M.Sc. handed in by Susanne Karg on burn scar detection with ALOS data

M.Sc. handed in by Susanne Karg on burn scar detection with ALOS data

October 26, 2017

Susanne Karg handed in her M.Sc. thesis “Burn Scar Detection Using Polarimetric ALOS-2 Time-Series Data” which was done in collaboration with the DLR-EOC. From the abstract: Fire is both a natural disturbance regime and a threat to infrastructure, forestry and human lives. Satellite remote sensing offers a fast and efficient way to  reliably estimate the burnt area. In most cases, optical satellite data are used for burn scar detection. Nevertheless, smoke, clouds or rain can decrease the quality of classification. In these cases, SAR data can be a good alternative. Using quad-polarisation SAR data, the backscatter can be decomposed into different scattering  mechanisms, describing the scatterer more precisely. Within this chapter the possibilities and limitations of using polarimetric ALOS-2 data for burnt area estimation are investigated using an object-based image analysis approach based on change-detection. The effects of speckle filters and averaging windows were investigated and the developed routine tested using a time-series. Differences were found between the backscatter behaviour during the fire and several months afterwards. The object-based postclassification increased the accuracy strongly compared to the pixel-based classification of the burn scar. The window sizes for speckle filtering and calculation of  decompositions influenced the classification result strongly. Good results were obtained for any of the time steps analysed after the routine was adapted to the rest of the time-series.

first supervisor: Martin Wegmann, second supervisor: Günter Strunz  in cooperation with Dr. Sandro Martinis and Dr. Simon Plank

you may also like:

Invited Talk at the University of Zurich

Invited Talk at the University of Zurich

EORC PI Florian Betz was invited by the group of Remote Sensing of Environmental Changes at the University of Zurich to talk about his research on satellite time series based analysis of river systems. The visit was a great opportunity to exchange ideas and elaborate...

Snow and ice research in the Arctic

Snow and ice research in the Arctic

Our colleagues Dr. Mirjana Bevanda and Dr. cand. Jakob Schwalb-Willmann recently conducted another UAS-based fieldwork in the Arctic, focusing on temporal variability of snow and ice property. Utilizing VTOL UAS platforms equipped with LiDAR, multispectral, and...

Exploring Wetland Ecosystems in the Rhön Biosphere Reserve

Exploring Wetland Ecosystems in the Rhön Biosphere Reserve

As part of our ongoing collaboration with our EOCap4Africa project partners, two members of the EORC (Dr. Insa Otte, Lilly Schell) at the University of Würzburg recently took a field trip to the Rhön Biosphere Reserve with our visiting scientists. We visited two...

Spring Vibes on Our Lunch Break

Spring Vibes on Our Lunch Break

With the first warm days of spring finally arriving, a small fraction of our team already took full advantage of the sunshine during lunch break—gathering outside to soak up the mild weather and enjoy a few well-earned moments of relaxation. Some of us have just...