Landsat Imagery & Analysis

Grassland Ecosystems and Societal Adaptations under Changing Grazing Intensity

and Climate on the Mongolian Plateau

Agenda

• Overview of research & publications goals

• Image availability in relation to field sites

• Planning for next summer’s field season– Image selection considerations– Preprocessing and Classification– Preparation of field plan

• Hyperion

• Back end computing issues

Overview of research & publications goals

• Strategy – envision outcomes and plan backward to achieve• Feasible Research Publication

– Land Cover Change over time from Landsat image archive• Compare patterns and change between

– Inner Mongolia vs Mongolia– Climatological gradients (E-W, N-S) of grassland ecosystem types

» Differences between C3 vs C4 photosynthetic pathway PFGs?– Agricultural Extensification vs Pasture ratio– Encroachment of deserts and evidence of land degradation– Use of County-level Herd Density data?

– Comparison of AVHRR/MODIS to Landsat• Flows in part from above paper – what are the tradeoffs between coarse

spatial/high temporal vs improved spatial/low temporal imagery?• Are there any significant implications for C-sequestration modeling

emanating from these (hypothesized) differences?– Comparisons of Landsat vs Hyperion – similar approach to above, but

emphasizing comparisons between multispectral vs hyperspectral• Does the addition of hyperspectral capability have a significant impact on the

ability to map plant groups? Desertification? Other relevant phenomena?– Perhaps some algorithm-development paper? (Dr. Sha?)

Image availability in relation to field sites

• Nina has compiled a detailed spreadsheet and screen captures listing/portraying available and useful images

• There appears to be ample opportunity to exploit multi-temporal imagery

• We will compile both inter-annual and intra-annual image sets, if possible

• Need to identify the 3 detailed study areas to focus what images to download, plus where to task Hyperion

Planning for next summer’s field season

• Identification of 3 detailed field sites• Permissions for GPS, ASD, etc• Logistics• Preparation of classification scheme• Preliminary classifications• Planning for field season to coincide with

Hyperion and Landsat ground truth collection• Coordination of RS, Social, Ecological field

activities

Image selection considerations

• Location vs 3 field sites

• Timing within seasons and across years

• Cloud cover and other image quality issues

• Amount of time required for processing – we can only do so much, so we want to select carefully

Preprocessing and Classification

• Once obtained, reproject into the common datum, projection and coordinate system

• Check for errors; fix if possible

• Clip to study areas

• ISODATA and other prelim classification strategies

• Develop and vett classification scheme

• Output for field work

Preparation of field plan

• Timing and logistics• Coordination with Social, Ecological• Personnel• Transportation and insurance of

instruments (GPS, ASD, etc)• Field sampling design• Field data forms• Other…?

Hyperion

• Need to determine detailed field locations– 3 village clusters where Social survey will occur– Ecological field sites?

• In the process of setting up tasking of sensor• Multi-season (ie, do we collect 2 years in a row?)• Supporting data considerations?

– Meteorological data for ATCOR?

• Other…?

Back end computing issues

• Need to set up a server– Very large volumes of data– Speed of processing and I/O– Backup of database and workflow

• Workstations– Software

• ERDAS Objective and Hyperspectral, plus standard toolkit• Trimble GPS management and post processing• ASD Spectroradiometer data processing and management