This paper investigates the effects of spatial autocorrelation structures in low resolution data on downscaling without ground measurements or secondary data, as well as the potential of geostatistical downscaling. An advanced geostatistical downscaling scheme applied in this paper consists of two analytical steps: the estimation of the point-support spatial autocorrelation structure by variogram deconvolution and the application of area-to-point kriging. Point kriging of block data without variogram deconvolution is also applied for a comparison purpose. Experiments using two low resolution thematic maps derived from remote sensing data showing very different spatial patterns are carried out to discuss the objectives. From the experiments, it is demonstrated that the advanced geostatistical downscaling scheme can generate the downscaling results that well preserve overall patterns of original low resolution data and also satisfy the coherence property, regardless of spatial patterns in input low resolution data. Point kriging of block data can produce the downscaling result compatible to that by area-to-point kriging when the spatial continuity in block data is strong. If heterogeneous local variations are dominant in input block data, the treatment of the low resolution data as point data cannot generate the reliable downscaling result, and this simplification should not be applied to donwscaling.

This study presents a rule-based urban image classification method for time series analysis of changes in the vicinity of Asan-si and Cheonan-si in Chungcheongnam-do, using Landsat satellite images (1991-2006). The area has been highly developed through the relocation of industrial facilities, land development, construction of a high-speed railroad, and an extension of the subway. To determine the yearly changing pattern of the urban area, eleven classes were made depending on the trend of development. An algorithm was generalized for the rules to be applied as an unsupervised classification, without the need of training area. The analysis results show that the urban zone of the research area has increased by about 1.53 times, and each correlation graph confirmed the distribution of the Built Up Index (BUI) values for each class. To evaluate the rule-based classification, coverage and accuracy were assessed. When Optimal allowable factor=0.36, the coverage of the rule was 98.4%, and for the test using ground data from 1991 to 2006, overall accuracy was 99.49%. It was confirmed that the method suggested to determine the maximum allowable factor correlates to the accuracy test results using ground data. Among the multiple images, available data was used as best as possible and classification accuracy could be improved since optimal classification to suit objectives was possible. The rule-based urban image classification method is expected to be applied to time series image analyses such as thematic mapping for urban development, urban development, and monitoring of environmental changes.

Land surface temperature (LST) is a one of the key variables of land surface which can be estimated from geostationary meteorological satellite. In this study, we have developed the three sets of LST retrieval algorithm from MTSAT-2 data through the radiative transfer simulations under various atmospheric profiles (TIGR data), satellite zenith angle, spectral emissivity, and surface lapse rate conditions using MODTRAN 4. The three LST algorithms are daytime, nighttime and total LST algorithms. The weighting method based on the solar zenith angle is developed for the consistent retrieval of LST at the early morning and evening time. The spectral emissivity of two thermal infrared channels is estimated by using vegetation coverage method with land cover map and 15-day normalized vegetation index data. In general, the three LST algorithms well estimated the LST without regard to the satellite zenith angle, water vapour amount, and surface lapse rate. However, the daytime LST algorithm shows a large bias especially for the warm LST (> 300 K) at day time conditions. The night LST algorithm shows a relatively large error for the LST (260 ~ 280K) at the night time conditions. The sensitivity analysis showed that the performance of weighting method is clearly improved regardless of the impacting conditions although the improvements of the weighted LST compared to the total LST are quite different according to the atmospheric and surface lapse rate conditions. The validation results of daytime (nighttime) LST with MODIS LST showed that the correlation coefficients, bias and RMSE are about 0.62~0.93 (0.44~0.83), -1.47~1.53 (-1.80~0.17), and 2.25~4.77 (2.15~4.27), respectively. However, the performance of daytime/nighttime LST algorithms is slightly degraded compared to that of the total LST algorithm.

Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) using the equations of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) / NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) were validated over the seas around Korea with satellite-tracked drifter data. A total 1,070 of matchups between satellite data and drifter data were acquired for the period of 2009. The mean rms errors of Multi- Channel SSTs (MCSSTs) and Non-Linear SSTs (NLSSTs) were evaluated to, in most of the cases, less than $1^{\circ}C$. However, the errors revealed dependencies on atmospheric and oceanic conditions. For the most part, SSTs were underestimated in winter and spring, whereas overestimated in summer. In addition to the seasonal characteristics, the errors also presented the effect of atmospheric moist that satellite SSTs were estimated considerably low ($-1.8^{\circ}C$) under extremely dry condition ($T_{11{\mu}m}-T_{12{\mu}m}$ < $0.3^{\circ}C$), whereas the tendency was reversed under moist condition. Wind forcings induced that SSTs tended to be higher for daytime data than in-situ measurements but lower for nighttime data, particularly in the range of low wind speeds. These characteristics imply that the validation of satellite SSTs should be continuously conducted for diverse regional applications.

Suspended sediment is an important oceanic variable for monitoring changes in coastal environment related to physical and biogeochemical processes. In order to estimate suspended sediment concentration (SSC) from satellite data, we derived SSC coefficients by fitting satellite remote sensing reflectances to in-situ suspended sediment measurements. To collect in-situ suspended sediment, we conducted ship cruises at 16 different locations three times for the periods of Sep.-November 2009 and Jul. 2010 at the passing time of Landsat $ETM_+$. Satellite data and in-situ data measured by spectroradiometers were converted to remote sensing reflectances ($R_{rs}$). Statistical approaches proved that the exponential formula using a single band of $R_{rs}$(565) was the most appropriate equation for the estimation of SSC in this study. Satellite suspended sediment using the newly-derived coefficients showed a good agreement with insitu suspended sediment with an Root Mean Square (RMS) error of 1-3 g/$m^3$. Satellite-observed SSCs tended to be overestimated at shallow depths due to bottom reflection presumably. This implies that the satellite-based SSCs should be carefully understood at the shallow coastal regions. Nevertheless, the satellite-derived SSCs based on the derived SSC coefficients, for the most cases, reasonably coincided with the pattern of in-situ suspended sediment measurements in the study region.

Image registration is an essential process to analyze the time series of satellite images for the purpose of image fusion and change detection. The Mutual Information (MI) is commonly used as similarity measure for image registration because of its robustness to noise. Due to the radiometric differences, it is not easy to apply MI to multi-temporal satellite images using directly the pixel intensity. Image features for MI are more abundantly obtained by employing a Gabor filter which varies adaptively with the filter characteristics such as filter size, frequency and orientation for each pixel. In this paper we employed Bidirectional Gabor Filter Energy (BGFE) defined by Gabor filter features and applied the BGFE to similarity measure calculation as an image feature for MI. The experiment results show that the proposed method is more robust than the conventional MI method combined with intensity or gradient magnitude.

Forests have been considered one of the most important ecosystems on the earth, affecting the lives and environment. The sustainable forest management requires accurate and timely information of forest and tree parameters. Appropriately interpreted remotely sensed imagery can provide quantitative data for deriving forest information temporally and spatially. Especially, analysis of individual tree detection and crown delineation is significant issue, because individual trees are basic units for forest management. Individual trees in aerial imagery have reflectance characteristics according to tree species, crown shape and hierarchical status. This study suggested a method that identified individual trees and delineated crown boundaries through adopting gradient method algorithm to amplified greenness data using red and green band of aerial imagery. The amplification of specific band value improved possibility of detecting individual trees, and gradient method algorithm was performed to apply to identify individual tree tops. Additionally, tree crown boundaries were explored using spectral intensity pattern created by geometric characteristic of tree crown shape. Finally, accuracy of result derived from this method was evaluated by comparing with the reference data about individual tree location, number and crown boundary acquired by visual interpretation. The accuracy ($\hat{K}$) of suggested method to identify individual trees was 0.89 and adequate window size for delineating crown boundaries was $19{\times}19$ window size (maximum crown size: 9.4m) with accuracy ($\hat{K}$) at 0.80.

An efficient method for the unsupervised classification of high resolution imagery is suggested in this paper. It employs pixel-linking and merging based on the adjacency graph. The proposed algorithm uses the neighbor lines of 8 directions to include information in spatial proximity. Two approaches are suggested to employ neighbor lines in the linking. One is to compute the dissimilarity measure for the pixel-linking using information from the best lines with the smallest non. The other is to select the best directions for the dissimilarity measure by comparing the non-homogeneity of each line in the same direction of two adjacent pixels. The resultant partition of pixel-linking is segmented and classified by the merging based on the regional and spectral adjacency graphs. This study performed extensive experiments using simulation data and a real high resolution data of IKONOS. The experimental results show that the new approach proposed in this study is quite effective to provide segments of high quality for object-based analysis and proper land-cover map for high resolution imagery of urban area.

Wind speeds have long been estimated from C-band VV-polarized SAR data by using the CMOD algorithms such as CMOD4, CMOD5, and CMOD_IFR2. Some SAR data with HH-polarization without any observations in VV-polarization mode should be converted to VV-polarized value in order to use the previous algorithms based on VV-polarized observation. To satisfy the necessity of polarization ratio (PR) for the conversion, we retrieved the conversion parameter from full-polarized SIR-C SAR image off the east coast of Korea. The polarization ratio for SIR-C SAR data was estimated to 0.47. To assess the accuracy of the polarization ratio coefficient, pseudo VV-polarized normalized radar cross section (NRCS) values were calculated and compared with the original VV-polarized ones. As a result, the estimated psudo values showed a good agreement with the original VV-polarized data with an root mean square error by 0.99 dB. We applied the psudo NRCS to the estimation of wind speeds based on the CMOD wind models. Comparison of the retrieved wind field with the ECMWF and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis wind data showed relatively small rms errors of 1.88 and 1.91 m/s, respectively. SIR-C HH-polarized SAR wind retrievals met the requirement of the scatterometer winds in overall. However, the polarization ratio coefficient revealed dependence on NRCS value, wind speed, and incident angle.

One of main concerns of operators of the Earth observation satellite is taking images as many as possible under the constraints of satellite resources during fixed period. In order to achieve this goal, satellite operators are strongly required to generate the optimized image collection plans, and it is a very time consuming process to achieve an optimized image collection plan when it is done by manual. This paper suggests automation of image collection planning based on the dynamic programming algorithm to reduce the time required for image collection planning. The validity of the proposed method is tested using operating satellite system and the result is given in this paper.

The satellite Chollian was successfully launched on June 27, 2010 and is expected to perform its communication, oceanographic, and meteorological duties for seven years. The follow-up launch of the Chollian satellite is already being planned, and diverse studies are under way to enable the use of the Korean satellite data. Studies are also being actively conducted in and out of Korea to visualize the meteorological data on the open-source virtual globes. The meteorological data include ground observation, satellite, and digital-model data. In this study, an efficient three-dimensional technique was developed to visualize typhoons on the virtual globes using the Chollian satellite data. This study was conducted to provide service to the public via the scientific visualization of the satellite image data, and to create an efficient satellite image analysis environment for meteorological researchers.

The sensitivity of microwave scattering to the dielectric properties and the geometric structure of soil surfaces makes radar remote sensing a challenge for a wide range of environmental issues directly related to the condition of natural surfaces. Especially, the potential for retrieving soil moisture with a high spatial and/or temporal resolution represents a significant contribution to hydrological and ecological modeling. This paper aims to review the current state of the art in SAR technology and methodological issues towards the discovery of a new potential accurate monitoring of soil moisture changes. In this paper, important parameters or constraints significantly affect the sensitivity of the measurements to soil moisture, such as roughness statistics, spatial resolution, and local topography, are discussed to improve the applicability of SAR remote sensing techniques. This study particularly intends to discuss important notes for developing smart and reliable methods capable of retrieving geophysical information.