A red edge band is a sensitive spectral band of crops, which helps to improve the accuracy of crop classification. In view of the characteristics of GF-6 WFV data with multiple red edge bands, this paper took Hengshui City, Hebei Province, China, as the study area to carry out red edge feature analysis and crop classification, and analyzed the influence of different red edge features on crop classification. On the basis of GF-6 WFV red edge band spectral analysis, different red edge feature extraction and red edge indices feature importance evaluation, 12 classification schemes were designed based on GF-6 WFV of four bands (only including red, green, blue and near-infrared bands), stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) and random forest (RF) method were used for feature selection and importance evaluation, and RF classification algorithm was used for crop classification. The results show the following: (1) The red edge 750 band of GF-6 WFV data contains more information content than the red edge 710 band. Compared with the red edge 750 band, the red edge 710 band is more conducive to improving the separability between different crops, which can improve the classification accuracy; (2) According to the classification results of different red edge indices, compared with the SDA method, the RF method is more accurate in the feature importance evaluation; (3) Red edge spectral features, red edge texture features and red edge indices can improve the accuracy of crop classification in different degrees, and the red edge features based on red edge 710 band can improve the accuracy of crop classification more effectively. This study improves the accuracy of remote sensing classification of crops, and can provide reference for the application of GF-6 WFV data and its red edge bands in agricultural remote sensing.

Fine classification of vegetation types has always been the focus and difficulty in the application field of remote sensing. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) sensors and platforms have become important data sources in various application fields due to their high spatial resolution and flexibility. Especially, UAV hyperspectral images can play a significant role in the fine classification of vegetation types. However, it is not clear how the ultrahigh resolution UAV hyperspectral images react in the fine classification of vegetation types in highly fragmented planting areas, and how the spatial resolution variation of UAV images will affect the classification accuracy. Based on UAV hyperspectral images obtained from a commercial hyperspectral imaging sensor (S185) onboard a UAV platform, this paper examines the impact of spatial resolution on the classification of vegetation types in highly fragmented planting areas in southern China by aggregating 0.025 m hyperspectral image to relatively coarse spatial resolutions (0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5 m). The object-based image analysis (OBIA) method was used and the effects of several segmentation scale parameters and different number of features were discussed. Finally, the classification accuracies from 84.3% to 91.3% were obtained successfully for multi-scale images. The results show that with the decrease of spatial resolution, the classification accuracies show a stable and slight fluctuation and then gradually decrease since the 0.5 m spatial resolution. The best classification accuracy does not occur in the original image, but at an intermediate level of resolution. The study also proves that the appropriate feature parameters vary at different scales. With the decrease of spatial resolution, the importance of vegetation index features has increased, and that of textural features shows an opposite trend; the appropriate segmentation scale has gradually decreased, and the appropriate number of features is 30 to 40. Therefore, it is of vital importance to select appropriate feature parameters for images in different scales so as to ensure the accuracy of classification.

Time series of vegetation indices can be utilized to capture crop phenology information, and have been widely used in land cover and crop classification, phenological feature extraction, and planting structure monitoring. This is of great significance for guiding agricultural production and formulating agricultural policies. According to the characteristics of the GF-6 satellite’s newly-added red edge bands, wide field view and high-frequency imaging, the time series of vegetation indices about multi-temporal GF-6 WFV data are used for the study of land cover and crop classification. In this study, eight time steps of GF-6 WFV data were selected from March to October 2019 in Hengshui City. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series and 10 different red edge spectral indices time series were constructed. Then, based on principal component analysis (PCA), using two feature selection and evaluation methods, stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) and random forest (RF), the red edge vegetation index of normalized difference red edge (NDRE) was selected. Seven different lengths of NDVI, NDRE and NDVI&NDRE time series were reconstructed by the Savizky-Golay (S-G) smoothing algorithm. Finally, an RF classification algorithm was used to analyze the influence of time series length and red edge indices features on land cover and crop classification, and the planting structure and distribution of crops in the study area were obtained. The results show that: (1) Compared with the NDRE red edge time series, the NDVI time series is more conducive to the improvement of the overall classification accuracy of crops, and NDRE can assist NDVI in improving the crop classification accuracy; (2) With the shortening of NDVI and NDRE time series, the accuracy of crop classification is gradually decreased, and the decline is gradually accelerated; and (3) Through the combination of the NDVI and NDRE time series, the accuracy of crop classification with different time series lengths can be improved compared with the single NDVI time series, which is conducive to improving the classification accuracy and timeliness of crops. This study has fully tapped the application potential of the new red edge bands of GF-6 WFV time series data, which can provide references for crop identification and classification of time series data such as NDVI and red edge vegetation index of different lengths. At the same time, it promotes the application of optical satellite data with red edge bands in the field of agricultural remote sensing.

Vegetation classification has always been the focus of remote sensing applications, especially for tropical regions with fragmented terrain, cloudy and rainy climates, and dense vegetation. How to effectively classify vegetation in tropical regions by using multi-spectral remote sensing with high resolution and red-edge spectrum needs to be further verified. Based on the experiment in Wenchang, Hainan, China, which is located in the tropical monsoon region, and combined with the ZY-1 02D 2.5 m fused images in January, March, July, and August, this paper discusses whether NDVI and four red-edge vegetation indices (VIs), CIre, NDVIre, MCARI, and TCARI, can promote vegetation classification and reduce the saturation. The results show that the schemes with the highest classification accuracies in all phases are those in which the red-edge VIs are involved, which suggests that the red-edge VIs can effectively contribute to the classification of vegetation. The maximum accuracy of the single phase is 86%, and the combined accuracy of the four phases can be improved to 92%. It has also been found that CIre and NDVIre do not reach saturation as easily as NDVI and MCARI in July and August, and their ability to enhance the separability between different vegetation types is superior to that of TCARI. In general, red-edge VIs can effectively promote vegetation classification in tropical monsoon regions, and red-edge VIs, such as CIre and NDVIre, have an anti-saturation performance, which can slow down the confusion between different vegetation types due to saturation.

As one of the most important active remote sensing technologies, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides advanced advantages of all-day, all-weather, and strong penetration capabilities. Due to its unique electromagnetic spectrum and imaging mechanism, the dimensions of remote sensing data have been considerably expanded. Important for fundamental research in microwave remote sensing, SAR image classification has been proven to have great value in many remote sensing applications. Many widely used SAR image classification algorithms rely on the combination of hand-designed features and machine learning classifiers, which still experience many issues that remain to be resolved and overcome, including optimized feature representation, the fuzzy confusion of speckle noise, the widespread applicability, and so on. To mitigate some of the issues and to improve the pattern recognition of high-resolution SAR images, a ConvCRF model combined with superpixel boundary constraint is developed. The proposed algorithm can successfully combine the local and global advantages of fully connected conditional random fields and deep models. An optimizing strategy using a superpixel boundary constraint in the inference iterations more efficiently preserves structure details. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides competitive advantages over other widely used models. In the land cover classification experiments using the MSTAR, E-SAR and GF-3 datasets, the overall accuracy of our proposed method achieves 90.18 ± 0.37, 91.63 ± 0.27, and 90.91 ± 0.31, respectively. Regarding the issues of SAR image classification, a novel integrated learning containing local and global image features can bring practical implications.

The utilization of remote sensing soil moisture products in agricultural and hydrological studies is on the rise. Conducting a regional applicability analysis of these soil moisture products is essential as a preliminary step for their effective utilization. The triple collocation (TC) method enables the estimation of the standard deviation of errors in products when true soil moisture values are unavailable. It assesses data uncertainty and mitigates the influence of product errors on fusion, thereby enhancing product accuracy significantly. In this study, the TC uncertainty error analysis was employed to integrate Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2), and the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) active (ESA CCI A) and passive (ESA CCI P) products, with ground-based measurements serving as a reference. Traditional evaluation metrics, such as the correlation coefficient (R), bias, root mean square error (RMSE), and unin situed root mean square error (ubRMSE), were employed to evaluate the accuracy of the product. The findings indicate that SMAP and ESA CCI P products demonstrate strong spatiotemporal continuity within the research area and exhibit low uncertainty across various land types. The products derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR-2) exhibit a high level of temporal and spatial continuity; however, there is a requirement for enhancing their accuracy. The products of ESA CCI A exhibit notable spatiotemporal disjunction, contributing significantly to their elevated level of uncertainty. After fusion with TC analysis, the correlation coefficient (R = 0.7) of the TC-2 product derived from the fusion of SMAP, AMSR-2, and ESA CCI P products is significantly higher than the correlation coefficient of the TC-1 product (R = 0.65) obtained from the fusion of SMAP, AMSR-2, and ESA CCI A products at a 95% confidence level. The integration of data can efficiently mitigate the challenges associated with spatiotemporal gaps and inaccuracies in products, offering a dependable foundation for the subsequent utilization of remote sensing products.