Development of Dense Time Series 30-m Image Products from the Chinese HJ-1A/B Constellation: A Case Study in Zoige Plateau, China

Abstract

Time series remote sensing products with both fine spatial and dense temporal resolutions are urgently needed for many earth system studies. The development of small satellite constellations with identical sensors affords novel opportunities to provide such kind of earth observations. In this paper, a new dense time series 30-m image product was proposed respectively based on an 8-day, 16-day and monthly composition. The products were composited by the Charge Coupled Device (CCD) images from the 2-day revisit small satellite constellation for environmental monitoring and disaster mitigation of China (HJ-1A/B). Taking the Zoige plateau in China as a case area where it is covered by highly heterogeneous vegetation landscapes, a detailed methodology was introduced on how to use 183 scenes of CCD images in 2010 to create composite products. The quality of the HJ CCD composites was evaluated by inter-comparison with the monthly 30-m global Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD), 16-day 500-m MODIS NDVI, and 8-day 500-m MODIS surface reflectance products. Results showed that the radiometric consistency between HJ and WELD composited Top Of Atmosphere (TOA) reflectance was in good agreement except for May, June, July and August when more clouds and invalid data gaps appeared in WELD. Visual assessment and temporal profile analysis also revealed that HJ possessed better visual effects and temporal coherence than that of WELD. The comparison between HJ and MODIS products indicated that HJ composites were radiometrically consistent with MODIS products over areas consisting of large patches of homogeneous surface types, but can better reflect the detailed spatial differences in regions with heterogeneous landscapes. This paper highlights the potential of compositing HJ-1A/B CCD images, allowing for providing a cloud free, time-space consistent, 30-m spatial resolution, and dense in time series image product. Meanwhile, the proposed products could also be treated as a reference to generate regional or even global composited products for the on-going satellite constellations and even for the forthcoming satellite missions such as Sentinel-2A/B.

Construction of smooth daily remote sensing time series data: a higher spatiotemporal resolution perspective

“…Several articles indicate the Sentinel-2 A/B data is promising [11,18]. With their short-term global revisiting cycle and 10-m resolution, they will play an additional role in high spatiotemporal remote sensing of time series data.…”

“…The double constellations constitute an observation network that covers China and its surrounding areas with a two-day repeat cycle. By taking advantage of its relatively high spatial resolution and frequent repeat cycle, some researchers demonstrated its potential in constructing dense timeseries data by data fusion with MODIS [11,15].…”

“…This area has a double cropping system: the winter wheat is sowed in October and harvested in June; the summer corn is sowed in June and harvested in October. Production of these HJ-1 A/B NDVI are conventional as others remote sensing imagery, and the literature has summarized the procedure [3,11,15]. The NDVI images were layer stacked to construct a time-series dataset ( Fig.…”

“…However, most of VI timeseries data was derived from low spatial resolution satellite platforms such as NOAA-AVHRR (Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer) instruments; EOS-MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro radiometer); and SPOT (Système Pour l'Observation de la Terre) VGT product [6][7][8][9][10]. Higher spatiotemporal resolution images can deepen the understanding of land surface dynamics; generating consistent and comparative finer spatiotemporal time series imagery is therefore critical [11].…”

Appling the One-Class Classification Method of Maxent to Detect an Invasive Plant Spartina alterniflora with Time-Series Analysis

“…Under these circumstances, the ESA's Sentinel-2A and B constellation (with 10-m, 20-m and 60-m spatial resolution and a repetition cycle of five days) [88] and the Chinese HuanJing-1 (HJ-1) A/B satellite (with the spatial resolution of 30 m and a temporal resolution of two days [89,90]) can be used as important supplement data for the Landsat satellite to formulate the complete time-series analysis model. Moreover, our time-series analysis model using only the selected three band variables can obtain very high accuracy.…”