• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.89-99
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• 2018

Spatial downscaling is often applied to coarse scale satellite products with high temporal resolution for environmental monitoring at a finer scale. An area-to-point regression kriging (ATPRK) algorithm is regarded as effective in that it combines regression modeling and residual correction with area-to-point kriging. However, an open source tool or package for ATPRK has not yet been developed. This paper describes the development and code organization of an R-based spatial downscaling tool, named R4ATPRK, for the implementation of ATPRK. R4ATPRK was developed using the R language and several R packages. A look-up table search and batch processing for computation of ATP kriging weights are employed to improve computational efficiency. An experiment on spatial downscaling of coarse scale land surface temperature products demonstrated that this tool could generate downscaling results in which overall variations in input coarse scale data were preserved and local details were also well captured. If computational efficiency can be further improved, and the tool is extended to include certain advanced procedures, R4ATPRK would be an effective tool for spatial downscaling of coarse scale satellite products.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.523-533
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• 2022

This paper presents a two-stage spatio-spectral fusion method (2SSFM) based on area-to-point regression kriging (ATPRK) to enhance spatial and spectral resolutions using multi-sensor satellite images with complementary spatial and spectral resolutions. 2SSFM combines ATPRK and random forest regression to predict spectral bands at high spatial resolution from multi-sensor satellite images. In the first stage, ATPRK-based spatial down scaling is performed to reduce the differences in spatial resolution between multi-sensor satellite images. In the second stage, regression modeling using random forest is then applied to quantify the relationship of spectral bands between multi-sensor satellite images. The prediction performance of 2SSFM was evaluated through a case study of the generation of red-edge and short-wave infrared bands. The red-edge and short-wave infrared bands of PlanetScope images were predicted from Sentinel-2 images using 2SSFM. From the case study, 2SSFM could generate red-edge and short-wave infrared bands with improved spatial resolution and similar spectral patterns to the actual spectral bands, which confirms the feasibility of 2SSFM for the generation of spectral bands not provided in high spatial resolution satellite images. Thus, 2SSFM can be applied to generate various spectral indices using the predicted spectral bands that are actually unavailable but effective for environmental monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.587-607
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• 2020

Soil moisture is essential information for meteorological and hydrological analyses. To date, many efforts have been made to achieve the two goals for soil moisture data, i.e., the improvement of accuracy and resolution, which is very challenging. We presented an ensemble downscaling method for quality improvement of gridded soil moisture data in terms of the accuracy and the spatial resolution by the integration of BMA (Bayesian model averaging) and ATPRK (area-to-point regression kriging). In the experiments, the BMA ensemble showed a 22% better accuracy than the data sets from ESA CCI (European Space Agency-Climate Change Initiative), ERA5 (ECMWF Reanalysis 5), and GLDAS (Global Land Data Assimilation System) in terms of RMSE (root mean square error). Also, the ATPRK downscaling could enhance the spatial resolution from 0.25° to 0.05° while preserving the improved accuracy and the spatial pattern of the BMA ensemble, without under- or over-estimation. The quality-improved data sets can contribute to a variety of local and regional applications related to soil moisture, such as agriculture, forest, hydrology, and meteorology. Because the ensemble downscaling method can be applied to the other land surface variables such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, and evapotranspiration, it can be a viable option to complement the accuracy and the spatial resolution of satellite images and numerical models.