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Work Package (WP) 4: Up-scaling and Remote Sensing component of the ARS Africae

1. Calibration and Validation of vegetation cover mapsthrough development of multi-scalestructural cover maps using state-of-the-art retrieval methods such as;

LUE-

LAI- the ratio of the upper leaf surface are to the ground area (broad leafed vegetation) for a

given unit area. LAI quantifies canopy structure and can be used to predict primary productivity

and crop growth. Itscommonly used in ecosystem modeling because it has an influence on

exchanges of energy, water vapor and carbon dioxide between plants and the atmosphere. LAI

can be measured on ground by harvesting leaf tissue and quantifying the leaf surface area.

fPAR- PAR is the spectral range from 400 to 700 nm thats used by plants for photosynthesis.

The Fraction of PAR signifies the portion of PAR used by plants. Preciiation and temperature are

the factors that determine the proportion of PAR absorbed by the plants. fPAR is an important

parameter in measuring Biomass production because vegetation development is related to the

rate at which radiant energy I absorbed by vegetation.

Spectral Unmixing- used to decompose reflectance (or corrected radiance) source spectrum

into a set of endmember spectra. The results of unmixing are a measure of the membership of

the individual endmember to the source spectrum. This measure is called the endmembers

abundance.

Random Forest Classifications-

Active Microwave Technologies, especially Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-

Multispectral backscatter-

Hyperspectral Backscatter-

Interferometry- analysis of phase difference of two SAR images taken over the same area.During this phase analysis, coherence is calculated between image phases, which are

wavelength and polarization dependent and strongly correlated with Biomass.

Polarimetry-

2. LULCC Analysisand Time Series Analysis3. Active Microwave Technology: Enhancing the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar)Processing /

Analysis capability for vegetation studies;

lack of atmospheric interferences / no haze vegetation structurestudies vegetation morphologicalstudies non-sensitivity to cloud cover / penetration Vegetation moisturestudies Tree cover product derived from 500-m MODIS imagery is available though not

extensively validated for the South African ecosystem

Availability of Aerial Photographyat a temporal resolution of 10 to 20 years, spatialresolution (scale) of between 1.12000 and 1:5000, and acquired in stereo-acting as

time series reference data for vegetation structure

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4. Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)these are multi-angular observationsand are available for the supersites, eg MODIS, MISR, Air-MISR, RapidEyeand Aerial

Photography;

used for the retrieval of vegetation structural parametersat various resolutions

comparing the retrieved vegetation parameters with the results from SAR

5. Up-scalinghigh resolution data for the classification of thematic classes will be tested using PanFusionand Pan sharpeningwith 1970s datasets

6. Mapping additional image characteristics and features such as texture, context imageinformation, image object direction, image area andshape, and the object structureto

compliment the signature analysis.

7. Validation of vegetation classes with calculation of users/ producers accuracies and KAPPAStatistics.

8. Developing predictive modelswith SAR for the local context considering fire and soil-vegetationmoisture as the interacting factors

9. Preparing operational appications of ESA-Sentinel-1 (RADAR) and Sentinel-2 (Optical) satellites.A program by European GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security).