Remote sensing

- What is remote sensing?

- Remote sensing is the science of obtaining information about objects or areas without
making physical contact with it
- This is generally done by sensing and recording reflected or emitted energy and processing,
analysing, and applying that information
- The objective of this lecture is to be familiar with the terminology associated with satellite-
based remote sensing and understanding the principles behind a large variety of remote
sensing applications.
- How many satellites are there in space?
- There have been 11,000+ satellites that have been launched, at which there are only 7,400
satellites are still in space, this is because most of them have been burnt up in space, but
however there is only 3,372+ satellites that are still active in space while the rest are
inactive.
- Low earth satellites orbit between 160-2000 kms, most of the artificial objects are in low
earth object.
- How many satellites in space that are currently active? 3,372+
- What poses a growing threat to these satellites? The degrading of satellites over time will
cause debris and which can cause collision among other satellites which causes
observational issues and space travel.

Satellite Characteristics

- We can think that satellites are like platforms with multiple sensors
- And the platforms jobs are to fly and supply power
- And the sensor is looking at the same object at the same time to provide several data about
the object
- The data that is sent is raw and requires scientists to clean it up for us to use.
- What are the types of sensors?
- Active sensors, they provide their own energy source for illumination.
- Passive sensors, measuring energy that is naturally available.
- Satellites characteristics:
- orbits geostationary orbits: viewing the same portion of the earth’s surface at all times,
weather monitoring and communication (which include phone, television, radio, etc.)
- These satellites require it to be 35,786 KM above the equator, it is basically stationary. The
satellites takes 5 mins to generate a rapid data and 15 mins to generate a full-disk data.
- Polar orbits: passing (nearly) above both poles of the earth on each revolution, it will take
about 90 mins. To complete an orbit. They pass each area of the world at the same time
every day because it is better for monitoring long-term changes.
- Another terms it can be coined is Swaths, which is the area observed by a satellite as it orbits
the Earth
- Swaths for satellite sensors can be tens to hundreds of kilometres wide

- Satellite Characteristics: resolution

- Resolution plays a role in how data from a sensor can be used. Resolution can vary
depending on the satellite’s orbit and sensor design.
- There are for types of resolution to consider, Spatial resolution, Temporal Resolution,
Spectral resolution, and radiometric resolution.
- Spatial Resolution, Spatial resolution is a measure of the amount of spatial detail a remote
sensing can capture. Spatial resolution of 1km means each pixel represents a 1km * 1km
area on the ground.
- Temporal Resolution:
- Temporal resolution is the time it takes for a satellite to compete an orbit and revisit the
same observation area.
- It depends on the orbit sensor 7 and swath width
- Geostationary satellites: mins. – hrs.
- Orbiting satellites: 12hrs – days – months
- Example would be that if you are near the equator it would take longer than other parts of
the Earth.
- Spectral Resolution:
- The ability of a satellite sensor is to measure specific wavelengths of the electromagnetic
spectrum, i.e. the number of bands in the spectrum in which the sensor can take
measurements

- Radiometric resolution:
- It is the ability of a sensor to detect differences in energy magnitude.
- Sensors with low radiometric resolution can detect only relatively large differences in the
amount of energy received. Sensors with high radiometric resolution can detect relatively
small differences in the amount of energy received
 - E.g. sensor 2 has much higher radiometric sensor than sensor 1
- Radiometric resolution is measured in bets.
- The greater the bit no. the greater the no. of grey-scale values a sensor can distinguish, and
therefore, the higher the radiometric resolution of a sensor.
- One bit stands for a sensor that knows only black and white. 2 bit equals 4 grey-scale values
and 4 bit 16 values

Radiometric sensors
Geostationary satellite over Aus.

- Spatial resolution of Himawari-8? 0.5-2 kms

- Temporal resolution of Himawari-8? 10 mins
- How many bands/channel on the Himawari-8 multispectral imager? 16

First part of the lecture is done! Below will be the second part.
Electromagnetic spectrum

- We can see that towards the right the wavelength is longer.

Remote sensing applications

- Visible and near-infrared

- Thermal infrared
- Microwave
- Gravity

Visible and near-infrared application.

- The energy comes from the sun

- So it is passive sensing
- An example is shown below
- NDVI is an index which provides a measure of vegetation density and conditions.
- It is influenced by the fractional cover of the ground by vegetation, the vegetation density,
and the vegetation greenness.
- It indicates the photosynthetic capacity of the land surface cover.
- Vegetation NDVI in Australia typically ranges from 0.1 up to 0.7 with higher values
associated with greater density and greenness of the plant canopy.
- NDVI decreases as leaves come under water stress, become diseased or die.
- Bare soil and snow values are close to zero.
- We can see the NDVI difference in this image with higher NDVI in areas are coloured in
green and those areas are usually rainforests whereas the lower NDVIs are areas that are
deserts.
 - We can see in this image that the NDVI is much higher in Sept. and Oct. this is because of the
season as it is spring, but this is only because we are in the southern hemisphere where as in
the northern hemisphere the NDVI would be much higher around April and May because of
the season.

- The limitations of visible and near-infrared are it can only be done during daylight and if
there are clouds, we can’t see through it, we are essentially using our naked eye.

Thermal Infrared

- Every object at temperatures above absolute zero (0 k) emiots thermal radiation, much in
the infrared portion of the EM spectrum, thermal infrared is passive, as it is naturally done.
The fundamental of thermal infrared:

- The urban heat island (UHI) effect

- The urban heat island is when the heat temperature is much higher in urban areas.
- Because of concrete and it is black it reflects more energy compared to rural or forest areas
where it isn’t reflected as often but is rather water evaporated due to the nearby rivers etc.
whereas urban areas have no water to evaporate.
- We can see that in urban areas in each state is much hotter than rural areas, we also need to
remember NDVI where higher NDVI are rural area.
- One of the applications of thermal infrareds is that we can monitor urban expansion over
time e.g. the image below is Bangkok 20 yrs. Ago compared to Bangkok now we can see that
overtime that the urban expansion has been building outwards towards areas that we used
to call rural, as a result the NDVI will be much lower in the urban areas.

- We can also use thermal infrared in identifying temperature anomalies in various areas,
examples are shown below.
- We can also identify bushfires with thermal infrared because it is passive we can detect the
temperature.

- View 33:35 in lecture 2 of remote sensing to see the comparison of red visible and infrared
of the volcano eruption in Tonga.
- We can also use ocean temperature with thermal infrared. Example below.
- We can see the image above of the “El Nino” event where the rainfall has happening in the
ocean. We can also see in this image that it is a full disk rotation of the satellite.
- Same as the visible and near infrared it is impacted by clouds, and we cannot see past the
clouds.

Microwave Applications
- Active microwave:

- Passive microwave:
- Active microwave applications:
- Principles:
- a directed beam of microwave pulses are transmitted from an antenna
- the energy interacts withs the terrain and is scattered
- the backscattered microwave energy is measured by the antenna.
- Applications of active microwave
- We can use it to determine elevations of certain areas e.g. below

- we can see in the Antarctic ice sheet that in the blue areas that the elevation is lowered
which therefore means that the ice is melting.
- We can also use active microwave applications in wind speeds
- The steps of using active microwave applications are as follows: the antenna sends
microwave pulses to the ocean surface, then pulses hit the surface of the ocean.
- Through this we can determine areas such are the ocean for backscatter where no winds will
indicate that there is minimal backscatter and strong winds can indicate strong backscatter.
- Passive microwave applications:
- The frequency of passive is low (1-200 HGz, or 0.15-30 cm)
- The principles of passive microwave are similar as thermal infrared remote sensing.
- Because the frequency is low the spacial resolution is low. This is due to the weak energy
source -> which require a larger field of view.
- The microwave brightness temperature (T b) of a media is the product of the media emissivity
and its physical temperature.
- Tb = ε TPhysical
- ε = emissivity
- This means that passive microwave can measure land surface temperature.

- We can see that passive microwave on the right has more data, and the reason to this is
because remember infrared can be limiting by clouds or carbon which reduces data that we
can retrieve rather than passive microwave. This is because microwave has a longer
wavelength and can penetrate clouds where infrared cannot.
- Then you ask the question why use infrared at all well because we can combine the 2 data to
fill in the gaps where needed. Example below

- However we can still see a gap in the merged data, that is because there is no satellite
coverage, but people can fill this gap with different methods.
- Passive microwaves applications can also be used in vegetation water content
- It is similar to NDVI but different as we use NDVI for vegetation density but for passive
microwave we can use it for vegetation water count. But it can be easily compared with
NDVI because vegetation density, trees have water in them, and we can see below that the
water vegetation content is a lot higher in areas with huge forests.

- As we mentioned earlier that one satellites have several remote senses, such as TRMM
which have both passive and active microwave.

- We can see in the image above that the passive microwave have a bigger swath whereas the
purple one have a much smaller one.
- The yellow line is the swarth distance in between so we can only see what is between the 2
yellow lines, but however we use the passive microwave to determine where the hurricane
is (image above) and use the active microwave to get a much-detailed data of the hurricane.

Gravity

- Gravity applications:
- Gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE)
- It is not based on electromagnetic waves
- Twi identical spacecrafts
- Polar orbit (one after the other, 220 km apart)
- Keep measuring the distance between these two spacecrafts to detect gravity changes
- Gravity is determined by mass
- Detects variations in mass over time

- View lecture remote sensing 2 to see how GRACE works @49:08

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