In 1997 and 1998 uncontrolled fires devastated huge tracts of tropical rainforests in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo in Indonesia. Here we report on results of a comparative study of ERS-2 ATSR hotspot and NOAA-AVHRR hotspot data used to analyse the extent of this disaster. A burned scar map derived from a Landsat TM image acquired after the fires and extensive ground data were used to asse...

Automated cloud detection and tracking is an important step in assessing global climate change via remote sensing. Cloud masks, which indicate whether individual pixels depict clouds, are included in many of the data products that are based on data acquired onboard earth satellites. Many cloud-mask algorithms have the form of decision trees, which employ sequential tests that scientists designe...

When using composite optical satellite images for land studies, an accurate and sensitive method is needed to detect pixels contaminated by unwanted atmospheric and surface effects. In this paper, we have examined the feasibility of using an algorithm previously developed for postseason analysis but in a ‘forward’ mode, i.e. for identifying contaminated pixels in currentseason data. The CECANT ...

Sea ice concentrations obtained with two algorithms from Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data are compared to spaceborne visible/infrared and active microwave imagery for the Greenland Sea in Spring. Both algorithms, the ARTIST Sea Ice algorithm (ASI) and the SEA LION algorithm (SLA), utilize 85-GHz SSM/I brightness temperatures with a spatial resolution of 15 km 13 km. Ice concentratio...

A new cloud detection algorithm for nighttime Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data has been developed and applied to a large number of images from various locations around Japan. The algorithm is characterized by a recovery function and the use of a two-dimensional histogram. Results obtained after applying the algorithm are presented and compared with those of previous algorit...

An automated satellite multi-image registration and mosaicing system based on aut?matic tie-point extra~tion and renavigation has been developed for A VHRR, TM, Viking Orbiter and pre-geocoded Images. ~he. ~eometnc aspects of image to image and image to ground registration form the core of any suc~ w.ork. ~owever a sIgnifIcant amount of preprocessing and some post-processing is n~ede~ to'produc...

introduction frost as a harmful climatologic phenomenon affects various human activities and biological processes. due to mountainous nature of kurdistan province as the study area of this research in one hand and type and diversity of effective air masses on the other, the frequency, severity and duration of this phenomenon in the province are outstanding. confronting frost could be one of the...

Climate change studies require consistent, long time series, surface reflectance data. The characterization of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is important for normalizing the solar radiation reflected from the earth’s surface. We evaluated four BRDF models to identify the preferred approach to the normalization of multiyear National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra...

the changes in time and location of surface temperature from a water body has an important effect on climate activities, marine biology, sea currents, salinity and other characteristics of the seas and lakes water. traditional measurement of temperature is costly and time consumer due to its dispersion and instability. in recent years the use of satellite technology and remote sensing sciences ...