Day 19, Aug 7, 2015

I received the DIRSIG image this morning!  After downloading it and opening it up, I realized that there are only three possible ROI's that I can use: trees, dirt, and grass.  I would have preferred more ROI's, but for now, I will have to make the best of only three.  Several of the images were also misaligned, so I had to rotate them and stretch them to make the pixels the same size and the image in the correct direction.  Then, I randomly selected 200 pixels containing trees, 200 containing dirt, and 200 grass pixels and created a ROI for each terrain.  However, when I tried to classify the NNDiffuse image, none of the classification systems would generate anything but a preview of the classified image.  This means that the classification system is working, but it will not fully display.  On Monday, I will continue troubleshooting.

Day 15 - 18, Aug 3 - Aug 6, 2015

These past three days after vacation, I have been waiting for the DIRSIG image.  I had to do some research on the properties of an image cube, then sent the necessary data to a CIS student, who is creating a synthetic image of farmland.  The synthetic image is important because it has perfect ground truth, which I can use to create regions of interest of the correct pixels.  Then I can use these ROI's to classify the remainder of the image, then use the same ROI's to classify the non-sharpened image.  After comparing the ground truth to the classification of each, I can do some statistical analysis (such as how much more accurate NNDiffuse was than the non-sharpened image).  While waiting, I finished as much of my powerpoint presentation as I could.  Currently, I am slightly more than halfway finished with the slides of my presentation.  I also completed the final version of my abstract, which is now posted to this blog. If all goes well, I will receive the DIRSIG image tomorrow so that I can conduct the remainder of my research.

Final Abstract

Determining the accuracy of pan-sharpening programs is rather subjective because it has been largely used for enhancing visual analysis. However, there is some research on one such program--NNDiffuse Pan-Sharpening--that tested the expected effectiveness of NNDiffuse using the standard spectral methods of Euclidean Distance and Spectral Angle Mapper. In this project, we extend those results to test how accurate NNDiffuse is in practice through its effect on the accuracy of image classification. NNDiffuse was applied to a synthetic image where perfect truth of the scene content is known. Different strategies for identifying training and testing pixels for the unsharpened and sharpened images were defined and assessed to quantify the effects of NNDiffuse on the accuracy of image classification. Application of these strategies are expected to improve land cover classification results using pan-sharpened images.

Important Stuff I Don't Want to Forget

Band 1: 0.45-0.52μm (blue).

Provides increased penetration of water bodies, as well as supporting analysis of land use, soil, and vegetation characteristics.

Band 2: 0.52-0.60μm (green).

This band spans the region between the blue and red chlorophyll absorption bands and therefore corresponds to the green reflectance of healthy vegetation.

Band 3: 0.63-0.69μm (red).

This is the red chlorophyll absorption band of healthy green vegetation and represents one of the most important bands for vegetation discrimination.  Spectral Cover of Landsat Sensors 19

Band 4: 0.76-0.90μm (reflective infrared).

This band is responsive to the amount of vegetation biomass present in the scene. It is useful for crop identification and emphasizes soil-crop and land-water contrasts.

Band 5: 1.55-1.75μm (mid-infrared)

This band is sensitive to the amount of moisture in plants and therefore useful in crop draught and in plant vigor studies.

Band 6: 2.08-2.35μm (thermal infrared)

This band measures the amount of infrared radiant flux emitted from surface.

Band 7: 2.08-2.35μm (mid-infrared)

This is an important band for the discrimination of geologic rock formation. It is effective in identifying zones of hydrothermal alteration in rocks.

Day 14: Thursday, July 23, 2015

I have been experimenting with the Parallelepiped Classification unsupervised classification system.  It takes a while to classify every pixel in the image, so I used a subset of the image (similar to cropping a photo) and processed the spatial subset--fewer pixels to classify means the classification system finishes  sooner.  However, the Parallelepiped Classification Software does not seem to work properly.  It often incorrectly classifies pixels and covers the majority of an image with a single pixel type.  It is possible that this error could be caused by the ROIs I chose, which may be contaminated by non-ROI data (for instance, a building and a tree in the same pixel, but classified as a building).

Day 13: Wednesday, July 22, 2015

This morning I had a drivers test.  I passed!!  When I got home, my mom would not let me leave the house without making myself--and her--an omelet.  I arrived at the CIS building around 12:00.  However, I had forgotten that Wednesdays are pizza days at CIS.  I would have gladly eaten a second lunch, but just as I walked into the food lounge, pizza time was over and the lecture in the presentation room (where food is not allowed) began.  My stomach got the better of me and I snuck a slice in.  The presentation itself was very interesting: Dr. Dube presented on the possible impacts solar weather and the need to develop an early warning system.  He stated that, should we be struck by a large solar flare such as the Carrington event, the largest storm ever to hit Earth, it would take societies across the globe around 10 years to fully recover.  Also, he also mentioned that in the future, if and when we begin to colonize mars, the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet will do very little to protect from solar storms, and X-Rays from the storm could fry any life on the planet.  Protective barriers or shelters would need to be extremely thick--if a large storm were to hit mars, around thirty feet of concrete would be minimally sufficient to protect colonists.  I think Dr. Dube's presentation was very interesting.  He did several things to make it so: first, he showed us how important his research area is, exploring many possible applications in depth.  Secondly, he did not bore us to sleep with math and astronomical jargon, but rather kept his speech simple enough for the audience to easily understand--after all, the speaker's objective is not to look smart, but to inform the audience.  Finally, he used gestures, changes in tone, and even some humor to keep the audience engaged.  When I begin planning and practicing my presentation, I will try to incorporate all of these techniques.

Day 12: Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Today we took a field trip to the Mees Observatory in the Bristol Hills.  I got to the Cis building at 3:00 so that I would not exceed the maximum recommended hours per day (8), and did research on which classification method would be best for my project.  So far, the only one that I can figure out how to use  is Parallelepiped classification, which often fails to classify vegetation and city building pixels correctly.  

At 6:00, we left for Mees.  We ate dinner at Amiels (free 14" subs!) and continued driving to Bristol.  When we got there, we congregated like sheep as swarms of mosquitoes ate us alive.  I should have worn long pants.  Since it was still light out, we looked at the only thing visible--the moon.  Then, several of us went for a hike through the woods on nearby hiker trails.  Before it got too dark, we returned to the observatory and looked at stars.  When it finally did get dark enough we could see an arm of the Milky Way, a satellite, and forming stars.  Aside from being educational, the visit was a great  social event.  The summer interns exchanged phone numbers and snap chat names so that we could keep in touch during and after the internship.  Too soon, however, it was time to return home, and we packed into the bus and rolled down the hill.