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Image processing in GRASS GIS

9-11 minutos

Image processing in GRASS GIS

Image processing in general

Digital numbers and physical values (reflection/radiance-

at-sensor):

Satellite imagery is commonly stored in Digital Numbers (DN)

for minimizing the storage volume, i.e. the originally sampled
analog physical value (color, temperature, etc) is stored a
discrete representation in 8-16 bits. For example, Landsat data
are stored in 8bit values (i.e., ranging from 0 to 255); other
satellite data may be stored in 10 or 16 bits. Having data
stored in DN, it implies that these data are not yet the
observed ground reality. Such data are called "at-satellite", for
example the amount of energy sensed by the sensor of the
satellite platform is encoded in 8 or more bits. This energy is

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called radiance-at-sensor. To obtain physical values from DNs,

satellite image providers use a linear transform equation (y =
a * x + b) to encode the radiance-at-sensor in 8 to 16 bits.
DNs can be turned back into physical values by applying the
reverse formula (x = (y - b) / a).

The GRASS GIS module i.landsat.toar easily transforms

Landsat DN to radiance-at-sensor (top of atmosphere, TOA).
The equivalent module for ASTER data is i.aster.toar. For other
satellites, r.mapcalc can be employed.

Reflection/radiance-at-sensor and surface reflectance

When radiance-at-sensor has been obtained, still the

atmosphere influences the signal as recorded at the sensor.
This atmospheric interaction with the sun energy reflected
back into space by ground/vegetation/soil needs to be
corrected. The need of removing atmospheric artifacts stems
from the fact that the atmosphericic conditions are changing
over time. Hence, to gain comparability between Earth surface
images taken at different times, atmospheric need to be
removed converting at-sensor values which are top of
atmosphere to surface reflectance values.

In GRASS GIS, there are two ways to apply atmospheric

correction for satellite imagery. A simple, less accurate way for
Landsat is with i.landsat.toar, using the DOS correction
method. The more accurate way is using i.atcorr (which
supports many satellite sensors). The atmospherically
corrected sensor data represent surface reflectance, which

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ranges theoretically from 0% to 100%. Note that this level of

data correction is the proper level of correction to calculate
vegetation indices.

In GRASS GIS, image data are identical to raster data.

However, a couple of commands are explicitly dedicated to
image processing. The geographic boundaries of the
raster/imagery file are described by the north, south, east, and
west fields. These values describe the lines which bound the
map at its edges. These lines do NOT pass through the center
of the grid cells at the edge of the map, but along the edge of
the map itself.

As a general rule in GRASS:

1. Raster/imagery output maps have their bounds and resolution

equal to those of the current region.

2. Raster/imagery input maps are automatically cropped/padded

and rescaled (using nearest-neighbor resampling) to match
the current region.

Imagery import

The module r.in.gdal offers a common interface for many

different raster and satellite image formats. Additionally, it also
offers options such as on-the-fly location creation or extension
of the default region to match the extent of the imported raster
map. For special cases, other import modules are available.
Always the full map is imported. Imagery data can be group
(e.g. channel-wise) with i.group.

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For importing scanned maps, the user will need to create a

x,y-location, scan the map in the desired resolution and save it
into an appropriate raster format (e.g. tiff, jpeg, png, pbm) and
then use r.in.gdal to import it. Based on reference points the
scanned map can be rectified to obtain geocoded data.

Image processing operations

GRASS raster/imagery map processing is always performed in

the current region settings (see g.region), i.e. the current
region extent and current raster resolution is used. If the
resolution differs from that of the input raster map(s), on-the-fly
resampling is performed (nearest neighbor resampling). If this
is not desired, the input map(s) has/have to be resampled
beforehand with one of the dedicated modules.

Geocoding of imagery data

GRASS is able to geocode raster and image data of various

types:

unreferenced scanned maps by defining four corner points

(i.group, i.target, g.gui.gcp, i.rectify)

unreferenced satellite data from optical and Radar sensors by

defining a certain number of ground control points (i.group,
i.target, g.gui.gcp, i.rectify)

interactive graphical Ground Control Point (GCP) manager

orthophoto generation based on DEM: i.ortho.photo

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digital handheld camera geocoding: modified procedure for

i.ortho.photo

Visualizing (true) color composites

To quickly combine the first three channels to a near natural

color image, the GRASS command d.rgb can be used or the
graphical GIS manager (wxGUI). It assigns each channel to a
color which is then mixed while displayed. With a bit more
work of tuning the grey scales of the channels, nearly perfect
colors can be achieved. Channel histograms can be shown
with d.histogram.

Calculation of vegetation indices

An example for indices derived from multispectral data is the

NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). To study the
vegetation status with NDVI, the Red and the Near Infrared
channels (NIR) are taken as used as input for simple map
algebra in the GRASS command r.mapcalc (

ndvi = 1.0 * (nir - red)/(nir + red)

). With r.colors an optimized "ndvi" color table can be assigned
afterward. Also other vegetation indices can be generated
likewise.

Calibration of thermal channel

The encoded digital numbers of a thermal infrared channel

can be transformed to degree Celsius (or other temperature

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units) which represent the temperature of the observed land

surface. This requires a few algebraic steps with r.mapcalc
which are outlined in the literature to apply gain and bias
values from the image metadata.

Image classification

Single and multispectral data can be classified to user defined

land use/land cover classes. In case of a single channel,
segmentation will be used. GRASS supports the following
methods:

Radiometric classification:
Unsupervised classification (i.cluster, i.maxlik) using the
Maximum Likelihood classification method

Supervised classification (i.gensig or g.gui.iclass, i.maxlik)

using the Maximum Likelihood classification method

Combined radiometric/geometric (segmentation based)

classification:
Supervised classification (i.gensigset, i.smap)

Object-oriented classification:
Unsupervised classification (segmentation based: i.segment)

Kappa statistic can be calculated to validate the results

(r.kappa). Covariance/correlation matrices can be calculated
with r.covar.

Image fusion

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In case of using multispectral data, improvements of the

resolution can be gained by merging the panchromatic
channel with color channels. GRASS provides the HIS
(i.rgb.his, i.his.rgb) and the Brovey and PCA transform
(i.pansharpen) methods.

Radiometric corrections

Atmospheric effects can be removed with i.atcorr. Correction

for topographic/terrain effects is offered in i.topo.corr. Clouds
in LANDSAT data can be identified and removed with
i.landsat.acca. Calibrated digital numbers of LANDSAT and
ASTER imagery may be converted to top-of-atmosphere
radiance or reflectance and temperature (i.aster.toar,
i.landsat.toar).

Time series processing

GRASS also offers support for time series processing

(r.series). Statistics can be derived from a set of coregistered
input maps such as multitemporal satellite data. The common
univariate statistics and also linear regression can be
calculated.

Evapotranspiration modeling

In GRASS, several types of evapotranspiration (ET) modeling

methods are available:

Reference ET: Hargreaves (i.evapo.mh), Penman-Monteith

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(i.evapo.pm);

Potential ET: Priestley-Taylor (i.evapo.pt);

Actual ET: i.evapo.time.

Evaporative fraction: i.eb.evapfr, i.eb.hsebal01.

Energy balance

Emissivity can be calculated with i.emissivity. Several modules

support the calculation of the energy balance:

Actual evapotranspiration for diurnal period (i.eb.eta);

Evaporative fraction and root zone soil moisture (i.eb.evapfr);

Sensible heat flux iteration (i.eb.hsebal01);

Net radiation approximation (i.eb.netrad);

Soil heat flux approximation (i.eb.soilheatflux).

See also

GRASS GIS Wiki page: Image processing

The GRASS 4 Image Processing manual

Introduction into raster data processing

Introduction into 3D raster data (voxel) processing

Introduction into vector data processing

Introduction into temporal data processing

Database management

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Projections and spatial transformations

SOURCE CODE

Available at: Image processing in GRASS GIS source code

(history)

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© 2003-2019 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS

7.8.1dev Reference Manual

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