ESA CCI SM products have provided remotely-sensed surface soil moisture (SSM) content with the best spatial and temporal coverage thus far, although its output spatial resolution of 25 km is too coarse for many regional and local applications. The downscaling methodology presented in this paper improves ESA CCI SM spatial resolution to 1 km using two-step approach. The first step is used as a data engineering tool and its output is used as an input for the Random forest model in the second step. In addition to improvements in terms of spatial resolution, the approach also considers the problem of data gaps. The filling of these gaps is the initial step of the procedure, which in the end produces a continuous product in both temporal and spatial domains. The methodology uses combined active and passive ESA CCI SM products in addition to in situ soil moisture observations and the set of auxiliary downscaling predictors. The research tested several variants of Random forest models to determine the best combination of ESA CCI SM products. The conclusion is that synergic use of all ESA CCI SM products together with the auxiliary datasets in the downscaling procedure provides better results than using just one type of ESA CCI SM product alone. The methodology was applied for obtaining SSM maps for the area of California, USA during 2016. The accuracy of tested models was validated using five-fold cross-validation against in situ data and the best variation of model achieved RMSE, R² and MAE of 0.0518 m³/m³, 0.7312 and 0.0374 m³/m³, respectively. The methodology proved to be useful for generating high-resolution SSM products, although additional improvements are necessary.

The inventory of woody vegetation is of great importance for good forest management. Advancements of remote sensing techniques have provided excellent tools for such purposes, reducing the required amount of time and labor, yet with high accuracy and the information richness. Sentinel-2 is one of the relatively new satellite missions, whose 13 spectral bands and short revisit time proved to be very useful when it comes to forest monitoring. In this study, the novel spatio-temporal classification framework for mapping woody vegetation from Sentinel-2 multitemporal data has been proposed. The used framework is based on the probability random forest classification, where temporal information is explicitly defined in the model. Because of this, several predictions are made for each pixel of the study area, which allow for specific spatio-temporal aggregation to be performed. The proposed methodology has been successfully applied for mapping eight potential forest and shrubby vegetation types over the study area of Serbia. Several spatio-temporal aggregation approaches have been tested, divided into two main groups: pixel-based and neighborhood-based. The validation metrics show that determining the most common vegetation type classes in the neighborhood of 5 × 5 pixels provides the best results. The overall accuracy and kappa coefficient obtained from five-fold cross validation of the results are 82.97% and 0.75, respectively. The corresponding producer’s accuracies range from 36.74% to 97.99% and user’s accuracies range from 46.31% to 98.43%. The proposed methodology proved to be applicable for mapping woody vegetation in Serbia and shows a potential to be implemented in other areas as well. Further testing is necessary to confirm such assumptions.

Numerous semi- and fully-automatic algorithms have been developed for individual tree detection from airborne laser-scanning data, but different rates of falsely detected treetops also accompany their results. In this paper, we proposed an approach that includes a machine learning-based refinement step to reduce the number of falsely detected treetops. The approach involves the local maxima filtering and segmentation of the canopy height model to extract different segment-level features used for the classification of treetop candidates. The study was conducted in a mixed temperate forest, predominantly deciduous, with a complex topography and an area size of 0.6 km × 4 km. The classification model’s training was performed by five machine learning approaches: Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting, Artificial Neural Network, the Support Vector Machine, and Logistic Regression. The final classification model with optimal hyperparameters was adopted based on the best-performing classifier (RF). The overall accuracy (OA) and kappa coefficient (κ) obtained from the ten-fold cross validation for the training data were 90.4% and 0.808, respectively. The prediction of the test data resulted in an OA = 89.0% and a κ = 0.757. This indicates that the proposed method could be an adequate solution for the reduction of falsely detected treetops before tree crown segmentation, especially in deciduous forests.

Land readjustment (LR) is increasingly applied as a tool of urban policy implementation in many countries of the world. In Serbia, LR is a new tool that is being introduced into the legal system and into planning practice, from which a significant contribution to the urban development of the country is expected. Countries have different models of LR, which are adjusted to the particular conditions specific for that society. This is to be expected, having in mind the specificity of each country. This paper presents the development of land readjustment models which are adjusted to Serbia, but could also be used in the countries of South-East Europe, considering that the predominant conditions are similar. The most important item in this process is defining the key elements which determine the nature of the model: the existence and appropriateness of the urban plan and the distribution of benefits from increased land value. The paper also presents a case study of LR implementation on the basis of defined models, after which an analysis of the outcomes is presented. It is concluded that by applying the LR models presented, numerous significant issues that occurred in the past can be solved.

This paper presents a universal model of weighted coordinate transformation, i.e. transformation considering the errors of coordinates in both coordinate systems. It is intrinsically one of the typical examples of ‘error-in-variables’ (EIV) models. The proposed method of LS theory application on weighted coordinate transformation does not impose any constraints on the form of functional relationship among stochastic variables. Since the basic idea is to generalise Gauss–Markov model (GMM) by introduction of so-called ‘total residuals’, the proposed procedure is named ‘Generalised Gauss–Markov model’. Formulation of expressions for estimation of unknown transformation parameters is theoretically confirmed using the Gauss–Helmert model (GHM) and three different modifications of the GMM. The proposed procedure is in its essence a strict solution to total least-squares (unweighted) and weighted total least-squares problem in coordinate transformation. This thesis is experimentally confirmed by comparison of its results with those found in four characteristic examples from the literature.