To accurately extract cultivated land boundaries based on high-resolution remote sensing imagery, an improved watershed segmentation algorithm was proposed herein based on a combination of pre- and post-improvement procedures. Image contrast enhancement was used as the pre-improvement, while the color distance of the Commission Internationale de l´Eclairage (CIE) color space, including the Lab and Luv, was used as the regional similarity measure for region merging as the post-improvement. Furthermore, the area relative error criterion (δ_A), the pixel quantity error criterion (δ_P), and the consistency criterion (K_hat) were used for evaluating the image segmentation accuracy. The region merging in Red–Green–Blue (RGB) color space was selected to compare the proposed algorithm by extracting cultivated land boundaries. The validation experiments were performed using a subset of Chinese Gaofen-2 (GF-2) remote sensing image with a coverage area of 0.12 km². The results showed the following: (1) The contrast-enhanced image exhibited an obvious gain in terms of improving the image segmentation effect and time efficiency using the improved algorithm. The time efficiency increased by 10.31%, 60.00%, and 40.28%, respectively, in the RGB, Lab, and Luv color spaces. (2) The optimal segmentation and merging scale parameters in the RGB, Lab, and Luv color spaces were C for minimum areas of 2000, 1900, and 2000, and D for a color difference of 1000, 40, and 40. (3) The algorithm improved the time efficiency of cultivated land boundary extraction in the Lab and Luv color spaces by 35.16% and 29.58%, respectively, compared to the RGB color space. The extraction accuracy was compared to the RGB color space using the δ_A, δ_P, and K_hat, that were improved by 76.92%, 62.01%, and 16.83%, respectively, in the Lab color space, while they were 55.79%, 49.67%, and 13.42% in the Luv color space. (4) Through the visual comparison, time efficiency, and segmentation accuracy, the comprehensive extraction effect using the proposed algorithm was obviously better than that of RGB color-based space algorithm. The established accuracy evaluation indicators were also proven to be consistent with the visual evaluation. (5) The proposed method has a satisfying transferability by a wider test area with a coverage area of 1 km². In addition, the proposed method, based on the image contrast enhancement, was to perform the region merging in the CIE color space according to the simulated immersion watershed segmentation results. It is a useful attempt for the watershed segmentation algorithm to extract cultivated land boundaries, which provides a reference for enhancing the watershed algorithm.

The rapid construction of high-speed railways in China has forced more and more routes to pass through slow subsidence zones caused by groundwater extraction or underground mining. It is crucial to carry out deformation monitoring and prediction those areas along high-speed railways to ensure the safe operation. Twenty-nine periods of Sentinel-1A data between Taiyuan South Station and Taigu East Station were first processed using the PS-InSAR technique, and the ground subsidence sequences at ten typical points were selected. Then the Variational modal decomposition (VMD) was combined with the Adaptive Boosting Algorithm (AdaBoost), and the VMD-LSTMAda-LSTMAda model was constructed by combining the long short-term memory (LSTM) model for the prediction of regional ground subsidence along the high-speed railway. The results show that the cumulative subsidence within the 200 m buffer of the line centreline is − 37.58 − 89.19 mm, and the annual average subsidence rate is − 26.57 − 82.63 mm/y. The proposed model can reduce the complexity of the deformation sequence and combines with AdaBoost to improve the prediction accuracy of the LSTM model. It performs well in terms of RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and R² at the two feature points (3703: RMSE = 0.82 mm, MAE = 0.25 mm, MAPE = 6.31%, and R² = 0.94; 522: RMSE = 1.32 mm, MAE = 0.46 mm, MAPE = 4.92%, R² = 0.95). The model improves the accuracy of regional subsidence prediction along the high-speed railway.

To accurately identify slope hazards based on high-resolution remote sensing imagery, an improved watershed segmentation algorithm is proposed. The color difference of the Luv color space was used as the regional similarity measure for region merging. Furthermore, the area relative error for evaluating the image segmentation accuracy was improved and supplemented with the pixel quantity error to evaluate the segmentation accuracy. An unstable slope was identified to validate the algorithm on Chinese Gaofen-2 (GF-2) remote sensing imagery by a multiscale segmentation extraction experiment. The results show the following: (1) the optimal segmentation and merging scale parameters were, respectively, minimum threshold constant C for minimum area A_min of 500 and optimal threshold D for a color difference of 400. (2) The total processing time for segmentation and merging of unstable slopes was 39.702 s, much lower than the maximum likelihood classification method and a little more than the object-oriented classification method. The relative error of the slope hazard area was 4.92% and the pixel quantity error was 1.60%, which were superior to the two classification methods. (3) The evaluation criteria of segmentation accuracy were consistent with the results of visual interpretation and the confusion matrix, indicating that the criteria established in this study are reliable. By comparing the time efficiency, visual effect and classification accuracies, the proposed method has a good comprehensive extraction effect. It can provide a technical reference for promoting the rapid extraction of slope hazards based on remote sensing imagery. Meanwhile, it also provides a theoretical and practical experience reference for improving the watershed segmentation algorithm.

To address the cost issue associated with pixel-level image annotation in fully supervised semantic segmentation, a method based on semi-supervised semantic segmentation is proposed for extracting winter wheat planting areas. This approach utilizes self-training with pseudo-labels to learn from a small set of images with pixel-level annotations and a large set of unlabeled images, thereby achieving the extraction. In the constructed initial dataset, a random sampling strategy is employed to select 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 proportions of labeled data. Furthermore, in conjunction with the concept of consistency regularization, strong data augmentation techniques are applied to the unlabeled images, surpassing classical methods such as cropping and rotation to construct a semi-supervised model. This effectively alleviates overfitting caused by noisy labels. By comparing the prediction results of different proportions of labeled data using SegNet, DeepLabv3+, and U-Net, it is determined that the U-Net network model yields the best extraction performance. Moreover, the evaluation metrics MPA and MIoU demonstrate varying degrees of improvement for semi-supervised semantic segmentation compared to fully supervised semantic segmentation. Notably, the U-Net model trained with 1/16 labeled data outperforms the models trained with 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 labeled data, achieving MPA and MIoU scores of 81.63%, 73.31%, 82.50%, and 76.01%, respectively. This method provides valuable insights for extracting winter wheat planting areas in scenarios with limited labeled data.