Vegetation monitoring in coastal areas using readily available Remote Sensing data

Monitoring of the status of vegetation is required for nature conservation. However, doing this for large areas is a time intensive task. Now the use of aerial data from airplanes has made this task easier. However this data source is dependent on the weather conditions and permission to fly in the busy airspace above the Netherlands. An...

Characterizing the thermal effects of vegetation on urban surface temperature

Vegetation is important for urban heat mitigation. The cooling intensity of vegetation is affected by background climate and urban design. How to evaluate vegetation cooling efficiency under different climate conditions is still an issue open to discussion. In this study, a normalized indicator of urban vegetation cooling efficiency (NVCE) is...

Remote sensing data as a soil moisture indicator for grass-covered dikes

Dikes hold back water and protect the land behind it from flooding. Due to rising sea levels, land subsidence and more extreme weather patterns, the function of dikes become increasingly important. To ensure dike safety, dikes are regularly inspected. With about 22,500 kilometers of dikes in the Netherlands, this is a very slow, costly and time...

Quantifying the effect of woody vegetation on the wave loads on a dike using remote sensing: Large scale physical model tests

It is already acknowledged that Nature-based Solutions can be used to attenuate waves, however it is still uncertain to what extent the vegetation can contribute to decreasing the flood risk. So far mainly small-scale tests have been performed to quantify wave attenuating properties of vegetation. To quantify the effect of more extreme wave...

A spectral unmixing method with ensemble estimation of endmembers: Application to flood mapping in the Caprivi floodplain

The Caprivi basin in Namibia has been affected by severe flooding in recent years resulting in deaths, displacements and destruction of infrastructure. The negative consequences of these floods have emphasized the need for timely, accurate and objective information about the extent and location of affected areas. Due to the high temporal...

System design for ARTEMIS environmental monitoring

This paper describes aspects of system design applied to the ARTEMIS environmental monitoring system of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The design aspects are derived from characteristics of the monitoring function and are based on methods of rainfall and vegetation monitoring from satellite observations which...