An improved methodology for the extraction and mapping of urban built-up areas at a global scale is presented in this study. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based multispectral data were combined with the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)-based nighttime light (NTL) data for robust extraction and mapping of urban built-up areas. The MODIS-based newly proposed Urban Built-up Index (UBI) was combined with NTL data, and the resulting Enhanced UBI (EUBI) was used as a single master image for global extraction of urban built-up areas. Due to higher variation of the EUBI with respect to geographical regions, a region-specific threshold approach was used to extract urban built-up areas. This research provided 500-m-resolution global urban built-up map of year 2014. The resulted map was compared with three existing moderate-resolution global maps and one high-resolution map in the United States. The comparative analysis demonstrated finer details of the urban built-up cover estimated by the resultant map.

The damage of buildings and manmade structures, where most of human activities occur, is the major cause of casualties of from earthquakes. In this paper, an improved technique, Earthquake Damage Visualization (EDV) is presented for the rapid detection of earthquake damage using the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. The EDV is based on the pre-seismic and co-seismic coherence change method. The normalized difference between the pre-seismic and co-seismic coherences, and vice versa, are used to calculate the forward (from pre-seismic to co-seismic) and backward (from co-seismic to pre-seismic) change parameters, respectively. The backward change parameter is added to visualize the retrospective changes caused by factors other than the earthquake. The third change-free parameter uses the average values of the pre-seismic and co-seismic coherence maps. These three change parameters were ultimately merged into the EDV as an RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) composite imagery. The EDV could visualize the earthquake damage efficiently using Horizontal transmit and Horizontal receive (HH), and Horizontal transmit and Vertical receive (HV) polarizations data from the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2). Its performance was evaluated in the Kathmandu Valley, which was hit severely by the 2015 Nepal Earthquake. The cross-validation results showed that the EDV is more sensitive to the damaged buildings than the existing method. The EDV could be used for building damage detection in other earthquakes as well.

Generally, the characterization of land surface roughness is obtained from the analysis of height variations observed along transects (e.g., root mean square (RMS) height, correlation length, and autocorrelation function). These surface roughness measurements are then used as inputs for surface dynamics modeling, e.g., for soil erosion modeling, runoff estimation, and microwave remote sensing scattering modeling and calibration. In the past, researchers have suggested various methods for estimating roughness parameters based on ground measurements, e.g., using a pin profilometer, but these methods require physical contact with the land and can be time-consuming to conduct. The target of this research is to develop a technique for deriving surface roughness characteristics from digital camera images by applying photogrammetric and geographical information systems (GIS) analysis techniques. First, ground photos acquired by a digital camera in the field were used to create a point cloud and 3D digital terrain model (DTM). Then, the DTM was imported to a GIS environment to calculate the surface roughness parameter for each field site. The results of the roughness derivation can be integrated with soil moisture for backscattering simulation, e.g., for inversion modeling to retrieve the backscattering coefficient. The results show that the proposed method has a high potential for retrieving surface roughness parameters in a time- and cost-efficient manner. The selection of homogeneous fields and the increased spatial distribution of sites in the study area will show a better result for microwave backscattering modeling.

Climate change and overpopulation have led to an increase in water demands worldwide. As a result, land subsidence due to groundwater extraction and water level decline is causing damage to communities in arid and semiarid regions. The agricultural plain of Samalghan in Iran has recently experienced wide areas of land subsidence, which is hypothesized to be caused by groundwater overexploitation. This hypothesis was assessed by estimating the amount of subsidence that occurred in the Samalghan plain using DInSAR based on an analysis of 25 Sentinel-1 descending SAR images over 6 years. To assess the influence of water level changes on this phenomenon, groundwater level maps were produced, and their relationship with land subsidence was evaluated. Results showed that one major cause of the subsidence in the Samalghan plain was groundwater overexploitation, with the highest average land subsidence occurring in 2019 (34 cm) and the lowest in 2015 and 2018 (18 cm). Twelve Sentinel-1 ascending images were used for relative validation of the DInSAR processing. The correlation value varied from 0.69 to 0.89 (an acceptable range). Finally, the aquifer behavior was studied, and changes in cultivation patterns and optimal utilization of groundwater resources were suggested as practical strategies to control the current situation.

Soil moisture (SM) plays a key role in many environmental processes and has a high spatial and temporal variability. Collecting sample SM data through field surveys (e.g., for validation of remote sensing-derived products) can be very expensive and time consuming if a study area is large, and producing accurate SM maps from the sample point data is a difficult task as well. In this study, geospatial processing techniques are used to combine several geo-environmental layers relevant to SM (soil, geology, rainfall, land cover, etc.) into a land unit area (LUA) map, which delineates regions with relatively homogeneous geological/geomorphological, land use/land cover, and climate characteristics. This LUA map is used to guide the collection of sample SM data in the field, and the field data is finally spatially interpolated to create a wall-to-wall map of SM in the study area (Garmsar, Iran). The main goal of this research is to create a SM map in an arid area, using a land unit area (LUA) approach to obtain the most appropriate sample locations for collecting SM field data. Several environmental GIS layers, which have an impact on SM, were combined to generate a LUA map, and then field surveying was done in each class of the LUA map. A SM map was produced based on LUA, remote sensing data indexes, and spatial interpolation of the field survey sample data. The several interpolation methods (inverse distance weighting, kriging, and co-kriging) were evaluated for generating SM maps from the sample data. The produced maps were compared to each other and validated using ground truth data. The results show that the LUA approach is a reasonable method to create the homogenous field to introduce a representative sample for field soil surveying. The geostatistical SM map achieved adequate accuracy; however, trend analysis and distribution of the soil sample point locations within the LUA types should be further investigated to achieve even better results. Co-kriging produced the most accurate SM map of the study area.