An accurate assessment of the grassland aboveground biomass (AGB) is important for analyzing terrestrial ecosystem structures and functions, estimating grassland primary productivity, and monitoring climate change and carbon/nitrogen circulation on a global scale. Multispectral satellites with wide-width advantages, such as Sentinel-2, have become the inevitable choice for the large-scale monitoring of grassland biomass on regional and global scales. However, the spectral resolution of multispectral satellites is generally low, which limits the inversion accuracy of grassland AGB and restricts further application in large-scale grassland monitoring. For this reason, a satellite-scale simulated spectra method was proposed to enhance the spectral information of the Sentinel-2 data, and a simulated spectrum (SS) was constructed using this algorithm. Then, the raw spectrum (RS) of Sentinel-2 and the SS were used as data sources to calculate the vegetation indices (RS-VIs and SS-VIs, which represent vegetation indices calculated using RS and SS data, respectively), and the multi-granularity spectral segmentation algorithm (MGSS) was employed to extract spectral segmentation features (RS-SF and SS-SF, which represent segmentation features extracted by RS and SS data, respectively). Following this, these spectral features (RS-SF, SS-SF, RS-VIs, and SS-VIs) were used to estimate AGB by partial least-squares regression (PLSR) and multiple stepwise regression (MSR) models. Finally, the spatial distribution law and the reasons for the latitude zone of the Inner Mongolia Plateau were analyzed, based on precipitation, the average temperature, topography, etc. The conclusions are as follows. Firstly, the SS has more spectral information and its sensitivity to biomass is higher than the RS of Sentinel-2 in some bands, and the correlation between the SS-VIs and biomass is higher than that of the RS-VIs. Secondly, among the spectral features, the most accurate AGB estimation was obtained by SS-SF, which gave R² = 0.95. The root mean square error (RMSE) was 10.86 g/m² and the estimate accuracy (EA) was 82.84% in the MSR model. Additionally, RMSE = 10.89 g/m² and EA = 82.78% in the PLSR model. Compared with the traditional estimation methods using RS and VI, R² was increased by at least 0.2, RMSE was reduced by at least 14.08 g/m², and EA was increased by 22.26%. Therefore, the simulated spectra method can help improve the estimation accuracy of AGB, and a new idea about regional and global large-scale biomass acquisition is provided.

Chlorophyll plays a critical role in assessing the photosynthetic capacity and health of grasslands. However, existing studies on the hyperspectral inversion of chlorophyll have mainly focused on field crops, leading to limited accuracy when applied to natural grasslands due to their complex canopy structures and species diversity. This study aims to address this challenge by extrapolating the measured leaf chlorophyll to the canopy level using the green vegetation coverage approach. Additionally, fractional-order derivative (FOD) methods are employed to enhance the sensitivity of hyperspectral data to chlorophyll. Several FOD spectral indices are developed to minimize interference from factors such as bare soil and hay, resulting in improved chlorophyll estimation accuracy. The study utilizes partial least squares regression (PLSR) and support vector machine regression (SVR) to construct inversion models based on full-band FOD, two-band FOD spectral indices, and their combination. Through comparative analysis, the optimal model for estimating grassland chlorophyll content is determined, yielding an R² value of 0.808, RMSE value of 1.720, and RPD value of 2.347.

Estimating the carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) contents of a large-span grassland transect is essential for evaluating ecosystem functioning and monitoring biogeochemical cycles. However, the field measurements are scattered, such that they cannot indicate the continuous gradient change in the grassland transect. Although remote sensing methods have been applied for the estimation of nutrient elements at the local scale in recent years, few studies have considered the effective estimation of C, N, and P contents over large-span grassland transects with complex environment including a variety of grassland types (i.e., meadow, typical grassland, and desert grassland). In this paper, an information enhancement algorithm (involving spectral enhancement, regional enhancement, and feature enhancement) is used to extract the weak information related to C, N, and P. First, the spectral simulation algorithm is used to enhance the spectral information of Sentinel-2 imagery. Then, the enhanced spectra and meteorological data are fused to express regional characteristics and the fractional differential (FD) algorithm is used to extract sensitive spectral features related to C, N, and P, in order to construct a partial least-squares regression (PLSR) model. Finally, the C, N, and P contents are estimated over a West–East grassland transect in Inner Mongolia, China. The results demonstrate that: (i) the contents of C, N, and P in large-span transects can be effectively estimated through use of the information enhancement method involving spectral enhancement, regional feature enhancement, and information enhancement, for which the estimation accuracies (R²) were 0.88, 0.78, and 0.85, respectively. Compared with the estimation results of raw Sentinel-2 imagery, the RMSE was reduced by 3.42 g/m², 0.14 g/m², and 13.73 mg/m², respectively; and (ii) the continuous change trend and spatial distribution characteristics of C, N, and P contents in the west–east transect of the Inner Mongolia Plateau were obtained, which showed decreasing trends in C, N, and P contents from east to west and the characteristics of meadow > typical grassland > desert grassland. Thus, the information enhancement algorithm can help to improve estimates of C, N, and P contents when considering large-span grassland transects.

Monitoring grassland vegetation growth is of vital importance to scientific grazing and grassland management. People expect to be able to use a portable device, like a mobile phone, to monitor grassland vegetation growth at any time. In this paper, we propose a handheld grassland vegetation monitoring system to achieve the goal of monitoring grassland vegetation growth. The system includes two parts: the hardware unit is a hand-held multispectral imaging tool named ASQ-Discover based on a smartphone, which has six bands (wavelengths)—including three visible bands (450 nm, 550 nm, 650 nm), a red-edge band (750 nm), and two near-infrared bands (850 nm, 960 nm). The imagery data of each band has a size of 5120 × 3840 pixels with 8-bit depth. The software unit improves image quality through vignetting removal, radiometric calibration, and misalignment correction and estimates and analyzes spectral traits of grassland vegetation (Fresh Grass Ratio (FGR), NDVI, NDRE, BNDVI, GNDVI, OSAVI and TGI) that are indicators of vegetation growth in grassland. We introduce the hardware and software unit in detail, and we also experiment in five pastures located in Haiyan County, Qinghai Province. Our experimental results show that the handheld grassland vegetation growth monitoring system has the potential to revolutionize the grassland monitoring that operators can conduct when using a hand-held tool to achieve the tasks of grassland vegetation growth monitoring.

The survival and longevity of architectural heritage, especially structures in isolated locations such as ancient opera stages, have been gradually threatened by natural and sociocultural changes over the past few decades. Furthermore, the future of these heritage sites remains uncertain. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to develop a research method, using multidisciplinary knowledge and digital technology, to digitally protect and inherit the endangered heritage of ancient stages. Hence, in this study, we applied a qualitative longitudinal method for digital protection, digital culture inheritance, and data intelligence management. Particularly, digital culture inheritance established the knowledge visualization model, which was used to excavate cultural connotations and was displayed with virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. Furthermore, a GIS digital platform was developed to provide data management and a virtual experience in a 3D-interactive way for culture presentation, cognition, and heritage. Then, the developed method was validated over four years by using the ancient opera stages in Shanxi, China, as case studies. The results demonstrate that this method is feasible in and applicable to the heritages of ancient stages and can be applied to other architectural heritages and even cultural heritages. This method also helps to promote the public’s awareness of the protection of cultural heritage, especially the heritages of ancient stages.

Paint loss is one of the major forms of deterioration in ancient murals and color paintings, and its detection and segmentation are critical for subsequent restoration efforts. However, existing methods still suffer from issues such as incomplete segmentation, patch noise, and missed detections during paint loss extraction, limiting the automation of paint loss detection and restoration. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes PLDS-YOLO, an improved model based on YOLOv8s-seg, specifically designed for the detection and segmentation of paint loss in ancient murals and color paintings. First, the PA-FPN network is optimized by integrating residual connections to enhance the fusion of shallow high-resolution features with deep semantic features, thereby improving the accuracy of edge extraction in deteriorated areas. Second, a dual-backbone network combining CSPDarkNet and ShuffleNet V2 is introduced to improve multi-scale feature extraction and enhance the discrimination of deteriorated areas. Third, SPD-Conv replaces traditional pooling layers, utilizing space-to-depth transformation to improve the model’s ability to perceive deteriorated areas of varying sizes. Experimental results on a self-constructed dataset demonstrate that PLDS-YOLO achieves a segmentation accuracy of 86.2%, outperforming existing methods in segmentation completeness, multi-scale deterioration detection, and small target recognition. Moreover, the model maintains a favorable balance between computational complexity and inference speed, providing reliable technical support for intelligent paint loss monitoring and digital restoration.