• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.589-607
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• 2019

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of recent model developments and practical issues in spatial downscaling of coarse resolution satellite-derived products. First, theoretical aspects of spatial downscaling models that have been applied when auxiliary variables are available at a finer spatial resolution are outlined and discussed. Based on a thorough literature survey, the spatial downscaling models are classified into two categories, including regression-based and component decomposition-based approaches, and their characteristics and limitations are then discussed. Second, open issues that have not been fully taken into account and future research directions, including quantification of uncertainty, trend component estimation across spatial scales, and an extension to a spatiotemporal downscaling framework, are discussed. If methodological developments pertaining to these issues are done in the near future, spatial downscaling is expected to play an important role in providing rich thematic information at the target spatial resolution.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.625-635
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• 2011

This paper investigates the effects of spatial autocorrelation structures in low resolution data on downscaling without ground measurements or secondary data, as well as the potential of geostatistical downscaling. An advanced geostatistical downscaling scheme applied in this paper consists of two analytical steps: the estimation of the point-support spatial autocorrelation structure by variogram deconvolution and the application of area-to-point kriging. Point kriging of block data without variogram deconvolution is also applied for a comparison purpose. Experiments using two low resolution thematic maps derived from remote sensing data showing very different spatial patterns are carried out to discuss the objectives. From the experiments, it is demonstrated that the advanced geostatistical downscaling scheme can generate the downscaling results that well preserve overall patterns of original low resolution data and also satisfy the coherence property, regardless of spatial patterns in input low resolution data. Point kriging of block data can produce the downscaling result compatible to that by area-to-point kriging when the spatial continuity in block data is strong. If heterogeneous local variations are dominant in input block data, the treatment of the low resolution data as point data cannot generate the reliable downscaling result, and this simplification should not be applied to donwscaling.

• 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.33 no.4
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• pp.445-454
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• 2017

The performance of spatial downscaling models depends on the quality of input coarse scale products. Thus, the impact of intrinsic errors contained in coarse scale satellite products on predictive performance should be properly assessed in parallel with the development of advanced downscaling models. Such an assessment is the main objective of this paper. Based on a synthetic satellite precipitation product at a coarse scale generated from rain gauge data, two synthetic precipitation products with different amounts of error were generated and used as inputs for spatial downscaling. Geographically weighted regression, which typically has very high explanatory power, was selected as the trend component estimation model, and area-to-point kriging was applied for residual correction in the spatial downscaling experiment. When errors in the coarse scale product were greater, the trend component estimates were much more susceptible to errors. But residual correction could reduce the impact of the erroneous trend component estimates, which improved the predictive performance. However, residual correction could not improve predictive performance significantly when substantial errors were contained in the input coarse scale data. Therefore, the development of advanced spatial downscaling models should be focused on correction of intrinsic errors in the coarse scale satellite product if a priori error information could be available, rather than on the application of advanced regression models with high explanatory power.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.25-35
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• 2017

Spatial downscaling with fine resolution auxiliary variables has been widely applied to predict precipitation at fine resolution from coarse resolution satellite-based precipitation products. The spatial downscaling framework is usually based on the decomposition of precipitation values into trend and residual components. The fine resolution auxiliary variables contribute to the estimation of the trend components. The main focus of this study is on quantitative analysis of impacts of trend component estimates on predictive performance in spatial downscaling. Two regression models were considered to estimate the trend components: multiple linear regression (MLR) and geographically weighted regression (GWR). After estimating the trend components using the two models,residual components were predicted at fine resolution grids using area-to-point kriging. Finally, the sum of the trend and residual components were considered as downscaling results. From the downscaling experiments with time-series Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B43 precipitation data, MLR-based downscaling showed the similar or even better predictive performance, compared with GWR-based downscaling with very high explanatory power. Despite very high explanatory power of GWR, the relationships quantified from TRMM precipitation data with errors and the auxiliary variables at coarse resolution may exaggerate the errors in the trend components at fine resolution. As a result, the errors attached to the trend estimates greatly affected the predictive performance. These results indicate that any regression model with high explanatory power does not always improve predictive performance due to intrinsic errors of the input coarse resolution data. Thus, it is suggested that the explanatory power of trend estimation models alone cannot be always used for the selection of an optimal model in spatial downscaling with fine resolution auxiliary variables.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.738-739
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• 2015

The main objective of this study, "Spatial Downscaling of Precipitation from GCMs for Assessing Climate Change over Han River and Imjin River Watersheds", is to carry out over Han River and Imjin River watersheds. To this end, a statistical regression method with MOS (Model Output Statistics) corrections at every downscaling step was developed and applied for downscaling the spatially-coarse Global Climate Model Projections (GCMPs) from CCSM3 and CSIRO with respect to precipitation into 0.1 degree (about 11 km) spatial grid over study regions. The spatially archived hydro-climate data sets such as Willmott, GsMap and APHRODITE datasets were used for MOS corrections by means of monthly climatology between observations and downscaled values. Precipitation values downscaled in this study were validated against ground observations and then future climate simulation results on precipitation were evaluated for the projections.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.609-626
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• 2020

Satellite-based land surface temperature (LST) has been used as one of the major parameters in various climate and environmental models. Especially, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST is the most widely used satellite-based LST product due to its spatiotemporal coverage (1 km spatial and sub-daily temporal resolutions) and longevity (> 20 years). However, there is an increasing demand for LST products with finer spatial resolution (e.g., 10-250 m) over regions such as urban areas. Therefore, various methods have been proposed to produce high-resolution MODIS-like LST less than 250 m (e.g., 100 m). The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of recent research trends and challenges for the downscaling of MODIS LST. Based on the recent literature survey for the past decade, the downscaling techniques classified into three groups-kernel-driven, fusion-based, and the combination of kernel-driven and fusion-based methods-were reviewed with their pros and cons. Then, five open issues and challenges were discussed: uncertainty in LST retrievals, low thermal contrast, the nonlinearity of LST temporal change, cloud contamination, and model generalization. Future research directions of LST downscaling were finally provided.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.229-229
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• 2015

Downscaling is a fundamental procedure in the assessment of the future climate change impact at regional and watershed scales. Hence, it is important to investigate the spatial variability of the climate conditions that are constructed by various downscaling methods in order to assess whether each method can model the climate conditions at various spatial scales properly. This study introduces a fundamental research from Jang and Kavvas(2015) that precipitation variability from a popular statistical downscaling method (BCSD) and a dynamical downscaling method (MM5) that is based on the NCAR/NCEP reanalysis data for a historical period and on the CCSM3 GCM A1B emission scenario simulations for a projection period, is investigated by means of some spatial characteristics: a) the normalized standard deviation (NSD), and b) the precipitation change over Northern California region. From the results of this study it is found that the BCSD method has limitations in projecting future precipitation values since the BCSD-projected precipitation, being based on the interpolated change factors from GCM projected precipitation, does not consider the interactions between GCM outputs and local geomorphological characteristics such as orographic effects and land use/cover patterns. As such, it is not clear whether the popular BCSD method is suitable for the assessment of the impact of future climate change at regional, watershed and local scales as the future climate will evolve in time and space as a nonlinear system with land-atmosphere feedbacks. However, it is noted that in this study only the BCSD procedure for the statistical downscaling method has been investigated, and the results by other statistical downscaling methods might be different.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.313-318
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• 2017

Land surface temperature is essential for monitoring abnormal climate phenomena such as UHI (Urban Heat Islands), and for modeling weather patterns. However, the quality of surface temperature obtained from the optical space imagery is affected by many factors such as, revisit period of the satellite, instance of capture, spatial resolution, and cloud coverage. Landsat 8 imagery, often used to obtain surface temperatures, has a high resolution of 30 meters (100 meters rearranged to 30 meters) and a revisit frequency of 16 days. On the contrary, MODIS imagery can be acquired daily with a spatial resolution of about 1 kilometer. Many past attempts have been made using both Landsat and MODIS imagery to complement each other to produce an imagery of improved temporal and spatial resolution. This paper applied machine learning methods and performed downscaling which can obtain daily based land surface temperature imagery of 30 meters.