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Project

Urban vegetation biomonitoring: exploring the potential of hyperspectral remote sensing

Vegetation and in particular green and full grown trees are extremely important in urban environments, amongst others for their beneficial effects on the reduction of air pollution. CIties are however not ideal environments for these trees and their health condition should be monitored carefully. A large scale biomonitoring of urban vegetation cannot be done manually, and remote sensing, and hyperspectral imaging in particular, announces themselves as a perfect candidate for an automated procedure. The aim of this project is to develop a framework for biomonitoring of urban vegetation from canopy spectral reflectance as this is the information that can be obtained from hyperspectral remote sensing. A data-driven approach is developed by constructing a hyperspectral reflectance library of leaf and canopy reflectance spectra. From this library, we will (i) study the relation between leaf-level and canopy-level reflectance; (ii) study the spectral distinction between healthy and unhealthy trees, and (iii) study the spectral distinction between trees growing at sites with different loads of air pollution.
Date:1 Jul 2012 →  30 Jun 2016
Keywords:BIOMONITORING, SPECTRAL UNMIXING, HYPERSPECTRAL DATA ANALYSIS, AIR POLLUTION
Disciplines:Physical geography and environmental geoscience, Plant biology, Communications technology, Geomatic engineering