global carbon sequestration assessments. In this study, we propose an autoencoder-based model for forest disturbance detection, which considers disturbances as anomalous events in forest temporal trajectories. The autoencoder network is established and trained to

ABSTRACT Geographical simulation is a popular method in geographical and environmental research. Many models developed to address geographic and environmental issues are distributed worldwide. However, due to the lack of portals, these models are still difficult to invoke for geographical simulations in open web environments. This study designs and develops a framework to assemble service-oriented

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges around the world. Many studies have applied mobility data to explore spatiotemporal trends over time, investigate associations with other variables, and predict or simulate the spread of COVID-19. Our objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of human mobility open data to guide researchers and policymakers in conducting data-driven

ABSTRACT Many efforts have been devoted to extracting impervious surfaces based on different methods from multiple spatial resolution images. Differences in extraction methods and spatial resolutions are significant and have led to discrepant performances in terms of the impervious surface extraction accuracy. However, which extraction method is more suitable for which kind of spatial resolution image

ABSTRACT Over the recent decades, the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has caused large effects on the earth system. However, few studies have paid attention to the effects of heterogeneity of CO2 on the biosphere and the hydrosphere. Using a coupled diagnostic biophysical model (PML-V2) and comparing three heterogeneous CO2 datasets (GOSAT, CMIP6 and CarbonTracker) against

ABSTRACT It is of great significance for disaster prevention and mitigation to carry out disaster simulations for dam failure accidents in advance, but at present, there are few professional systems for disaster simulations of tailings dams. In this paper, we focused on the construction of a virtual geographic environment (VGE) system that provides an effective tool for visualizing the dam-break process

ABSTRACT Low-lying coastal cities are widely acknowledged as the most densely populated places of urban settlement; they are also more vulnerable to risks resulting from intensive land use and land cover change, human activities, global climate change, and the rising sea levels. This study aims to predict how urban growth is affected by sea level rise (SLR) in the Australian context. We develop an

ABSTRACT Forests have invariably been considered as an obstacle in retrieving land surface parameters from spaceborne passive microwave brightness temperature (TB) observations. For quantifying the effect of forests on microwave signals, several models have been developed. However, these models rarely reveal the dependence of microwave radiation on forest types, which can hardly meet the needs of high-accuracy

ABSTRACT Gridded model assessments require at least one climatic and one soil database for carrying out the simulations. There are several parallel soil and climate database development projects that provide sufficient, albeit considerably different, observation based input data for crop model based impact studies. The input database related uncertainty of the Biome-BGCMuSo agro-environmental model

ABSTRACT The aims of this study were: i) to compare no-till areas in two municipalities located in different regions of Brazil, along with the influence on CO2Flux and GPP, and ii) to verify the difference between environmental factors followed by the trends of these variables regarding future scenarios (ARIMA time-series model number). The study was carried out in two areas with different latitudes

ABSTRACT As researchers globally work towards a fully digital representation of the earth and its processes – i.e. a true Digital Earth – the need grows for software and systems to link disparate computer simulation models of various parts of the earth in a reliable and highly functional way. Web services have been demonstrated as an effective way to share and reuse models as they enable communication

ABSTRACT Floods occur frequently worldwide. The timely, accurate mapping of the flooded areas is an important task. Therefore, an unsupervised approach is proposed for automated flooded area mapping from bi-temporal Sentinel-2 multispectral images in this paper. First, spatial–spectral features of the images before and after the flood are extracted to construct the change magnitude image (CMI). Then

ABSTRACT The ability to correct for the influence of forest cover is crucial for retrieval of surface geophysical parameters such as snow cover and soil properties from microwave remote sensing. Existing correction approaches to brightness temperatures for northern boreal forest regions consider forest transmissivity constant during wintertime. However, due to biophysical protection mechanisms, below

ABSTRACT As an important facilitator in e-government and society in general, Open SDI merits an assessment of its characteristics and the monitoring of its development. The aim of the study was the proposal of the SDI openness assessment approach based on existing openness assessment frameworks, as well as the presentation of the Polish Spatial Data Infrastructure (PSDI) development towards openness

ABSTRACT The highly dynamic nature of agro-ecosystems in space and time usually leads to high intra-class variance and low inter-class separability in the fine spatial resolution (FSR) remotely sensed imagery. This makes traditional classifiers essentially relying on spectral information for crop mapping from FSR imagery an extremely challenging task. To mine effectively the rich spectral and spatial

ABSTRACT Exploring carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities is essential for urban energy conservation and resource management. Remotely sensed nighttime lights from the Suomi NPP-VIIRS provide spatial consistency in and a low-cost way of revealing CO2 emissions. Although many researches have documented the feasibility of the Suomi NPP-VIIRS data for assessing CO2 emissions, few have systematically

ABSTRACT The spectral clustering method has notable advantages in segmentation. But the high computational complexity and time consuming limit its application in large-scale and dense airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point cloud data. We proposed the Nyström-based spectral clustering (NSC) algorithm to decrease the computational burden. This novel NSC method showed accurate and rapid in

ABSTRACT Land surface albedo (LSA) is an important parameter in surface energy balance and global climate change. It has been used in the fields of energy budgets, climate dynamics, and land surface processes. To apply satellite LSA products more widely, the product accuracy needs to be evaluated at different scales and under atmospheric and surface conditions. This study validates and analyzes the

ABSTRACT The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) maintains seven in situ soil moisture networks throughout the continental United States, some since 2002. These networks are crucial for understanding the spatial and temporal extent of droughts in their historical context, parameterization of hydrologic models, and local agricultural decision support. However, the

ABSTRACT Comparison and validation of canopy reflectance (CR) models are two important steps to ensure their reliability. Pure forest plantations are an ideal type of forest for validating CR models because of their simple background and the low variance in the crown structures which are usually assumed to be identical in most CR models. A Geometric Optical Model for Forest Plantations (GOFP) was compared

ABSTRACT Accurate and rapid estimation of canopy cover (CC) is crucial for many ecological and environmental models and for forest management. Unmanned aerial vehicle-light detecting and ranging (UAV-LiDAR) systems represent a promising tool for CC estimation due to their high mobility, low cost, and high point density. However, the CC values from UAV-LiDAR point clouds may be underestimated due to

ABSTRACT Long-term droughts significantly impact surface and groundwater resources in India, however, observed changes in major river basins have not been well explored. Here we use Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) at three different time scales (24, 48, and 60 months) to identify long-term droughts in India for the observed record

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was the spatial and temporal monitoring of soil erosion patterns in Iran. The G2 model was used, as an appropriate tool to provide the required month-time step country-wide soil loss maps and statistical outputs. The input parameters were derived with field surveys and remote sensing imagery (MODIS, SRTM, SPOT, and Sentinel-2 scenes). An innovation for G2 was the consideration

ABSTRACT Evacuation is an effective and commonly taken strategy to minimize death and injuries from an incoming hurricane. For decades, interdisciplinary research has contributed to a better understanding of evacuation behavior. Evacuation destination choice modeling is an essential step for hurricane evacuation transportation planning. Multiple factors are identified associated with evacuation destination

ABSTRACT Seamless navigation has attracted lots of attention and many methods have been reported in the literature or made available as commercial applications. The process of navigation can be interpreted as a continuous movement of 3D objects from one unoccupied 3D indoor/outdoor space to another. From a technical perspective, a 3D navigation model is one of the critical components that should be

ABSTRACT Metadata information and catalogue services are major ways of making satellite images findable and accessible. Spatio-temporal indexing is the key to ensuring efficient searches. Because spatial information and temporal information are usually independently maintained and indexed, the image retrieval process has to include two search steps: a spatial query and a temporal query. As most Earth

ABSTRACT The pandemic of COVID-19 witnessed a massive infodemic with the public being bombarded with vast quantities of information. The spreading of neutral and highly accurate reports can guide the public to self-protect and reduce the pandemic. Mis- and dis-information would intrigue panic and high exposure risk to epidemic. Although the infodemic has attracted attentions from the academia, it is

ABSTRACT This study reveals the human mobility from various sources and the luxury nature of social distancing in the U.S during the COVID-19 pandemic by highlighting the disparities in mobility dynamics from lower-income and upper-income counties. We collect, process, and compute mobility data from four different sources. We further design a Responsive Index ( RI) based on the time series of mobility

ABSTRACT The Terrestrial Water Resources Satellite (TWRS) campaign is a planned Chinese candidate satellite mission, and a one-dimensional synthetic aperture technology will be used, resulting in variant incidence angles for collecting synchronous active-passive observations at L-band, which would make brightness temperature (Tb) downscaling especially challenging when aiming to improve the spatial

ABSTRACT Algal blooms are a frequent subject in scientific discussions and are the focus of many recent studies, mainly due to their adverse effect on society. Given the lack of ground truth data and the need to develop tools for their detection and monitoring, this research proposes a novel method to automate detection. Concepts derived from multi-temporal image series processing, spectral indices

ABSTRACT Identifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of the water body in Dongting Lake, the second largest freshwater lake in China, is crucial for water resource management. In this study, the variations of the water body were comprehensively analyzed based on remote sensing images and in situ measurements from 2000 to 2019. Four breakpoint detection approaches were integrated to analyze the change trends

ABSTRACT Reliable microstructure measurement of snow is a requirement for microwave radiative transfer model validation. Snow specific surface area (SSA) can be measured using stereological methods, in which snow samples are cast in the field and photographed in the laboratory. Processing stereology photographs manually by counting intersections of test cycloids with air–ice boundaries reduces the

ABSTRACT While ontological modelling and Semantic Web technologies are sometimes used to describe knowledge domains with a spatial component, there is still a lack of semantics to describe how to present this knowledge geovisually to the end user and how to automatize the process. In this paper, we first present vocabularies to describe at a high level the elements that make up a geovisualization.

ABSTRACT Grassland fires are a serious problem in Victoria, Australia due to large quantity of dry grass. Grassland curing degree (GCD) measures the dryness of the grass and is an important factor for assessing grassland fire danger. Grassland curing maps (GCMs) display the spatial distribution of GCDs, but the quality of GCMs varies depending on the spatial resolution of the observing satellite remote

ABSTRACT This paper proposed a geoscience model service integrated workflow-based rainstorm waterlogging analysis method to overcome the defects of conventional waterlogging analysis systems. In this research, we studied a general OGC WPS service invoking strategy, an automatic asynchronous invoking mechanism of WPS services in the BPEL workflow, and a distributed waterlogging analysis services integrated

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a novel ocean visualization framework, which focuses on analyzing multidimensional and spatiotemporal ocean data. GPU-based visualization methods are explored to effectively visualize ocean data. An improved ray casting algorithm for heterogeneous multisection ocean volume data is presented. A two-layer spherical shell is taken as the ocean data proxy geometry, which

ABSTRACT Cloud computing enables performing computations and analysis tasks and sharing services in web-based computer centres instead of local desktop systems. One of the most used areas of cloud computing is geographic information systems (GIS) applications. Although Desktop GIS products are still used in the community frequently, Web GIS and Cloud GIS applications have drawn attention and have become

ABSTRACT Spatial prediction of any geographic phenomenon can be an intractable problem. Predicting sparse and uncertain spatial events related to many influencing factors necessitates the integration of multiple data sources. We present an innovative approach that combines data in a Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) and uses machine learning for analysis. A DGGS provides a structured input for multiple

ABSTRACT The visualization of flood disasters in virtual reality (VR) scenes is useful for the representation and sharing of disaster knowledge and can effectively improve users’ cognitive efficiency in comprehending disaster information. However, the existing VR methods of visualizing flood disaster scenes have some shortcomings, such as low rendering efficiency and poor user experience. In this paper

ABSTRACT The satellite visibility number of GNSS is an important indicator for evaluating its availability for positioning and navigation. In urban areas, urban canyons cause serious satellite signals block, resulting in positioning uncertainty. Many studies used 3D city models to evaluate the visible satellites in some areas at a certain time. Nevertheless, this kind of method is difficult to apply

ABSTRACT There are different processes in 3D urban land administration in which spatial analysis plays an underpinning role. Among 3D data models, Industry Foundation Class (IFC) provides the potential capabilities for modelling legal and physical dimensions of urban properties. However, performing spatial analysis using IFC files cannot address the on-demand spatial analysis requirements of 3D urban

ABSTRACT As essential parts of the unique ecosystem of Tibetan Plateau (TP), the sizes and associated physical properties of alpine lakes have long been investigated. However, little is known about one of the most critical biogeochemical properties, i.e. the Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentrations. Here, for the first time, we presented a comprehensive investigation of the temporal–spatial variations

ABSTRACT As essential parts of the unique ecosystem of Tibetan Plateau (TP), the sizes and associated physical properties of alpine lakes have long been investigated. However, little is known about one of the most critical biogeochemical properties, i.e. the Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) concentrations. Here, for the first time, we presented a comprehensive investigation of the temporal–spatial variations

ABSTRACT In order to facilitate and coordinate spatial data sharing and exchange, many organisations have developed spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). SDI governance plays a pivotal role in the development and evolution of an SDI, but as SDIs are complex adaptive systems, governing is a challenge. This research therefore proposes a complexity perspective to SDI governance by exploring the use of

ABSTRACT In order to facilitate and coordinate spatial data sharing and exchange, many organisations have developed spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). SDI governance plays a pivotal role in the development and evolution of an SDI, but as SDIs are complex adaptive systems, governing is a challenge. This research therefore proposes a complexity perspective to SDI governance by exploring the use of

ABSTRACT The symmetrical circular shape of mesoscale eddies has been widely used in their scientific researches. Recently, an elliptical average eddy shape has been confirmed for eddies in the global ocean using multi-satellite altimeter data. As a regional extension of a previous study on the geometry of global eddies, a mean eddy shape in the South China Sea (SCS) has been derived by averaging a

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China, a series of measures were implemented by the government to prevent the spread of disease, including the lockdown policy and construction of emergency hospitals. To estimate the impact of these measures on aquatic environments, turbidity of lakes in Wuhan was dynamically monitored by integrating multi-sensor satellite observations. Calibrated against

ABSTRACT With growing pressures on marine ecosystems and on marine space, an increasingly needed strategy to optimise the use of marine space is to co-locate synergic marine human uses in close spatial–temporal proximity while separating conflicting marine human uses. The ArcMap toolbox SEANERGY is a new, cross-sectoral spatial decision support tool (DST) that enables maritime spatial planners to consider

ABSTRACT The Aral Sea crisis is considered one of the most severe ecological tragedies from the 1960s in Central Asia. The reasons for this crisis, especially in the twenty-first century, are still scientific disputes. This study investigated the relationship between land cover change in the Aral Sea related basins and the Aral Sea crisis from 2000 to 2020 by employing the GlobeLand30 dataset with

ABSTRACT Since 1982, Landsat series of satellite sensors continuously acquired thermal infrared images of the Earth’s land surface. In this study, Landsat 5, 7, and 8 land surface temperature (LST) products in the conterminous United States from 2009 to 2019 were validated using in situ measurements collected at 6 SURFRAD (Surface Radiation Budget Network) sites, 6 ARM (Atmospheric Radiation Measurement)

ABSTRACT Ice velocity constitutes a key parameter for quantifying ice-sheet discharge rates and is thus crucial for improving the coupled models of the Antarctic ice sheet towards accurately predict its contribution to future global sea-level rise. However, in Antarctica, high-resolution and continuous ice velocity estimates remain elusive, which is key to unravel Antarctica’s present-day ice mass

ABSTRACT Accurate and efficient three-dimensional (3D) streetscape reconstruction is the fundamental ability for an exploration vehicle to navigate safely and perform high-level tasks. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in streetscape reconstruction with visual images and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), but they have difficulties either in scaling and reconstructing large-scale outdoors

ABSTRACT In this paper, we developed highly accurate ensemble machine learning models integrating Reduced Error Pruning Tree (REPT) as a base classifier with the Bagging (B), Decorate (D), and Random Subspace (RSS) ensemble learning techniques for spatial prediction of rainfall-induced landslides in the Uttarkashi district, located in the Himalayan range, India. To do so, a total of 103 historical

ABSTRACT Sea ice conditions and navigability along four typical routes of the Northeast Passage (NEP) are analysed using remote-sensing data from 1979 to 2019. The influence of air temperature (Tair) and surface wind on the sea ice concentration (SIC) and the navigability of routes is determined. It is found that the annually averaged SICs of the different routes have decreased over the past 41 years

(2020). List of reviewers for International Journal of Digital Earth. International Journal of Digital Earth: Vol. 13, No. 12, pp. (i)-(ii).

ABSTRACT Monthly Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day-Night Band (DNB) composite data are widely used in research, such as estimations of socioeconomic parameters. However, some surface conditions affect the VIIRS DNB radiance, which may create some estimation bias in certain regions. In this paper, we propose a novel normalization algorithm for VIIRS DNB monthly composite data. The

ABSTRACT Global change refers to changes in the relationship between humans and nature. It is desirable to actively integrate human social activities into the unified framework of global change so that their mutual relations and functional mechanisms can be understood. This complicated issue necessitates an appropriate method allowing domain experts to collaboratively contribute their knowledge to

ABSTRACT Updating an authoritative Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) database requires many resources. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) involves citizens in the collection of data about their spatial environment. There is a growing interest in using existing VGI to update authoritative databases. This paper presents a framework aimed at integrating multi-source VGI based on a data fusion technique

ABSTRACT Soil emissivity of Arctic regions is a key parameter for assessing surface properties from microwave brightness temperature (Tb) measurements. Particularly in winter, frozen soil permittivity and roughness are two poorly characterized unknowns that must be considered. Here, we show that after removing snow, the 3D soil roughness can be accurately inferred from in-situ photogrammetry using

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the possibility to use mobile phone network data to monitor spatial policies in land use and transport planning. Monitoring requires robust time series and reproducible concepts linking spatial policies to monitoring outcomes, a requirement differing from current literature where mobile phone data analysis is exemplified in selected areas with privileged data access. Concepts