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Classification at subpixel level for a low resolution hyperspectral image (LR HSI) is considered in this article. Using selected labeled samples as labeled endmembers and unsupervised clustering centers of LR HSI as unlabeled endmembers, a hybrid endmember library is constructed for spectral unmixing of LR HSI. The abundances of unlabeled endmembers are used to optimize the estimated fractional abundances of labeled classes within mixed pixels to improve the estimation accuracy. A more accurate subpixel mapping result is then obtained by applying subpixel spatial attraction model with the optimized fractional abundances. To incorporate spatial contextual information and further improve the subpixel mapping performance, a subpixel level segmentation map is generated by applying unsupervised clustering to the upsampled LR HSI, and integrated with the initial subpixel mapping result by decision fusion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method remarkably outperforms state-of-the-art subpixel mapping methods, including the corresponding ones with or without spatial contextual information incorporation.

The fine extraction of water boundaries is of great significance for water resource monitoring, water environment monitoring, and flood prevention. MODIS images are widely used for water extraction due to their high temporal resolution, wide coverage, gratuity, and long observation period. However, owing to their low spatial resolution, the water boundary results are often blurred. It is difficult to extract water boundaries accurately. The subpixel mapping algorithm can solve this problem. In this article, Dongting Lake and its surroundings are adopted as the experimental area. The digital elevation model (DEM) is used to modify the subpixel/pixel spatial attraction model (SPSAM) mapping results. The proposed algorithm is referred to as the DEM-modified SPSAM (D-MSPSAM). Based on the visual results of the two sets of experiments, the modified results suitably maintain the spatial details of the water, and many of the underestimations caused by the similarity of the spectral characteristics of the surroundings to those of the water have been corrected. In this paper, the accuracy of Landsat-8 water extraction is used as a reference. Based on the quantitative results, the D-MSPSAM method has a higher extraction accuracy than the traditional threshold method, and the accuracies of the extraction for high water and low water have been increased by 3.56 percentage points and 2.77 percentage points, respectively. Furthermore, these results also confirm the potential application of DEM data for flood submergence extraction and provide new ideas for the improvement of the subpixel mapping model. The proposed method can accurately generate water distribution maps in a practical and economical way.

Water bodies are ubiquitous features in Arctic wetlands. Ponds, i.e., waters with a surface area smaller than 104 m2, have been recognized as hotspots of biological activity and greenhouse gas emissions but are not well inventoried. This study aimed to identify common characteristics of three Arctic wetlands including water body size and abundance for different spatial resolutions, and the potential of Landsat-5 TM satellite data to show the subpixel fraction of water cover (SWC) via the surface albedo. Water bodies were mapped using optical and radar satellite data with resolutions of 4mor better, Landsat-5 TM at 30mand the MODIS water mask (MOD44W) at 250m resolution. Study sites showed similar properties regarding water body distributions and scaling issues. Abundance-size distributions showed a curved pattern on a log-log scale with a flattened lower tail and an upper tail that appeared Paretian. Ponds represented 95% of the total water body number. Total number of water bodies decreased with coarser spatial resolutions. However, clusters of small water bodies were merged into single larger water bodies leading to local overestimation of water surface area. To assess the uncertainty of coarse-scale products, both surface water fraction and the water body size distribution should therefore be considered. Using Landsat surface albedo to estimate SWC across different terrain types including polygonal terrain and drained thermokarst basins proved to be a robust approach. However, the albedo–SWC relationship is site specific and needs to be tested in other Arctic regions. These findings present a baseline to better represent small water bodies of Arctic wet tundra environments in regional as well as global ecosystem and climate models.

Fractional green vegetation cover (FVC) is a useful parameter for many environmental and climate-related applications. A common approach for estimating FVC involves the linear unmixing of two spectral endmembers in a remote sensing image; bare soil and green vegetation. The spectral properties of these two endmembers are typically determined based on field measurements, estimated using additional data sources (e.g., soil databases or land cover maps), or extracted directly from the imagery. Most FVC estimation approaches do not consider that the spectral properties of endmembers may vary across space. However, due to local differences in climate, soil type, vegetation species, etc., the spectral characteristics of soil and green vegetation may exhibit positive spatial autocorrelation. When this is the case, it may be useful to take these local variations into account for estimating FVC. In this study, spatial interpolation (Inverse Distance Weighting and Ordinary Kriging) was used to predict variations in the spectral characteristics of bare soil and green vegetation across space. When the spatially-interpolated values were used in place of scene-invariant endmember values to estimate FVC in an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) image, the accuracy of FVC estimates increased, providing evidence that it may be useful to consider the effects of spatial autocorrelation for spectral mixture analysis.

Capturing the dynamics of a lake-water area using remotely sensed images has always been an essential task. Most of the fine spatial resolution data are unsuitable for this purpose because of their low temporal resolution and limited scene coverage. A Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP–VIIRS) is a newly-available and appropriate sensor for monitoring large lakes due to its frequent revisits and wide swath (more than 3000 km). However, it provides visible and infrared images at relatively coarse spatial resolutions, which would sometimes hamper the accurate mapping of lake shorelines. This study, therefore, proposes a two-step downscaling method that combines spectral unmixing and subpixel mapping to produce a finer resolution lake map from NPP–VIIRS imagery, which is then applied to delineate the shorelines of five plateau lakes in Yunnan Province, as well as the shoreline dynamics of Poyang Lake at three separate times. A newly published global water dynamic dataset is employed in this study to improve the downscaling method. Results suggest that the proposed method can generate a finer resolution lake map that exhibits more details of the shoreline than hard classification. The downscaling results of the Suomi NPP–VIIRS generally achieve higher than 75% accuracy, while the downscaling results of a Landsat-simulated fraction map could have accuracy higher than 85%. This reveals that errors and uncertainties exist in both procedures, but mainly come from the spectral unmixing procedure which retrieves water fractions from NPP–VIIRS data.

Various subpixel mapping (SPM) methods have been proposed as downscaling techniques to reduce uncertainty in classifying mixed pixels. Such methods can provide category maps of a higher spatial resolution than the original input images. The aim of this study was to explore and validate the potential of SPM as an alternative method for obtaining land use/land cover (LULC) maps of regions where high-spatial-resolution LULC maps are unavailable. An experimental design was proposed to evaluate the feasibility of SPM for providing the alternative LULC maps. A case study was implemented in the Jingjinji region of China. SPM results for spatial resolutions of 500–100 m were derived from a single 1-km synthetic fraction image using two representative SPM methods. The 1-km synthetic fraction image was assumed to be error free. Accuracy assessment and analysis showed that overall accuracies of the SPM results were reduced from about 85% to 75% with increasing spatial resolution, and that producer’s accuracies varied considerably from about 62% to 93%. SPM performed best when handling areal features in comparison with linear and point features. The highest accuracies were achieved for areas with the lowest complexity. The study concluded that the results from SPM could provide an alternative LULC data source with acceptable accuracy, especially in areas with low complexity and with a large proportion of areal features.