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More specifically, remote sensing of watersheds encompasses a wide range of applications that involve acquiring and utilizing hydrological, ecological, and environmental information in watersheds [[15], [17]], including watershed mapping [[18]], monitoring of underlying surface elements in the watershed [[19]], inversion of water cycle parameters [[20]], water resource assessment [[21]], acquisition of watershed ecological environment parameters [[22]], monitoring natural disasters [[23]], analyzing upstream and downstream [[24]], supporting water governance priorities [[25]], water resource development [[26]], and irrigation water management [[27]]. Data Barriers and Data Sharing Addressing data barriers and promoting data sharing is a critical perspective in remote sensing for watershed management. The advent of remote sensing has revolutionized watershed research, providing unprecedented insights into watershed dynamics and spatiotemporal patterns [[10]]. Similarly, merging remote sensing data with in situ measurements, socio-economic data, and other geospatial information can enhance the accuracy and reliability of watershed analyses. [Extracted from the article]

The rapid and accurate extraction of water information from satellite imagery has been a crucial topic in remote sensing applications and has important value in water resources management, water environment monitoring, and disaster emergency management. Although the OLI-2 sensor onboard Landsat-9 is similar to the well-known OLI onboard Landsat-8, there were significant differences in the average absolute percentage change in the bands for water detection. Additionally, the performance of Landsat-9 in water body extraction is yet to be fully understood. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct comparative studies to evaluate the water extraction performance of Landsat-9 with Landsat-8. In this study, we analyze the performance of simultaneous Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 data for water body extraction based on eight common water indices (Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), Augmented Normalized Difference Water Index (ANDWI), Water Index 2015 (WI2015), tasseled cap wetness index (TCW), Automated Water Extraction Index for scenes with shadows (AWEIsh) and without shadows (AWEInsh) and Multi-Band Water Index (MBWI)) to extract water bodies in seven study sites worldwide. The Otsu algorithm is utilized to automatically determine the optimal segmentation threshold for water body extraction. The results showed that (1) Landsat-9 satellite data can be used for water body extraction effectively, with results consistent with those from Landsat-8. The eight selected water indices in this study are applicable to both Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 satellites. (2) The NDWI index shows a larger variability in accuracy compared to other indices when used on Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 imagery. Therefore, additional caution should be exercised when using the NDWI for water body analysis with both Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 satellites simultaneously. (3) For Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 imagery, ratio-based water indices tend to have more omission errors, while difference-based indices are more prone to commission errors. Overall, ratio-based indices exhibit greater variability in overall accuracy, whereas difference-based indices demonstrate lower sensitivity to variations in the study area, showing smaller overall accuracy fluctuations and higher robustness. This study can provide necessary references for the selection of water indices based on the newest Landsat-9 data. The results are crucial for guiding the combined use of Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 for global surface water mapping and understanding its long-term changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of the spatial distribution of urban emergency shelters can effectively identify defects in the current distribution of urban emergency shelters and weaknesses in the overall evacuation service capacity of the city and provide reference for improving the level of urban emergency shelters and evacuation and disaster relief capacity. At present, evaluation of the spatial distribution of urban emergency shelters is mainly carried out on three aspects: effectiveness, accessibility, and safety. However, there are problems, such as individual evaluation scales and incomplete indicator systems, unreasonable allocation of indicator weights, and ignoring the influence of fuzzy incompatibility between different indicator attributes on the evaluation results. In this paper, we start from two scales, the individual emergency shelter and the regional groups of emergency shelters. Based on the five criteria of effectiveness, accessibility, safety, suitability, and fairness, the evaluation indicator system of the spatial distribution of urban emergency shelters was constructed. It was combined with AHP, CRITIC, the optimal weight coefficient solution method based on the maximum deviation sum of squares theory, and fuzzy optimization theory to construct a multi-indicator evaluation model. Further, the spatial distribution condition of the existing emergency shelter in Shanghai was evaluated. The results show that: among the existing ninety-one emergency shelters in Shanghai, there are nine places with unreasonable spatial distribution; nineteen places are comparatively unreasonable. From the scale of regional groups, there is one district (Pudong New District) with unreasonable spatial distribution: its relative superiority value is far lower than other districts, and there are three districts that are comparatively unreasonable. Further, the evaluation scores of the spatial distribution reasonableness of emergency shelters in each region of Shanghai show a high–low–middle distribution from the downtown area of Shanghai outward. The evaluation indicator system and evaluation method used in this paper can effectively reflect the deficiencies in the spatial distribution of urban emergency shelters, thus providing a reference for the relevant departments to improve and plan emergency shelters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aerosol optical depth (AOD) represents the light attenuation by aerosols and is an important threat to urban air quality, production activities, human health, and sustainable urban development in arid and semiarid regions. To some extent, the AOD reflects the extent of regional air pollution and is often characterized by significant spatiotemporal dynamics. However, detailed local AOD information is ambiguous at best due to limited monitoring techniques. Currently, the availability of abundant satellite data and constantly updated AOD extraction algorithms offer unprecedented perspectives for high-resolution AOD extraction and long-time series analysis. This study, based on the long-term sequence MOD09A1 data from 2010 to 2018 and lookup table generation, uses the improved deep blue algorithm (DB) to conduct fine-resolution (500 m) AOD (at 550 nm wavelength) remote sensing (RS) estimation on Landsat TM/OLI data from the Urumqi region, analyzes the spatiotemporal AOD variation characteristics in Urumqi and combines gray relational analysis (GRA) and the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model to analyze AOD influence factors and simulate pollutant propagation trajectories in representative periods. The results demonstrate that the improved DB algorithm has a high inversion accuracy for continuous AOD inversion at a high spatial resolution in urban areas. The spatial AOD distribution in Urumqi declines from urban to suburban areas, and higher AODs are concentrated in cities and along roads. Among these areas, Xinshi District has the highest AOD, and Urumqi County has the lowest AOD. The seasonal AOD variation characteristics are distinct, and the AOD order is spring (0.411) > summer (0.285) > autumn (0.203), with the largest variation in spring. The average AOD in Urumqi is 0.187, and the interannual variation generally shows an upward trend. However, from 2010 to 2018, AOD first declined gradually and then declined significantly. Thereafter, AOD reached its lowest value in 2015 (0.076), followed by a significant AOD increase, reaching a peak in 2016 (0.354). This shows that coal to natural gas (NG) project implementation in Urumqi promoted the improvement of Urumqi's atmospheric environment. According to GRA, the temperature has the largest impact on the AOD in Urumqi (0.699). Combined with the HYSPLIT model, it was found that the aerosols observed over Urumqi were associated with long-range transport from Central Asia, and these aerosols can affect the entire northern part of China through long-distance transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since hyperspectral satellite images (HSIs) usually hold low spatial resolution, improving the spatial resolution of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is an effective solution to explore its potential for remote sensing applications, such as land cover mapping over urban and coastal areas. The fusion of HSIs with high spatial resolution multispectral images (MSIs) and panchromatic (PAN) images could be a solution. To address the challenging work of fusing HSIs, MSIs and PAN images, a novel easy-to-implement stepwise fusion approach was proposed in this study. The fusion of HSIs and MSIs was decomposed into a set of simple image fusion tasks through spectral grouping strategy. HSI, MSI and PAN images were fused step by step using existing image fusion algorithms. According to different fusion order, two strategies ((HSI+MSI)+PAN and HSI+(MSI+PAN)) were proposed. Using simulated and real Gaofen-5 (GF-5) HSI, MSI and PAN images from the Gaofen-1 (GF-1) PMS sensor as experimental data, we compared the proposed stepwise fusion strategies with the traditional fusion strategy (HSI+PAN), and compared the performances of six fusion algorithms under three fusion strategies. We comprehensively evaluated the fused results through three aspects: spectral fidelity, spatial fidelity and computation efficiency evaluation. The results showed that (1) the spectral fidelity of the fused images obtained by stepwise fusion strategies was better than that of the traditional strategy; (2) the proposed stepwise strategies performed better or comparable spatial fidelity than traditional strategy; (3) the stepwise strategy did not significantly increase the time complexity compared to the traditional strategy; and (4) we also provide suggestions for selecting image fusion algorithms using the proposed strategy. The study provided us with a reference for the selection of fusion strategies and algorithms in different application scenarios, and also provided an easy-to-implement solution and useful references for fusing HSI, MSI and PAN images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling and managing surface source pollution depends on the rapid monitoring of total nitrogen in water. However, the complex factors affecting water quality (plant shading and suspended matter in water) make direct estimation extremely challenging. Considering the spectral response mechanisms of emergent plants, we coupled discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and fractional order discretization (FOD) techniques with three machine learning models (random forest (RF), bagging algorithm (bagging), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost)) to mine this potential spectral information. A total of 567 models were developed, and airborne hyperspectral data processed with various DWT scales and FOD techniques were compared. The effective information in the hyperspectral reflectance data were better emphasized after DWT processing. After DWT processing the original spectrum (OR), its sensitivity to TN in water was maximally improved by 0.22, and the correlation between FOD and TN in water was optimally increased by 0.57. The transformed spectral information enhanced the TN model accuracy, especially for FOD after DWT. For RF, 82% of the model R2 values improved by 0.02~0.72 compared to the model using FOD spectra; 78.8% of the bagging values improved by 0.01~0.53 and 65.0% of the XGBoost values improved by 0.01~0.64. The XGBoost model with DWT coupled with grey relation analysis (GRA) yielded the best estimation accuracy, with the highest precision of R2 = 0.91 for L6. In conclusion, appropriately scaled DWT analysis can substantially improve the accuracy of extracting TN from UAV hyperspectral images. These outcomes may facilitate the further development of accurate water quality monitoring in sophisticated global waters from drone or satellite hyperspectral data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aquaculture has grown rapidly in the field of food industry in recent years; however, it brought many environmental problems, such as water pollution and reclamations of lakes and coastal wetland areas. Thus, the evaluation and management of aquaculture industry are needed, in which accurate aquaculture mapping is an essential prerequisite. Due to the difference between inland and marine aquaculture areas and the difficulty in processing large amounts of remote sensing images, the accurate mapping of different aquaculture types is still challenging. In this study, a novel approach based on multi-source spectral and texture features was proposed to map simultaneously inland and marine aquaculture areas. Time series optical Sentinel-2 images were first employed to derive spectral indices for obtaining texture features. The backscattering and texture features derived from the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of Sentinel-1A were then used to distinguish aquaculture areas from other geographical entities. Finally, a supervised Random Forest classifier was applied for large scale aquaculture area mapping. To address the low efficiency in processing large amounts of remote sensing images, the proposed approach was implemented on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. A case study in the Pearl River Basin (Guangdong Province) of China showed that the proposed approach obtained aquaculture map with an overall accuracy of 89.5%, and the implementation of proposed approach on GEE platform greatly improved the efficiency for large scale aquaculture area mapping. The derived aquaculture map may support decision-making services for the sustainable development of aquaculture areas and ecological protection in the study area, and the proposed approach holds great potential for mapping aquacultures on both national and global scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based hyperspectral remote sensing is an important monitoring technology for the soil moisture content (SMC) of agroecological systems in arid regions. This technology develops precision farming and agricultural informatization. However, hyperspectral data are generally used in data mining. In this study, UAV-based hyperspectral imaging data with a resolution o 4 cm and totaling 70 soil samples (0–10 cm) were collected from farmland (2.5 × 104 m2) near Fukang City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Four estimation strategies were tested: the original image (strategy I), first- and second-order derivative methods (strategy II), the fractional-order derivative (FOD) technique (strategy III), and the optimal fractional order combined with the optimal multiband indices (strategy IV). These strategies were based on the eXtreme Gradient Boost (XGBoost) algorithm, with the aim of building the best estimation model for agricultural SMC in arid regions. The results demonstrated that FOD technology could effectively mine information (with an absolute maximum correlation coefficient of 0.768). By comparison, strategy IV yielded the best estimates out of the methods tested (R2val = 0.921, RMSEP = 1.943, and RPD = 2.736) for the SMC. The model derived from the order of 0.4 within strategy IV worked relatively well among the different derivative methods (strategy I, II, and III). In conclusion, the combination of FOD technology and the optimal multiband indices generated a highly accurate model within the XGBoost algorithm for SMC estimation. This research provided a promising data mining approach for UAV-based hyperspectral imaging data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]