Terminal lakes are widely distributed in the arid and semi-arid Gobi of Mongolia, and serves as important water resource for local people and livestock. However, such lakes are subject to great fluctuations in its size depending on climatic conditions and human water utilization. The Orog Lake is one such example that has shown remarkable fluctuation in recent years. In this study, we investigated the temporal changes of Orog Lake surface area by using 16-day MODIS 250 m NDVI products from 2000 to 2010. The results were compared with climate variability represented by monthly precipitation and temperature. Our results show that the Orog Lake gradually shrank for the period from 2000 to 2010, but with a significant range of seasonal and inter-annual variability. The lake area showed considerable seasonal variations, as it expanded in spring and fall, primarily due to snow melt and summer precipitation, respectively. Extreme drought period from 2000 to 2002 triggered the substantial reduction in lake area, leading to dry-up in year 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. After dry-up once occurred in 2005, the lake repeated reappearance and disappearance depending on seasonal and annual precipitation. Our findings implicate that the ground water fluctuated around the lake bottom level since 2005. This suggests the highly vulnerable nature of Orog lake, which greatly depends on future precipitation change.

The GOCI imagery can be an effective alternative to monitor short-term changes over terrestrial environments. This study aimed to assess the radiometric characteristics of the GOCI multispectral imagery for land applications. As an initial approach, we compared GOCI at-sensor radiance with MODIS data obtained simultaneously. Dynamic range of GOCI radiance was larger than MODIS over land area. Further, the at-sensor radiance over various land surface targets were tested by vicarious calibration. Surface reflectance were directly measured in field using a portable spectrometer and indirectly derived from the atmospherically corrected MODIS product over relatively homogeneous sites of desert, tidal flat, bare soil, and fallow crop fields. The GOCI radiance values were then simulated by radiative transfer model (6S). In overall, simulated radiance were very similar to the actual radiance extracted from GOCI data. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) calculated from the GOCI bands 5 and 8 shows very close relationship with MODIS NDVI. In this study, the GOCI imagery has shown appropriate radiometric quality to be used for various land applications. Further works are needed to derive surface reflectance over land area after atmospheric correction.

Although low spatial resolution satellite images like MODIS and GOCI can be important to observe land surface, it is often difficult to visually interpret the imagery because of the low contrast by prevailing cloud covers. We proposed a simple and adaptive stretching algorithm to enhance image contrast over land areas in cloudy images. The proposed method is basically a linear algorithm that stretches only non-cloud pixels. The adaptive linear stretch method uses two values: the low limit (L) from image statistics and upper limit (U) from low boundary value of cloud pixels. The cloud pixel value was automatically determined by pre-developed empirical function for each spectral band. We used MODIS and GOCI images having various types of cloud distributions and coverage. The adaptive contrast stretching method was evaluated by both visual interpretation and statistical distribution of displayed brightness values.

This study was performed to estimate forest canopy density (FCD) using airborne hyperspectral data acquired in the Independence Hall of Korea in central Korea. The airborne hyperspectral data were obtained with 36 narrow spectrum ranges of visible (Red, Green, and Blue) and near infrared spectrum (NIR) scope. The FCD mapping model developed by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) uses vegetation index (VI), bare soil index (BI), shadow index (SI), and temperature index (TI) for estimating FCD. Vegetation density (VD) was calculated through the integration of VI and BI, and scaled shadow index (SSI) was extracted from SI after the detection of black soil by TI. Finally, the FCD was estimated with VD and SSI. For the estimation of FCD in this study, VI and SI were extracted from hyperspectral data. But BI and TI were not available from hyperspectral data. Hyperspectral data makes the numerous combination of each band for calculating VI and SI. Therefore, the principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to find which band combinations are explanatory. This study showed that forest canopy density can be efficiently estimated with the help of airborne hyperspectral data. Our result showed that most forest area had 60 ~ 80% canopy density. On the other hand, there was little area of 10 ~ 20% canopy density forest.

To understand forest structures, the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument have been employed to measure and monitor forest canopy with feasibility of acquiring three dimensional canopy structure information. This study tried to examine the potential of GLAS dataset in measuring forest canopy structures, particularly maximum canopy height estimation. To estimate maximum canopy height using feasible GLAS dataset, we simply used difference between signal start and ground peak derived from Gaussian decomposition method. After estimation procedure, maximum canopy height was derived from airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data and it was applied to evaluate the accuracy of that of GLAS estimation. In addition, several influences, such as topographical and biophysical factors, were analyzed and discussed to explain error sources of direct maximum canopy height estimation using GLAS data. In the result of estimation using direct method, a root mean square error (RMSE) was estimated at 8.15 m. The estimation tended to be overestimated when comparing to derivations of airborne LiDAR. According to the result of error occurrences analysis, we need to consider these error sources, particularly terrain slope within GLAS footprint, and to apply statistical regression approach based on various parameters from a Gaussian decomposition for accurate and reliable maximum canopy height estimation.

In this paper, we introduce a newly developed photogrammetric software for automatic generation of high quality geo-products and its performance assessment carried out using various satellite images. Our newly developed software provides the latest techniques of an optimized sensor modelling, ortho-image generation and automated Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation for diverse remote sensing images. In particular, images from dual- and multi-sensor images can be integrated for 3D mapping. This can be a novel innovation toward a wider applicability of remote sensing data, since 3D mapping has been limited within only single-sensor so far. We used Kompsat-2, Ikonos, QuickBird, Spot-5 high resolution satellite images to test an accuracy of 3D points and ortho-image generated by the software. Outputs were assessed by comparing reliable reference data. From various sensor combinations 3D mapping were implemented and their accuracy was evaluated using independent check points. Model accuracy of 1~2 pixels or better was achieved regardless of sensor combination type. The high resolution ortho-image results are consistent with the reference map on a scale of 1:5,000 after being rectified by the software and an accuracy of 1~2 pixels could be achieved through quantitative assessment. The developed software offers efficient critical geo-processing modules of various remote sensing images and it is expected that the software can be widely used to meet the demand on the high-quality geo products.

This paper give further assessment on the original DoP-CPD classification scheme. This paper provides some additional comparative study on the DoP-CPD with H/A/alpha classifier in terms of multi look effects and classification performances. The statistics and multi looking effects of the DoP and CPD were analyzed with measured polarimetric SAR data. DoP-CPD is less sensitive to the number of averaging pixels than the entropy-alpha technique. A DoP-CPD diagram with appropriate boundaries between six different classes was then developed based on the data analysis. A polarimetric SAR image DoP-CPD classification technique is verified with C-band polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images.

In the view from most application system developers and users, cloud computing becomes popular in recent years and is still evolving. But in fact it is not easy to reach at the level of actual operations. Despite, it is known that the cloud in the practical stage provides a new pattern for deploying a geo-spatial application. However, domestically geo-spatial application implementation and operation based on this concept or scheme is on the beginning stage. It is the motivation of this works. Although this study is an introductory level, a simple and practical processed result was presented. This study was carried out on Amazon web services platform, as infrastructure as a service in the geo-spatial areas. Under this environment, cloud instance, a web and mobile system being previously implemented in the multi-layered structure for geo-spatial open sources of database and application server, was generated. Judging from this example, it is highly possible that cloud services with the functions of geo-processing service and large volume data handling are the crucial point, leading a new business model for civilian remote sensing application and geo-spatial enterprise industry. The further works to extend geo-spatial applications in cloud computing paradigm are left.