Building consistent time series night-time light data from average DMSP/OLS images for indicating human activities in a large-scale oceanic area
Huang, R.; Wu, W.; Yu, K. (2022). Building consistent time series night-time light data from average DMSP/OLS images for indicating human activities in a large-scale oceanic area. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 114: 103023. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2022.103023
In: International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. International Institute for Aerial Survey and Earth Sciences: Enschede. ISSN 1569-8432; e-ISSN 1872-826X, more
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| Keywords |
Standardization > Calibration > Intercalibration
Time series
Marine/Coastal |
| Author keywords |
Ocean; DMSP/OLS average image; Random Forest |
| Abstract |
Human activities in the ocean have never been chronically and continuously investigated on a large scale. Night-time light (NTL) images collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) have been used as a proxy for monitoring the distribution and intensity of some human activities in the ocean from 1992 to 2013. However, systematic radiometric biases exist among the average visible-light DMSP/OLS NTL images (DMSPavg) derived from different satellites. Moreover, the high randomness of fishing vessel locations and the large amount of noise impede the intercalibration of DMSPavg. To address these issues, this study has developed a method for generating a series of consistent NTL images from 1992 to 2013 for a large-scale oceanic area. A composite image was first constructed by combining the original DMSPavg, median, and standard deviation filter images derived from the DMSPavg, and a bathymetry image. Thereafter, Random Forest (RF) algorithm was employed to classify the composite image into effective and noisy pixels. Finally, a stepwise intercalibration method was adopted to reduce the systematic radiometric biases in the denoised images. The experimental results showed that RF had an overall accuracy of 96% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.775. Furthermore, the intercalibration was shown to significantly reduce the systematic radiometric biases owing to the noises being effectively discarded by the RF. Specifically, the Sum Normalized Different Index (SNDI) of the images intercalibrated by the proposed method can reach 0.61, which is 68.2% less than that of the original DMSPavg. In addition, the correlation coefficients between the intercalibrated DMSPavg and fishery catches in the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Japan and Malaysia can reach 0.949 and 0.901, respectively, which are higher than other values, such as the one intercalibrated using the Pseudo-Invariant Features (PIFs) method. In summary, the proposed method has been proven to be effective and feasible for generating consistent time-series NTL data for a large-scale oceanic area, and the derived Total Light Index (TLI) is an effective indicator of ocean fishery activities for ocean ecosystem research and related applications. |
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