Satellite Data Potentialities in Solid Waste Landfill Monitoring: Review and Case Studies

Abstract

Remote sensing can represent an important instrument for monitoring landfills and their evolution over time. In general, remote sensing can offer a global and rapid view of the Earth’s surface. Thanks to a wide variety of heterogeneous sensors, it can provide high-level information, making it a useful technology for many applications. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a review of relevant methods based on remote sensing for landfill identification and monitoring. The methods found in the literature make use of measurements acquired from both multi-spectral and radar sensors and exploit vegetation indexes, land surface temperature, and backscatter information, either separately or in combination. Moreover, additional information can be provided by atmospheric sounders able to detect gas emissions (e.g., methane) and hyperspectral sensors. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of the full potential of Earth observation data for landfill monitoring, this article also provides applications of the main procedures presented to selected test sites. These applications highlight the potentialities of satellite-borne sensors for improving the detection and delimitation of landfills and enhancing the evaluation of waste disposal effects on environmental health. The results revealed that a single-sensor-based analysis can provide significant information on the landfill evolution. However, a data fusion approach that incorporates data acquired from heterogeneous sensors, including visible/near infrared, thermal infrared, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR), can result in a more effective instrument to fully support the monitoring of landfills and their effect on the surrounding area. In particular, the results show that a synergistic use of multispectral indexes, land surface temperature, and the backscatter coefficient retrieved from SAR sensors can improve the sensitivity to changes in the spatial geometry of the considered site.

Assessing the Impact of Landfills on Surrounding Vegetation: A Remote Sensing Analysis with Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8

“…The virtual constellation obtained by Sen2like allows us to increase the total number of acquisitions over an AOI of about 30% compared to the actual Sentinel-2 satellites [5].…”

Teledección de residuos sólidos municipales en vertederos a cielo abierto en una provincia de Tacna

“…Por lo tanto, la aplicación de tecnologías de teledetección, como el uso de imágenes satelitales, se convierte en una herramienta fundamental para identificar las áreas específicas donde se están depositando los residuos sólidos municipales generados por la población. Estas herramientas nos brindan la capacidad de analizar la ubicación de estos vertederos, lo que a su vez facilita la planificación de acciones de mantenimiento y cierre de estos sitios (Papale et al, 2023;Elkhrachy et al, 2023). La información recopilada a través de la teledetección proporcionará a las autoridades locales los datos necesarios para una gestión más eficaz y sostenible de los residuos sólidos.…”