Unwanted Vegetation, Abandoned

Lands Detection and Mapping

Ovidiu Mihilescu S.C. GAUSS S.R.L

CHINESE - ROMANIAN CONFERENCE

on APPLIED SCIENCES in DEFENCE
Hunedoara, 15-16 June, 2012
 Motivations
Council Regulation (EC) No. 73/2009
Article 6 Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition
(GAEC)
Minimum level of maintenance:
Ensure a minimum level of maintenance and avoid the deterioration of habitats
- Retention of landscape features, including, where appropriate, hedges, ponds,
ditches, trees inline, in group or isolated and field margins
- Avoiding the encroachment of unwanted vegetation on agricultural land
- Protection of permanent pasture
 Objective
To develop a methodology for identification of unwanted
vegetation, abandoned lands from satellite images to be
used in visual computer aided photo interpretation -
CAPI
 Study area and datasets
The chosen study area is a part of Mehedinti county (7200 ha)
 Satellite imagery
Satellite images, orthorectified
VHR Geoeye, multispectral pansharpened (26 May 2009) GSD 0,5 m
HR multispectral Spot 4 (9 May 2009)
HR multispectral Spot 4 (14 Jun 2009)
HR multispectral Spot 5 (14 Jul 2009)
 Procedures
NDVI was generated for all HR images
NDVI was selected because is, probably, the most
commonly used index, in the last decades, when
studying vegetation.
Its deficiencies and advantages have been thoroughly
studied and are actually well known. This provided to
the project results a kind of point of reference from
where the performance of the other techniques was
evaluated. NDVI is defined as:

where R and NIR

represent the surface reflectance on the red and near
infrared regions of the spectrum, respectively.
MSAVI - Soil-Adjusted Vegetation
Index
The modified soil-adjusted vegetation index
(MSAVI) and its later revision, MSAVI2, are soil
adjusted vegetation indices that seek to address
some of the limitation of NDVI when applied to
areas with a high degree of exposed soil surface.

where RED is the red band reflectance from a

sensor, NIR is the near infrared band reflectance,
and L is the soil brightness correction factor.
MSAVI uses the following formula to calculate L,
where s is the slope of the soil line from a plot of
red versus near infrared brightness values. :
 Modified MSAVI - Modified Soil-
Adjusted Vegetation Index
The formula of calculation is the same as in MSAVI, the only exception is that
instead of deducting RED band from NIR, we deduct GREEN band from NIR
 NDVI results
NDVI 9 May NDVI 14 Jun NDVI 14 Jul

The principle behind NDVI is that chlorophyll causes considerable absorption of

incoming sunlight, in the near-infrared region of the spectrum where a plant's spongy
mesophyll leaf structure creates considerable reflectance (Tucker 1979,
Jackson et al.1983, Tucker et al. 1991).
As a result, vigorously growing healthy vegetation has low red-light reflectance and high
near-infrared reflectance, and hence, high NDVI values.
This relatively simply algorithm produces output values in the range of -1.0 to 1.0.
Increasing positive NDVI values, indicate increasing amounts of green vegetation. NDVI
values near zero and decreasing negative values indicate non-vegetated features such
as barren surfaces (rock and soil) and water, snow, ice, and clouds.
 MSAVI results
MSAVI 9 May MSAVI 14 Jun MSAVI 14 Jul
 Modified MSAVI results
MMSAVI 9 May MMSAVI 14 Jun MMSAVI 14 Jul
 Stacks
NDVI MSAVI MMSAVI
 Stacks - overviews
NDVI MSAVI MMSAVI
Indices stacks classification
NDVI MSAVI MMSAVI
 Differences
NDVI MSAVI MMSAVI
 Abandoned vs uncultivated land
NDVI MSAVI MMSAVI

Abandoned land
Uncultivated land
Uncultivated land
encroachment of
unwanted
vegetation
 Conclusions
- Vegetation indices classification can be a great
help in taking decisions regarding GAEC checks
- The method doesnt eliminate the classical
visual interpretation on time series satellite
images

To do in the future:
Supervised classification
Initial masking of urban elements