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Sar Study Using RISAT-1 PDF
Sar Study Using RISAT-1 PDF
Sar Study Using RISAT-1 PDF
radar imagery due to varying stem height and density11. are used for estimating kharif rice acreage estimation.
The use of multi-temporal radar data combined via an Data have been collected for two different dates suffi-
intensity, hue and saturation (IHS) transformation has ciently spaced in phenology to identify rice fields. Spacing
also been found to improve wetland mapping12. The between the data is minimum of 12 days for the Odisha
opportunity to explore the potential of radar data will coastal area and maximum 50 days for Allahabad. Detailed
improve as many SAR satellites are currently being information about the dataset used is given in Table 1.
launched or will soon be launched. These extra satellites Rice is predominantly grown in the entire Indo-
will not only increase the amount of data available for Gangetic plain during monsoon season. Uttar Pradesh,
analysis, but will also increase collection frequency and Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal are considered as the rice
the variety of polarizations and frequencies available13. bowl of the country. Two-date scenes having overlap in
Forest inventory and monitoring have been routinely major rice-growing regions of these states are selected as
done by satellite remote sensing techniques. While opti- the test area (Figure 1).
cal remote sensing is widely used for this purpose, it is
often affected by sun angle and atmospheric parameters Methodology
(e.g. clouds, haze and aerosols) and hinders quantitative
modelling. In this context, the active radar remote sens- Processing of the RISAT-1 data was carried out using
ing, having particular significance for all-weather, day PCI Geomatica (ver. 9.0) software. L2 product is avail-
night imaging capability and responsiveness to moisture able in .tiff format. HH and HV images are imported to
content and structural attributes of vegetation, holds native raster format of PCI Geomatica (.pix) and trans-
promise for quantitative analysis in studies on forestry. ferred to a single file as two separate channels. Reprojec-
One of the unique potentials demonstrated by space- tion (if needed) is done and then the image is filtered by
borne radar images is their penetration capability through enhanced Lee adaptive filter with kernel size 5 5, as
shallow sand cover in arid regions and detecting subsur- established by standard procedures1. Most of the scenes
face geological and archaeological features, in particular had abrupt brightness variations in the near and far range
buried river channels and imprints of archaeological sites side and banding at equal interval along the track due to
occurring in the adjoining areas. Images acquired in mosaicing of data of beams used to form the MRS data.
northeastern Sahara in 1981 during the first NASA Shut- These unwanted patterns were removed by marking a
tle Image Radar mission (SIR-A) demonstrated the capa- transect across the image and adjusting the brightness by
bility of the L-band (wavelength 24.5 cm) to penetrate plotting the variations in brightness across the pixels. The
12 m of loose sand and return information about geo- coefficient and central pixel values are used to correct
logic and geomorphologic features covered by sand14,15. this pattern. Calibration for HH and HV polarization am-
Subsequently, radar images in L-band by Seasat, SIR-A plitude image were carried out using the calibration con-
and SIR-B acquired in the Baden-Jaran Desert of China16, stant in product.xml as:
in Saudi Arabia17,18 and in the Mojave Desert of Califor-
nia19,20 confirmed the benefit of radar images to study Value in dB (in 32-bit real channel)
bedrock features beneath few metres of loose sand. = 20 log10 (DN) calibration constant.
Analysis of Seasat, SIR-A and SIR-B images revealed
igneous features (dykes) buried as much as 2 m beneath The two-date images were co-registered by fitting manual
alluvium in the Mojave Desert19. The radar energy has GCPs with about 25 well-distributed points throughout
penetrated through the shallow sand cover and subsurface the image scene. A second-order polynomial model was
igneous dykes have acted as subsurface rough surfaces fitted to register the second date image with respect to the
and provided high backscatter to be detected by the radar first date image.
sensor. Ancient drainage pattern cut in the bedrock is not On this two-date HHHV image, the vectors in the
visible in the optical images because of the sand cover. form of sample-segment or district boundary were over-
The buried palaeodrainage network appears as dark fea- laid. Classification of the rice area is performed inside
tures due to smoother channel fillings and is identified these segments to derive the crop proportion and finally
due to contrasting brightness of hard substrate of the district rice acreage. Addition of HV channel takes care
adjoining region14,15,2124. of the fallow and river border region otherwise classified
as rice using two-date HH data.
Kharif rice acreage using two-date RISAT-1 data
Observation
Dataset and study area Rice, being a semi-aquatic crop, generates unique tempo-
ral backscatter profile unlike other crops. During trans-
RISAT-1 C-band (5.35 GHz) dual-polarization (HH, HV) plantation, backscatter is quite low due to puddled fields
MRS L2 data (18 m pixel spacing and 37 incidence angle) in standing water condition which reflects more energy in
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 104, NO. 4, 25 FEBRUARY 2013 491
SPECIAL SECTION: RADAR IMAGING SATELLITE-1
0.30 for late transplanted rice. Misclassification due to The present study is a preliminary attempt to utilize the
moist soil and waterbodies in two-date single polarization RISAT-1 data for kharif rice monitoring, which was the
data has been solved by adding HV polarization in both largest national project using microwave data from a for-
dates. HV is more sensitive to above-ground volume and eign satellites till the launch of RISAT-1. The feasibility
hence backscattering differs. Due to late onset of mon- of RISAT-1 data for monitoring the national rice acreage
soon, most of the area has transplanted rice lately, which has been demonstrated in this study. Suitable datasets
clearly showed up in the second-date data. from RISAT-1 would improve classification of the pre-
Dataset for coastal Odisha comprises one ascending sent study and also boost the monitoring of other kharif
pass and another descending with 10 days temporal inter- crops in future. The low data cost would be a boon for the
val. Though the interval is too small to identify early and microwave remote sensing community globally in all
late transplanted rice, the SAR data successfully picked arenas of application.
up rice fields because majority of transplanting opera-
tions coincided with these dates. Crop ratio for this area
Oceanographic applications of RISAT-1 SAR
is estimated as 0.10 and 0.31 for early and late trans-
planted rice respectively. The FCC composed by two-date
HH polarization shows a similar picture of the study area Data
(Figure 4).
In the Allahabad scene (Figure 3), analysis shows that It is well known that for oceanographic applications wide
most of the rice-growing areas have early transplanted swath (scanSAR)-mode data are best suitable. Hence
rice, only few fields have sown it late. Crop proportion of in-house development of all the retrieval algorithms has
early transplanted rice is estimated as 0.30 and for late been carried out using Wide Swath Medium resolution
transplanted rice it is 0.08. Two-date HH dataset was also (Wide Swath Mode, WSM) data from Advanced SAR
analysed and results have been compared. Overestimation (ASAR) on-board ENVISAT. The algorithms are tested
of late transplanted rice is clearly identified, which esti- on Fine Resolution (FRS) and Medium Resolution
mated crop ratio of late transplanted rice as 0.15. The (MRS)-mode data from RISAT-1 SAR (due to non-
large data gap (50 days) between the two dates rendered availability of wide swath data from RISAT-1 while pre-
some difficulty in picking up the late transplanted paddy paring this manuscript). Brief descriptions of the various
as it was missed in the 10 August scene. The fully-grown data used in this study are given below.
crop was picked up in the third date, but critical trans-
plantation phase for some parts was missed. (1) ENVISATASAR: ENVISAT was launched by the
European Space Agency (ESA) on 1 March 2002 in a
Sun-synchronous orbit of altitude 799.8 km with inclina-
tion 98.550, as a successor to ERS-1 and ERS-2. The or-
bital period of ENVISAT is 100.59 min with a repeat
cycle of 35 days and varying imaging frequency from
1 to 3 days. ASAR is one of the ten payloads carried by
ENVISAT. ASAR uses in-phase array with an incidence
angle range of 1545 and is able to operate in five dif-
ferent polarization modes (VV, HH, VV/HH, HV/HH,
VH/VV) in C-band (5.3 GHz, 5.6 cm). Among the five
operating modes of ASAR (Image Mode, Alternating
Polarization, WSM, Wave Mode and Global Monitoring),
only the WSM, using the scanSAR technique, offers a
Figure 3. a, classified rice sample segment in Allahabad region. b,
classified rice in coastal Odisha. wide enough swath (around 400 km) with a spatial reso-
lution adapted to accurate regional monitoring (with a
pixel spacing of 75 m). The incidence angle in each
image ranges from 17 to 42.
(2) RISAT-1 SAR: RISAT-1 was launched on 26 April
2012 by ISRO in a Sun-synchronous dawndusk orbit of
altitude 536 km with inclination of 97.55 and orbital
period of 95.5 min. RISAT-1 carries a C-band (5.35 GHz)
SAR as the sole payload. The RISAT-1 SAR is capable
of imaging the Earths surface in different modes, e.g.
HRS (spotlight scanning, resolution less than 2 m), FRS-
1 (Stripmap scanning, resolution 3 m), FRS-2 (Stripmap
Figure 4. Comparison between two-date HH FCC of RISAT-1 and
Radarsat-2. Scanning, resolution 6 m, quad-pol capability), MRS
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 104, NO. 4, 25 FEBRUARY 2013 493
SPECIAL SECTION: RADAR IMAGING SATELLITE-1
(scanSAR scanning, resolution 25 m) and CRS (scanSAR imagery, a single SAR image frame is extracted. In case
scanning, resolution 50 m) with variable swath widths of RISAT-1 FRS-1 mode, such a frame is comprised of
ranging from 30 to 240 km. 512 512 image pixels. Since each pixel represents a
3 m 3 m area, the image frame corresponds to 1.5 km
Methodology
Table 2. Validation results with OSCAT, TMI, SSMI, Jason-2 and their statistics
Figure 7. Retrieval of ocean wave spectra from a subset of RISAT-1 SAR image 952F1_S58_RV.
Figure 8. Ship detection from RISAT-1 SAR image 21343_VV. The adjacent table shows the number
of detected ships and their corresponding geo-location for the subset.
1.5 km patch on the ocean surface. The frame size pro- ing spectrum. Hence from the 2D spectrum, 20% of the
vides a sufficiently large area that at least 10 cycles of ensemble average is subtracted after convolving with a
very long surface waves, up to 150 m in length, can be Gaussian-shaped kernel to remove the noise32. After this,
included in a single frame. At the same time, the frames the 2D spectra are divided by magnitude of modulation
are also small enough that the ocean surface can be transfer function (MTF) that accounts for the modulation
assumed homogeneous within a frame. of capillary wave by underlying gravity waves33. Figure 7
The mean intensity is subtracted from the image frame shows a RISAT-1 FRS-1 image and retrieved wave spectra.
and the resultant is normalized by dividing by the mean
intensity. This image of fractional modulation is then Ship detection: Real-time detection of coastal as well as
Fourier transformed and squared to produce image inten- open ocean ships using SAR images provides a valuable
sity-variance spectrum as a function of azimuth and range aid for building a space-based surveillance system. From
wavenumber. The image is then corrected for stationary the SAR imagery ships can be detected by means of their
response. intensity contrast relative to the immediate background.
Since the resulting image has only two degrees of free- In a SAR image, a 20 20 pixels window is selected. If
dom, the value of the spectrum at each two-dimensional the intensity of a pixel is greater than the threshold (com-
wavenumber bin is a noisy representation of the underly- puted by the mean and standard deviation of 400 pixels
within a single window and assuming a constant false referenced data of 12 July 2012. The field data comprises
alarm rate, CFAR) of the window enclosing the particular vegetation-related information.
pixel, the pixel is detected as a potential ship pixel34.
The window is then moved through the whole SAR image Methodology
searching all the potential ship pixels. When the searching
operation is completed, ships are identified based on the The methodology involves a standard approach wherein:
ship pixels using a scanning-based ship cluster algorithm. The data were subjected to speckle removal.
Figure 8 shows ship detection results from one RISAT-1 The GPS-aided ground truth information is converted
image. The algorithm has been validated using informa- into a spatial point-layer with the updated attributes of
tion from Director General, Shipping Corporation, Mum- field data.
bai and found to be very sound for operation purposes. Classification of the SAR data after defining the train-
ing classes based on ground truth as stored in the spa-
Future scope tial layer (point layer).
The study area Wular Lake, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Preliminary decision rule classification of
is an internationally important wetland under the Ramsar mangrove ecosystem using single-date VV
Convention. The lake, along with the extensive marshes polarization SAR
surrounding it, is an important natural habitat for wildlife.
It is also an important habitat for fish, accounting for Mangrove forests are found in the intertidal zones of
60% of the total fish production in J&K. The lake is a tropical and subtropical coastlines, and exist as an eco-
source of livelihood for the large human population living system comprising estuaries, lagoons, creeks and
along its fringes. Encroachments resulting in the conver-
sion of vast catchment areas into agriculture land, pollu-
tion from fertilizers and animal wastes, poaching of
waterfowl and migratory birds and weed infestation are
the main threats to the wetland.
Colour Area
code Class description (ha)
Open water 580
Low density Trapa (Trapa natans and T. bispinosa) 2,249
Medium density Trapa (T. natans and T. bispinosa) 809
High density Trapa (T. natans and T. bispinosa) 1,369
Medium density willow 1,543
High density willow 1,767
Water beneath the emergent vegetation (mainly Phragmites communis) 1,206
Habitation 947
Paddy fields 168
Fallow 739
Total 11,377
Single polarization (VV) SAR datum was used and the high backscatter (Figure 11). The mangrove forests regis-
signatures of the different components of mangrove eco- tered backscatter values ranging from 12 to 7.5 dB.
system of the island were noted. Based on the backscatter
signatures and ancillary information, a knowledge base
Preliminary decision rule classification
was developed which culminated into decision rules that
were used for classification. The training sets were
The mangrove ecosystem of the island could be classified
selected using the mangrove ecosystem map of National
into mangrove forests, intertidal mudflat and creeks/
Wetland Inventory and Assessment, showing mangrove
channels (Figure 12). The mangrove forests could be
forests, creeks and intertidal mudflats40. Considering the
divided into two broad classes, viz. dense and sparse
intra-class variability within mangrove forests, care was
mangrove based on canopy closure (< 40% closure for
taken to consider training classes covering these variabili-
sparse mangrove and > 40% for dense mangrove). Thus,
ties. These categories were grouped into sub-classes. For
dense mangrove corresponded to very dense and moder-
each class training samples were appropriately selected.
ately dense forests, and sparse mangrove to open forests,
A decision rule algorithm was developed based on 65%
scrub and non forest zones of the forest cover classifica-
of training class signature and validated on the rest of
tion scheme provided by Forest Survey of India41. Since
35% samples. A mask of the mangrove region was cre-
low-tide conditions prevailed during the image acquisi-
ated using available Sundarban maps. Within this mask
tion time, mudflats could be demarcated along both the
different ranges of amplitude backscatter values of sin-
eastern and the western creeks and several other minor
gle-date VV polarization were used for rule development.
Using macro language of EASI/PACE, the decision rules
were generated to classify the single-date image.
Figure 11. Mean backscatter values with standard deviation bars (of
the population means) of VV polarization of different mangrove eco- Figure 13. Proportion of different classes of mangrove ecosystem of
system components of Dhanchi Island. Dhanchi Island.
Figure 14. Ground photographs of different classes of mangrove ecosystem of Dhanchi Island.
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40. National Wetland Atlas. SAC/EPSA/ABHG/NWIA/ATLAS/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This work was carried out under the
34/2011, Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad, 2011. RISAT-1 Utilization Programme funded by ISRO. We thank A. S.
41. Forest Survey of India, Forest cover mapping. Ministry of Envi- Kiran Kumar, Director, Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad
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in/scheme_of_classification.html Planetary Sciences and Applications Area for their encouragement.