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Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Atmospheric Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 24702

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Amy Braverman

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Principal Statistician, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Mail Stop 158-242, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, USA
Interests: statistical methods for remote sensing; uncertainty quantification; spatial and spatio-temporal statistical modeling; analysis of massive data sets; climate model diagnosis using remote sensing observations

Dr. Emily Kang

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Guest Editor

Associate Professor, Division of Statistics and Data Science, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Cincinnati, Room 531 2925CGD, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0025, USA
Interests: spatial and spatio-temporal statistics; Bayesian hierarchical modeling; statistical computing; uncertainty quantification; statistical learning; statistical modeling for remote sensing; climate; environmental sciences

Dr. Meredith Franklin

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Guest Editor

Department of Statistical Sciences, School of the Environment, University of Toronto, 700 University Ave, Toronto, ON, Canada
Interests: environmental statistics; spatial statistics; remote sensing; environmental epidemiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last 20 years, a trove of new statistical methods for remote sensing data have been developed and used to reveal new insights about the Earth’s geophysical processes, the impact of human activities on them, and their impacts on people’s lives. These processes exhibit spatial and spatio-temporal dependence, and consequently, so do the corresponding observed radiances and retrieved geophysical data products. However, multiple uncertainties affect acquisition and processing, and they must be accounted for both in the products themselves and in subsequent analyses. Exploiting inherent spatial and temporal dependence can mitigate the impacts of these uncertainties and lead to more accurate products, science conclusions, and more informed decisions.

This Special Issue serves as a compendium of recent work bringing modern spatial and spatio-temporal statistical methods to bear on the collection, generation, and analysis of remote sensing data products. We explore two broad themes here: methods and applications. In methods, we showcase spatial and spatio-temporal statistical tools created specifically for massive remote sensing data sets. All the modern methods we are aware of were developed in response to practical problems, and we ask that authors include the motivation for their work and show examples. Under applications, we come at the problem from the other direction: we seek contributions from remote sensing scientists and users who have incorporated spatial and spatio-temporal statistical methods into their work and have realized benefits. We are especially interested in applications where new scientific or societal insights are enabled by these techniques. Our goal is to bring the remote sensing community up to date on what modern statistical methods have to offer and to facilitate more collaboration between the remote sensing and statistics communities going forward.

Dr. Amy Braverman
Dr. Emily Kang
Dr. Meredith Franklin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

spatial statistics
spatio-temporal statistics
change-of-support
data fusion
uncertainty quantification
spatial/temporal dependence
gradients and trends
bias and variability
climate
health effects

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Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 3173 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Bayesian Spatial Models for Projecting Corn Yields

by Samantha Roth, Ben Seiyon Lee, Robert E. Nicholas, Klaus Keller and Murali Haran

Remote Sens. 2024, 16(1), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16010069 - 23 Dec 2023

Viewed by 1146

Abstract

Climate change is predicted to impact corn yields. Previous studies analyzing these impacts differ in data and modeling approaches and, consequently, corn yield projections. We analyze the impacts of climate change on corn yields using two statistical models with different approaches for dealing with county-level effects. The first model, which is novel to modeling corn yields, uses a computationally efficient spatial basis function approach. We use a Bayesian framework to incorporate both parametric and climate model structural uncertainty. We find that the statistical models have similar predictive abilities, but the spatial basis function model is faster and hence potentially a useful tool for crop yield projections. We also explore how different gridded temperature datasets affect the statistical model fit and performance. Compared to the dataset with only weather station data, we find that the dataset composed of satellite and weather station data results in a model with a magnified relationship between temperature and corn yields. For all statistical models, we observe a relationship between temperature and corn yields that is broadly similar to previous studies. We use downscaled and bias-corrected CMIP5 climate model projections to obtain detrended corn yield projections for 2020–2049 and 2069–2098. In both periods, we project a decrease in the mean corn yield production, reinforcing the findings of other studies. However, the magnitude of the decrease and the associated uncertainties we obtain differ from previous studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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17 pages, 1378 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Data-Fusion Approach to Assessing the Contribution of Wildland Fire Smoke to Fine Particulate Matter in California

by Hongjian Yang, Sofia Ruiz-Suarez, Brian J. Reich, Yawen Guan and Ana G. Rappold

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(17), 4246; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15174246 - 29 Aug 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1384

Abstract

The escalating frequency and severity of global wildfires necessitate an in-depth understanding and monitoring of wildfire smoke impacts, specifically its contribution to fine particulate matter (PM

_{2.5}

). We propose a data-fusion method to study wildfire contribution to PM

_{2.5}

using satellite-derived smoke [...] Read more.

The escalating frequency and severity of global wildfires necessitate an in-depth understanding and monitoring of wildfire smoke impacts, specifically its contribution to fine particulate matter (PM

_{2.5}

). We propose a data-fusion method to study wildfire contribution to PM

_{2.5}

using satellite-derived smoke plume indicators and PM

_{2.5}

monitoring data. Our study incorporates two types of monitoring data, the high-quality but sparse Air Quality System (AQS) stations and the abundant but less accurate PurpleAir (PA) sensors that are gaining popularity among citizen scientists. We propose a multi-resolution spatiotemporal model specified in the spectral domain to calibrate the PA sensors against accurate AQS measurements, and leverage the two networks to estimate wildfire contribution to PM

_{2.5}

in California in 2020 and 2021. A Bayesian approach is taken to incorporate all uncertainties and our prior intuition that the dependence between networks, as well as the accuracy of PA network, vary by frequency. We find that 1% to 3% increase in PM

_{2.5}

concentration due to wildfire smoke, and that leveraging PA sensors improves accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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26 pages, 4424 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Statistical Prediction of Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) from Multivariate OCO-2 Data

by Josh Jacobson, Noel Cressie and Andrew Zammit-Mangion

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(16), 4038; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15164038 - 15 Aug 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2097

Abstract

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, or SIF, is a part of the natural process of photosynthesis. SIF can be measured from space by instruments such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), making it a useful proxy for monitoring gross primary production (GPP), which is a critical component of Earth’s carbon cycle. The complex physical relationship between SIF and GPP is frequently studied using OCO-2 observations of SIF since they offer the finest spatial resolution available. However, measurement error (noise) and large gaps in spatial coverage limit the use of OCO-2 SIF to highly aggregated scales. To study the relationship between SIF and GPP across varying spatial scales, de-noised and gap-filled (i.e., Level 3) SIF data products are needed. Using a geostatistical methodology called cokriging, which includes kriging as a special case, we develop coSIF: a Level 3 SIF data product at a 0.05-degree resolution. As a natural secondary variable for cokriging, OCO-2 observes column-averaged atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (XCO

_{2}

) simultaneously with SIF. There is a suggested lagged spatio-temporal dependence between SIF and XCO

_{2}

, which we characterize through spatial covariance and cross-covariance functions. Our approach is highly parallelizable and accounts for non-stationary measurement errors in the observations. Importantly, each datum in the resulting coSIF data product is accompanied by a measure of uncertainty. Extant approaches do not provide formal uncertainty quantification, nor do they leverage the cross-dependence with XCO

_{2}

. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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17 pages, 7263 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of East Asia Wind Vectors Using Space–Time Cross-Covariance Models

by Jaehong Jeong and Won Chang

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(11), 2860; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15112860 - 31 May 2023

Viewed by 1611

Abstract

As the risk posed by climate change becomes increasingly evident, countries across the world are constantly seeking alternative energy sources. Wind energy has substantial potential for future energy portfolios without having negative impacts on the environment. In developing nationwide and worldwide energy plans, understanding the spatio-temporal pattern of wind is crucial. We analyze wind vectors in the region of East Asia from the fifth-generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis. To model the wind vectors, we consider Tukey g-and-h transformation-based non-Gaussian processes, along with multivariate covariance functions. The proposed model can address non-Gaussian features and nonstationary dependence structures of wind vectors. In addition, a two-step inference scheme coupled with the composite likelihood method is applied to handle the computational issues posed by a large dataset. In the first step, we fit the temporal dependence structures of data with a location-specific non-Gaussian time series model. This allows us to remove substantial amounts of nonstationary variations in both space and time, and thus, relatively simple covariance models can handle large and complicated data in the second step. We show that the proposed method with a covariance structure reflecting the nonstationarity due to the latitude difference and the land–ocean difference leads to better predictions for wind speed as well as wind potential, which is crucial for planning wind power generation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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25 pages, 6831 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Empirical Bayesian Approach to Quantify Multi-Scale Spatial Structural Diversity in Remote Sensing Data

by Leila A. Schuh, Maria J. Santos, Michael E. Schaepman and Reinhard Furrer

Remote Sens. 2023, 15(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15010014 - 21 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2048

Abstract

Landscape structure is as much a driver as a product of environmental and biological interactions and it manifests as scale-specific, but also as multi-scale patterns. Multi-scale structure affects processes on smaller and larger scales and its detection requires information from different scales to be combined. Herein, we propose a novel method to quantify multi-scale spatial structural diversity in continuous remote sensing data. We combined information from different extents with an empirical Bayesian model and we applied a new entropy metric and a value co-occurrence approach to capture heterogeneity. We tested this method on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data in northern Eurasia and on simulated data and we also tested the effect of coarser pixel resolution. We find that multi-scale structural diversity can reveal itself as patches and linear landscape features, which persist or become apparent across spatial scales. Multi-scale line features reveal the transition zones between spatial regimes and multi-scale patches reveal those areas within transition zones where values are most different from each other. Additionally, spatial regimes themselves can be distinguished. We also find the choice of scale need not be informed by typical length-scales, which makes the method easy to implement. The proposed multi-scale approach can be applied to other contexts, following the roadmap we pave out in this study and using the tools available in the accompanying R package StrucDiv. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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25 pages, 2061 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Inferring Changes in Arctic Sea Ice through a Spatio-Temporal Logistic Autoregression Fitted to Remote-Sensing Data

by Bohai Zhang, Furong Li, Huiyan Sang and Noel Cressie

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(23), 5995; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14235995 - 26 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1728

Abstract

Arctic sea ice extent (SIE) has drawn increasing attention from scientists in recent years because of its fast decline in the Boreal summer and early fall. The measurement of SIE is derived from remote sensing data and is both a lagged and leading indicator of climate change. To characterize at a local level the decline in SIE, we use remote-sensing data at 25 km resolution to fit a spatio-temporal logistic autoregressive model of the sea-ice evolution in the Arctic region. The model incorporates last year’s ice/water binary observations at nearby grid cells in an autoregressive manner with autoregressive coefficients that vary both in space and time. Using the model-based estimates of ice/water probabilities in the Arctic region, we propose several graphical summaries to visualize the spatio-temporal changes in Arctic sea ice beyond what can be visualized with the single time series of SIE. In ever-higher latitude bands, we observe a consistently declining temporal trend of sea ice in the early fall. We also observe a clear decline in and contraction of the sea ice’s distribution between

70^{\circ} N

–

75^{\circ} N

, and of most concern is that this may reflect the future behavior of sea ice at ever-higher latitudes under climate change. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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20 pages, 1808 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Surface Reflectance Retrievals for Visible/Shortwave Infrared Remote Sensing via Gaussian Process Priors

by Daniel Zilber, David R. Thompson, Matthias Katzfuss, Vijay Natraj, Jonathan Hobbs and Amy Braverman

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(9), 2183; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14092183 - 3 May 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1984

Abstract

Remote Visible/Shortwave Infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectroscopy is a powerful tool for measuring the composition of Earth’s surface over wide areas. This compositional information is captured by the spectral surface reflectance, where distinct shapes and absorption features indicate the chemical, bio- and geophysical properties of the materials in the scene. Estimating this surface reflectance requires removing the influence of atmospheric distortions caused by water vapor and particles. Traditionally reflectance is estimated by considering one location at a time, disentangling atmospheric and surface effects independently at all locations in a scene. However, this approach does not take advantage of spatial correlations between contiguous pixels. We propose an extension to a common Bayesian approach, Optimal Estimation, by introducing atmospheric correlations into the multivariate Gaussian prior. We show how this approach can be implemented as a small change to the traditional estimation procedure, thus limiting the additional computational burden. We demonstrate a simple version of the technique using simulations and multiple airborne radiance data sets. Our results show that the predicted atmospheric fields are smoother and more realistic than independent inversions given the assumption of spatial correlation and may reduce bias in the surface reflectance retrievals compared to post-process smoothing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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23 pages, 12987 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatiotemporal Geostatistical Analysis and Global Mapping of CH₄ Columns from GOSAT Observations

by Luman Li, Liping Lei, Hao Song, Zhaocheng Zeng and Zhonghua He

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(3), 654; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030654 - 29 Jan 2022

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3501

Abstract

Methane (CH₄) is one of the most important greenhouse gases causing the global warming effect. The mapping data of atmospheric CH₄ concentrations in space and time can help us better to understand the characteristics and driving factors of CH₄ variation as to support the actions of CH₄ emission reduction for preventing the continuous increase of atmospheric CH₄ concentrations. In this study, we applied a spatiotemporal geostatistical analysis and prediction to develop an approach to generate the mapping CH₄ dataset (Mapping-XCH₄) in 1° grid and three days globally using column averaged dry air mole fraction of CH₄ (XCH₄) data derived from observations of the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) from April 2009 to April 2020. Cross-validation for the spatiotemporal geostatistical predictions showed better correlation coefficient of 0.97 and a mean absolute prediction error of 7.66 ppb. The standard deviation is 11.42 ppb when comparing the Mapping-XCH₄ data with the ground measurements from the total carbon column observing network (TCCON). Moreover, we assessed the performance of this Mapping-XCH₄ dataset by comparing with the XCH₄ simulations from the CarbonTracker model and primarily investigating the variations of XCH₄ from April 2009 to April 2020. The results showed that the mean annual increase in XCH₄ was 7.5 ppb/yr derived from Mapping-XCH_4, which was slightly greater than 7.3 ppb/yr from the ground observational network during the past 10 years from 2010. XCH₄ is larger in South Asia and eastern China than in the other regions, which agrees with the XCH₄ simulations. The Mapping-XCH₄ shows a significant linear relationship and a correlation coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.66, with EDGAR emission inventories over Monsoon Asia. Moreover, we found that Mapping-XCH₄ could detect the reduction of XCH₄ in the period of lockdown from January to April 2020 in China, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, we can apply GOSAT observations over a long period from 2009 to 2020 to generate a spatiotemporally continuous dataset globally using geostatistical analysis. This long-term Mpping-XCH₄ dataset has great potential for understanding the spatiotemporal variations of CH₄ concentrations induced by natural processes and anthropogenic emissions at a global and regional scale. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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23 pages, 11756 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Detection of Multidecadal Changes in Vegetation Dynamics and Association with Intra-Annual Climate Variability in the Columbia River Basin

by Andrew B. Whetten and Hannah J. Demler

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(3), 569; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030569 - 25 Jan 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2744

Abstract

Remotely-sensed Leaf Area Index (LAI) is a useful metric for assessing changes in vegetation cover and greeness over time and space. Satellite-derived LAI measurements can be used to assess these intra- and inter-annual vegetation dynamics and how they correlate with changing regional and local climate conditions. The detection of such changes at local and regional levels is challenged by the underlying continuity and extensive missing values of high-resolution spatio-temporal vegetation data. Here, the feasibility of functional data analysis methods was evaluated to improve the exploration of such data. In this paper, an investigation of multidecadal variation in LAI is conducted in the Columbia River Watershed, as detected by NOAA Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite imaging. The inter- and intra-annual correlation of LAI with temperature and precipitation were then investigated using data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts global atmospheric re-analysis (ERA-Interim) in the period 1996–2017. A functional cluster analysis model was implemented to identify regions in the Columbia River Watershed that exhibit similar long-term greening trends. Across this region, a multidecadal trend toward earlier and higher annual LAI peaks was detected, and strong correlations were found between earlier and higher LAI peaks and warmer temperatures in late winter and early spring. Although strongly correlated to LAI, maximum temperature and precipitation do not demonstrate a similar strong multidecadal trend over the studied time period. The modeling approach is proficient for analyzing tens or hundreds of thousands of sampled sites without parallel processing or high-performance computing (HPC). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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18 pages, 3837 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Temporal and Spatial Autocorrelation as Determinants of Regional AOD-PM_2.5 Model Performance in the Middle East

by Khang Chau, Meredith Franklin, Huikyo Lee, Michael Garay and Olga Kalashnikova

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(18), 3790; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183790 - 21 Sep 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2932

Abstract

Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM

_{2.5}

) air pollution has been shown in numerous studies to be associated with detrimental health effects. However, the ability to conduct epidemiological assessments can be limited due to challenges in generating reliable PM

_{2.5}

estimates, particularly [...] Read more.

Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM

_{2.5}

_{2.5}

estimates, particularly in parts of the world such as the Middle East where measurements are scarce and extreme meteorological events such as sandstorms are frequent. In order to supplement exposure modeling efforts under such conditions, satellite-retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) has proven to be useful due to its global coverage. By using AODs from the Multiangle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) of the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) combined with meteorological and assimilated aerosol information from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2), we constructed machine learning models to predict PM

_{2.5}

in the area surrounding the Persian Gulf, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E). Our models showed regional differences in predictive performance, with better results in the U.A.E. (median test

R^{2}

= 0.66) than Kuwait (median test

R^{2}

= 0.51). Variable importance also differed by region, where satellite-retrieved AOD variables were more important for predicting PM

_{2.5}

in Kuwait than in the U.A.E. Divergent trends in the temporal and spatial autocorrelations of PM

_{2.5}

and AOD in the two regions offered possible explanations for differences in predictive performance and variable importance. In a test of model transferability, we found that models trained in one region and applied to another did not predict PM

_{2.5}

well, even if the transferred model had better performance. Overall the results of our study suggest that models developed over large geographic areas could generate PM

_{2.5}

estimates with greater uncertainty than could be obtained by taking a regional modeling approach. Furthermore, development of methods to better incorporate spatial and temporal autocorrelations in machine learning models warrants further examination. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Statistics: Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing)

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