Monitoring of urban ecological environment including air quality using satellite imagery

Abstract

Rapid urbanisation has highlighted problems in the urban ecological environment and stimulated research on the evaluation of urban environments. In previous studies, key factors such as greenness, wetness, and temperature were extracted from satellite images to assess the urban ecological environment. Although air pollution has become increasingly serious as urbanisation proceeds, information on air pollution is not included in existing models. The Sentinel-5P satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 2017 is a reliable data source for monitoring air quality. By making full use of images from Landsat 8, Sentinel-2A, and Sentinel-5P, this work attempts to construct a new remote sensing monitoring index for urban ecology by adding air quality information to the existing remote sensing ecological index. The proposed index was tested in the Beijing metropolitan area using satellite data from 2020. The results obtained using the proposed index differ greatly in the central urban region and near large bodies of water from those obtained using the existing remote sensing monitoring model, indicating that air quality plays a significant role in evaluating the urban ecological environment. Because the model constructed in this study integrates information on vegetation, soil, humidity, heat, and air quality, it can comprehensively and objectively reflect the quality of the urban ecological environment. Consequently, the proposed remote sensing index provides a new approach to effectively monitoring the urban ecological environment.

Development of the “Ecological Diptychs” application for detecting the boundaries of forest areas on satellite images and aerial photographs

“…Many studies have been devoted to these problems. [1][2] As part of the growing need for environmental surveillance systems, developing an application for analyzing satellite images becomes an important step in providing accurate and up-to-date information. Developing said application can be useful for several reasons:  Forest Management: Accurate delineation of forest areas helps forest departments and authorities to effectively manage forest resources, control logging and prevent illegal logging.…”