EKOSAT-IR-Ecology-related earth observation and hot spot detection
Introduction
Earth observation satellites launched over the last 30 years have made important contributions to the understanding of our world and the various elements that it comprises. It is the “bird's eye perspective” combined with a high temporal revisit time allowing a fast and border-less overview in a wide spectral range that makes satellite remote sensing an attractive data source for environmental information.
Over the past 20–30 years, multispectral remote sensing has mainly been carried out by “classical” existing multispectral systems like SPOT 1–3, the Landsat series, IRS-1C and D with 3 or 4 spectral bands with a medium spatial resolution of 20–30 m. For future developments, two major trends can be identified:
Available and planned very high-resolution multi-spectral systems such as IKONOS-2, Orbview 3 and Quickbird also with 3-4 spectral bands but at a very high (1 m) spatial resolution.
Available and planned systems carrying hyperspectral sensors like EO1, NEMO and HYPSEO providing spatial resolutions of 20–30m but at a large number of spectral bands (200) across the electromagnetic spectrum.
In particular, vegetation-related and ecological applications require remote sensing data with specific spectral information at a high spatial resolution ( m), that the present systems are not able to deliver. To fill this gap, the Multi-Spectral Remote-sensing System (MSRS) was developed on a user-driven approach by OHB-System AG and Electro-Optic Industries Ltd. (ELOP) providing 12 dedicated spectral bands with 5 m spatial resolution.
Wildfires annually affect several hundred million hectares of forest and other vegetations of the world. In some ecosystems, fire plays an ecologically significant role in biogeochemical cycles and disturbance dynamics. In other ecosystems, fire may lead to the destruction of forests or to long-term site degradation. In most areas of the world wildfires burning under extreme weather conditions will have detrimental impacts on economies, human health and safety, with consequences which are comparable to the severity of other natural hazards.
Vegetation fires and volcano eruptions affect the chemistry of the atmosphere, alter the radiation budget of the Earth, and contribute to the green-house process through gases such as , and . The combustion gases , CO, and NO play an important role in the formation of tropospheric . About 60% of the global emissions of and other green-house gases are related to anthropogenic fossil fuel burning and cement production, i.e. well-known processes. The remaining 40% of the green-house gas emissions—together with a huge amount of aerosols—are generated by biomass burning, volcanic activities and coal seam burning, processes which are still purely understood and quantified on global scale.
Current space-borne sensor systems are used to generate products of fire susceptibility evaluating time-series of vegetation state data, occurrence and coarse location of active fires, as well as smoke and burnt areas. However, existing and planned operational space-borne sensors show serious limitations such as
channel saturation leading to reduced high-temperature event discrimination,
spatial resolution worse than 1 km.
Section snippets
Multi-spectral remote sensing system (MSRS)
MSRS is designed as a stand-alone system comprising the superspectral camera as well as data processing, storage and downlink complemented by a sensor control computer, house keeping and power supply (see Fig. 1).
The main features of MSRS are:
12 spectral bands in the 400–1000 nm region (VIS/NIR) with 10–50 nm bandwidth,
10 bit radiometric resolution,
5 m spatial resolution with 26 km swath from 670 km altitude,
data storage 60 Gbit (expandable to 192 Gbit and more),
data transmission 100–280 Mbit/s,
optional
Hot-spot-recognition system (HSRS)
The hot-spot-recognition system (HSRS), developed and built by the DLR Institute of Space Sensor Technology and Planetary Exploration, is a two-channel push-broom scanner with spectral bands in the mid-infrared (MIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) spectral ranges (see Fig. 3).
The detectors are two cadmium-mercury-telluride (CdHgTe) linear photodiode arrays. The lines—with identical layout in the MIR and TIR—comprise elements each in a staggered structure where two linear detector arrays are
EKOSAT-IR space segment
As spacecraft bus for the EKOSAT-IR mission, the utilisation of the existing flight spare model (FSM) of KOMPSAT-1 was investigated (Fig. 4). KOMPSAT-1, the Korea multipurpose satellite, which is operated by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), was launched in 1999 into a sun-synchronous orbit of 685 km altitude. The main mission of KOMPSAT-1 is dedicated to Earth observation [1].
The key characteristics of the KOMPSAT-1 spacecraft are:
mass 500 kg incl. payload,
power 500 W incl.
Data utilisation
The EKOSAT-IR ground segment philosophy relies on the maximum use of existing infrastructure, considering one central S-band station for mission control and one basic X-band station for data reception, processing, archiving and distribution. Further X-band receiving stations are envisaged (see Fig. 6). Product generation, user service & marketing is foreseen in cooperation with existing value-adders.
MSRS data will provide unique geo-information in particular for the following applications:
Conclusion
EKOSAT-IR offers an attractive opportunity for a fast and low-cost in-orbit deployment of MSRS and HSRS by the utilisation of an existing spacecraft bus in order to enable an early access to super-resolution and hot-spot Earth observation products for Earth Watch and GMES objectives as well as upcoming commercial markets.
MSRS and HSRS provides a unique sensor complement for
high spatial resolution (5 m) super spectral data (VIS/NIR) for ecological applications,
high-temperature event data
References (8)
- H. Lübberstedt, B. Penné, C. Tobehn, M. Kassebom, EKOSAT /DIAMANT and the Earth observation program at OHB-SYSTEM,...
- B. Penné et al., DIAMANT/MSRS—Multi spectral high resolution system, Proceedings German Aerospace Congress DGLR,...
- ...
- K. Briess, W. Bärwald, T. Gehrlich, H. Jahn, F. Lura, H. Studemund, The DLR small satellite mission BIRD, Proceedings...
Cited by (1)
Single infrared image super-resolution combining non-local means with kernel regression
2013, Infrared Physics and TechnologyCitation Excerpt :High-resolution (HR) infrared images are constantly desired and required in many application fields, such as remote sensing [1,2], video surveillance [3,4], and national defense [5].