New publication on Hyperspectral Data for Mapping Fractional Cover

New publication on Hyperspectral Data for Mapping Fractional Cover

September 29, 2015

The outcome of one of our MSc students, Sarah Malec, got published in Remote Sensing titled “Capability of Spaceborne Hyperspectral EnMAP Mission for Mapping Fractional Cover for Soil Erosion Modeling”. Soil erosion can be linked to relative fractional cover of photosynthetic-active vegetation (PV), non-photosynthetic-active vegetation (NPV) and bare soil (BS), which can be integrated into erosion models as the cover-management C-factor. This study investigates the capability of EnMAP imagery to map fractional cover in a region near San Jose, Costa Rica, characterized by spatially extensive coffee plantations and grazing in a mountainous terrain. Simulated EnMAP imagery is based on airborne hyperspectral HyMap data. Fractional cover estimates are derived in an automated fashion by extracting image endmembers to be used with a Multiple End-member Spectral Mixture Analysis approach. The C-factor is calculated based on the fractional cover estimates determined independently for EnMAP and HyMap. Results demonstrate that with EnMAP imagery it is possible to extract quality endmember classes with important spectral features related to PV, NPV and soil, and be able to estimate relative cover fractions. This spectral information is critical to separate BS and NPV which greatly can impact the C-factor derivation. From a regional perspective, we can use EnMAP to provide good fractional cover estimates that can be integrated into soil erosion modeling.

 

Malec, S.; Rogge, D.; Heiden, U.; Sanchez-Azofeifa, A.; Bachmann, M.; Wegmann, M. Capability of Spaceborne Hyperspectral EnMAP Mission for Mapping Fractional Cover for Soil Erosion Modeling. Remote Sens. 2015, 7, 11776-11800.

you may also like:

EORC and EAGLE summer BBQ

EORC and EAGLE summer BBQ

We’re happy to announce that our summer BBQ is happening again on Thursday, July 24th at 4pm! Alongside good food and a relaxed atmosphere, we’re also hosting a series of short talks highlighting exciting topics in Earth Observation and environmental science: “The...

🗺 Exploring Map Visualizations

🗺 Exploring Map Visualizations

Within our EAGLE courses our students have to learn a wide variety of skills - beside the fundamental earth observation theory and practice also skills like map creation is part of the curriculum. One of our students Ronja Seitz has created three visualizations guides...

Successful Completion of UNIversInternational Certificate

Successful Completion of UNIversInternational Certificate

In line with its internationalization strategy, the University of Würzburg supports administrative staff in their task of advising and supporting international students, guests, and academics. To this end, it has launched the "UNIversInternational" certificate...

The “Geolingual Studies” team visited the DLR EOC

The “Geolingual Studies” team visited the DLR EOC

The "Geolingual Studies" team of the University Würzburg visited the DLR-EOC on 3 and 4 July 2025. Geolingual Studies is an innovative area of research and teaching which takes a decisively applied linguistic approach and combines methodologies from linguistics,...

Course on Object-based image analysis

Course on Object-based image analysis

Dr. Michael Wurm from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) gave a class about Object-based image analysis (OBIA) using the eCognition Software for the EAGLE students. The course gives an insight into the theoretical basis of OBIA and using different datasets and tasks...