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Abstract:The segmentation of a high spatial resolution remote sensing image is a critical step in geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA). Evaluating the performance of segmentation without ground truth data, i.e., unsupervised evaluation, is important for the comparison of segmentation algorithms and the automatic selection of optimal parameters. This unsupervised strategy currently faces several challenges in practice, such as difficulties in designing effective indicators and limitations of the spectral values in the feature representation. This study proposes a novel unsupervised evaluation method to quantitatively measure the quality of segmentation results to overcome these problems. In this method, multiple spectral and spatial features of images are first extracted simultaneously and then integrated into a feature set to improve the quality of the feature representation of ground objects. The indicators designed for spatial stratified heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation are included to estimate the properties of the segments in this integrated feature set. These two indicators are then combined into a global assessment metric as the final quality score. The trade-offs of the combined indicators are accounted for using a strategy based on the Mahalanobis distance, which can be exhibited geometrically. The method is tested on two segmentation algorithms and three testing images. The proposed method is compared with two existing unsupervised methods and a supervised method to confirm its capabilities. Through comparison and visual analysis, the results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method and demonstrated the reliability and improvements of this method with respect to other methods.

With several bands covering iron-bearing mineral spectral features, Sentinel-2 has advantages for iron mapping. However, due to the inconsistent spatial resolution, the sensitivity of Sentinel-2 data to detect iron-bearing minerals may be decreased by excluding the 60 m bands and neglecting the 20 m vegetation red-edge bands. Hence, the capability of Sentinel-2 for iron-bearing minerals mapping were assessed by applying a multivariate (MV) method to pansharpen Sentinel-2 data. Firstly, the Sentinel-2 bands with spatial resolution 20 m and 60 m (except band 10) were pansharpened to 10 m. Then, extraction of iron-bearing minerals from the MV-fused image was explored in the Cuprite area, Nevada, USA. With the complete set of 12 bands with a fine spatial resolution, three band ratios (6/1, 6/8A and (6 + 7)/8A) of the fused image were proposed for the extraction of hematite + goethite, hematite + jarosite and the mixture of iron-bearing minerals, respectively. Additionally, band ratios of Sentinel-2 data for iron-bearing minerals in previous studies were modified with substitution of narrow near infrared band 8A for band 8. Results demonstrated that the capability for detection of iron-bearing minerals using Sentinel-2 data was improved by consideration of two extra bands and the unified fine spatial resolution.