The results of a study to explore variations in cloud cover, over regions that are minimally affected by rainfall and heavy rainfall, and that are coincident with variations in the galactic cosmic ray flux, are presented. Using an extensive record of global satellite derived cloud and rainfall products from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) D1 data series and Xie and...

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in a cooperative agreement with the Office of Surface Mining’s Charleston Field Office, is evaluating the utility of high resolution satellite images for characterizing vegetation patterns on reclaimed surface mines. This paper details the results of the first phase of this project, which sought to determine whether satellite images coul...

Cloud-free optical satellite imagery simplifies remote sensing, but land-cover phenology limits existing solutions to persistent cloudiness to compositing temporally resolute, spatially coarser imagery. Here, a new strategy for developing cloud-free imagery at finer resolution permits simple automatic change detection. The strategy uses regression trees to predict pixel values underneath clouds...

Snow cover depletion curves are required for several water management applications of snow hydrology and are often difficult to obtain automatically using optical remote sensing data owing to both frequent cloud cover and temporary snow cover. This study develops a methodology to produce accurate snow cover depletion curves automatically using high temporal resolution optical remote sensing dat...

as the information carried in a high spatial resolution image is not represented by single pixels but by meaningful image objects, which include the association of multiple pixels and their mutual relations, the object based method has become one of the most commonly used strategies for the processing of high resolution imagery. this processing comprises two fundamental and critical steps towar...

Cloud cover can influence numerous important ecological processes, including reproduction, growth, survival, and behavior, yet our assessment of its importance at the appropriate spatial scales has remained remarkably limited. If captured over a large extent yet at sufficiently fine spatial grain, cloud cover dynamics may provide key information for delineating a variety of habitat types and pr...

to identify an appropriate index for monitoring and evaluation of drought, rainfall data obtained from meteorological stations of ilam province from 2000 to 2011 and modis satellite images with 16-day intervals were collected and processed. the standardized precipitation index (spi) was calculated based on rainfall data; therefore, the rainfall data were used for measuring spi and satellite ima...