Scale Issues in Remote Sensing: A Review on Analysis, Processing and Modeling
Open Access
- 12 March 2009
- Vol. 9 (3), 1768-1793
- https://doi.org/10.3390/s90301768
Abstract
With the development of quantitative remote sensing, scale issues have attracted more and more the attention of scientists. Research is now suffering from a severe scale discrepancy between data sources and the models used. Consequently, both data interpretation and model application become difficult due to these scale issues. Therefore, effectively scaling remotely sensed information at different scales has already become one of the most important research focuses of remote sensing. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate scale issues from the points of view of analysis, processing and modeling and to provide technical assistance when facing scale issues in remote sensing. The definition of scale and relevant terminologies are given in the first part of this paper. Then, the main causes of scale effects and the scaling effects on measurements, retrieval models and products are reviewed and discussed. Ways to describe the scale threshold and scale domain are briefly discussed. Finally, the general scaling methods, in particular up-scaling methods, are compared and summarized in detail.Keywords
This publication has 72 references indexed in Scilit:
- Impact of Spatial LAI Heterogeneity on Estimate of Directional Gap Fraction from SPOT-Satellite DataSensors, 2008
- Impacts and uncertainties of upscaling of remote-sensing data validation for a semi-arid woodlandJournal of Arid Environments, 2008
- Comparing terrestrial carbon fluxes from the scale of a flux tower to the global scaleEcological Modelling, 2007
- Scaling effects on modeled surface energy-balance components using the NOAH-OSU land surface modelJournal of Hydrology, 2003
- Characteristic length scale of input data in distributed models: implications for modeling grid sizeJournal of Hydrology, 2000
- On the spatial scaling of soil moistureJournal of Hydrology, 1999
- Multiscaling properties of soil moisture images and decomposition of large- and small-scale features using wavelet transformsInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1998
- Scaling up in hydrology using remote sensing: Summary of a WorkshopInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1998
- Semi-empirical models and scaling: A least square method for remote sensing experimentsInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1998
- Estimating grassland biomass and leaf area index using ground and satellite dataInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1994