E.U. Program Culture 2000 : “ SMART HISTORY “
‘From Smart History towards common European
Heritage by a preservation model of CINQUE TERRE
NATIONAL PARK – Italy ‘
It parts with no. 2 outside Vernazza on the eastern side in a picturesque corner characterised by flourishing limestone benches overcome by agaves and prickly pears (Indian figs). No. 7 goes up to left moving inland and ascends again for a brief stretch before coming back to face the open sea. The steep hill is within the macquis which was once occupied with vines and olive trees. The path goes forward to reach the border of a large landslide after which some well-cultivated vines appear and continue until Comeneco pass (318 metres). Then it crosses the San Bernardino-Corniglia road and goes into the village of San Bernardino (307 metres), crossing the square of Santuario di NS delle Grazie. The hill becomes steep once again until it reaches the “dei Santuari” road that no. 7 crosses passing among the Fornacchi houses (500 metres) beside the Zuara Plains (530 metres) and enters a pine forest. It goes along a wide dirt road in the last stretch through heather and thorny broom until it reaches no. 1 at Cigoletta pass (612 metres) from where it goes down to Riccò.
Due to the particular orography and morphology of the territory, you must wear suitable clothes and shoes on the Cinque Terre walking paths. These paths have similar characteristics to mountain trails and are largely unprotected. You may come across significant unevenness and open stretches. The ground generally varies with atmospheric conditions and can sometimes be rough. Considering the high flows of visitors, you may frequently meet people coming from the opposite direction, often with rucksacks. Should this occur, you should keep in by the hillside and facilitate passage.
Children must be accompanied by adults and watched carefully.
Wojciech Drzewiecki, Beata Hejmanowska
Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Informatics,
AGH University of Science and Technology
The methodology
For efficient management in protected areas up-to-date and reliable information is necessery. Most of the management issues are spatial in their nature. Spatial phenomena can be mapped, but conventional mapping techniques are time- and cost-consuming. Remote sensing technology offers alternative approach.
Iternational Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing defines Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing as: “the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information from non-contact imaging and other sensor systems about the Earth and its environment, and other physical objects and processes through recording, measuring, analyzing and representation”. Remote Sensing is a broad term covering differrent technologies of data acquisition. They common feature is that the measurement is done remotely - without any direct contact between the sensor and the object (or phenomena) under invastigation.
Remote Sensing Technology can be a valuable tool for the management in protected areas. Using this technology we can obtain relatively cheap information about the large areas. Passive remote sensing is an unobtrusive technology, what is important when we want to gather data in the sensitive areas and do not disturb the objects under invastigation. We can register data over large areas. Remote sensing information can be easly integrated in Geographical Information Systems. It can be used among others in management and protection of forests and waters, land-use planning, assessment of damaged areas, soil-water contents assessment, environmental monitoring, etc.
The users can choose appriopriate data for their task from the variety of close-range, airborne and satellite images in various spatial, spectral and temporal resolution. Spatial resolution of remote sensing images can vary from centimeters to kilometers. Users should choose images according to their needs. Middle resolution satellite images (pixel size 5-30 meters) can be applied in regional planning and mapping in scale of 1:50000. Nowadays a new very high resolution images exists (pixel size below 1 meter). Such images enables mapping in scale of 1:10000. Aerial photographs can be used for large scale mapping.
Spectral resolution refers to the number and dimension of specific wavelength intervals the sensor is sensitive to (Jensen 2000). Sensors can be panchromatic or sensitive to some number of spectral bands (up to hundrets of very narrow bands in case of hyperspectral sensors). Some bands (regions of the electromagnetic spectrum) are important for biophisical or other specific information extraction. Because of that spectral bands should be selected carefully to satisfy user goals.
The temporal resolution of a sensor refers to how often it records imagery of a particular area (Jensen 2000). Ideally, it should match the characteristics of the invasigated object (or phenomena). Analysis of the images acquired on different dates (so-called time-series analysis) is a very powerfull monitoring tool. User can easly detect changes and trends.
The Poster
Our works in Cinque Terre National Park were focused on the possible applications of remotely sensed images to landuse/landcover mapping and vegetation assessment. We consider these issues important from the area management point of view, especially regarding agriculture and forestry.
Remotely sensed images can be visualised in different ways. So called False Colour Composit (FCC) is used very often for vegetation analysis. It is composed from three images acquired in green, red and near infra-red parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It can be used for discrimination of vegetation or assessment of vegetation stage and condition. Draping images over Digital Elevation Model improves image interpretability.
At the poster two False Colour Composits from 15 m resolution ASTER images are presented. The first one was registered on March 2nd 2001 and the second one on July 15th 2004. ASTER acquires images in several spectral bands in VNIR, SWIR and TIR regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images are aviable with low or no cost. Other sensors having similar properties (except that images have to be paid for) are Landsat, SPOT, IRS.
Various image transformations can help in visual interpretation of remotely sensed images. Landuse/landcover information can be extracted from images eg. as a result of supervised image classification. In this case user have to decide about land cover classes to discriminate. Then he chooses some areas representative for the each class, so called test sites, and “teatches” the software about their spectral characteristics. Based on this information computer system assigns every pixel of the image to one of the possible classes.
During the field works we chose the test sites in Cinque Terre Park and visited them to recognise the type of vegetation (land cover). Then we applied supervised image classification to generate land cover map. Urban, vineyard, olivtree, decidous forest, conifer forest and water land cover classes were distinguished on the map. Poster shows locations of the test sites choosen during the “Smart History” Workshop as well as the land use/ land cover map obtained as a result.
Vegetation Index is another kind of image transformation useful for vegetation assessment. The image obtained through appriopiate transformation of red and near infra-red spectral bands shows a biomass level. In case of the VI image shown on the poster the brighter colour the higher biomass level.
ASTER images are appriopriate for middle scale mapping. For larger scales (and higher number of detail resulting in higher interpretability) images with finer spatial resolusion are needed (eg. IKONOS, QuickBird, aerial photographs). Poster shows an example of such image - IKONOS FCC image from the Landscape Park in Cracow area.
Merging (or image fusion) is another way to achieve enhaced image interpretability. In this process multispectral images with low spatial resolution are fused with panchromatic image having better spatial resolution parameters. As an example FCC image of the Cracow city is shown. It was obtained as a fusion of Landsat spectral bands and IRS panchromatic image. It is noticeable that the Landsat images original resolution of 30 meters is worse then ASTER images presented above. But when merged with 5 m resolution IRS image they are much better interpretble.
An example from the Bieszczadzki National Park (Poland) is presented at the end. Infra-red aerial photograph taken in the Park were used for both orthophotomap and Digital Elevation Model creation. Both products were used as an input data for GIS system created in the Park to faciliate preparation of the Preservation Plan mainly. False-coloure orthophotomap became a very important layer of information for analysts and Park employers. It was evident that many of maps thay were working with became out-of-date. The orthophotomap was used for updating of topographical and vegetation maps as well as for vegetation assessment. Elevation model enabled analysing of visibility, soil erosion and flooding risk among others.
Conclusions
Approach choosen for Cinque Terre National Park may be repeted in any other region where up-to-date land use/land cover information in middle map scale is needed. Low cost (or no cost) of ASTER images allows for multitemporal assessment. It may be useful in Cinque Terre first of all for monitoring of vegetation changes, especially in vineyards regions. In the most crucial regions detailed mapping based on higher resolution images may be needed.
Bibliography:
Hejmanowska B., Mularz S., 1996 Thermal inertia modelling for soil moisture assessment based on remotely sensed data Int. Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote sensing XVII ISPRS Congress , Vienna, Austria, http://www.fotogrametria.agh.edu.pl/5terra
Hejmanowska B., 1998, Removal of topographical effect from remote sensing data for thermal inertia modeling WG IV/1, ISPRS Commission IV Symposium: “GIS – Between Vision and Application”, September 7-10, 1998, Stuttgart, Germany http://www.ifp.uni-stuttgart.de/publications/commIV/hejman95.pdf
Hejmanowska B. Mularz S. , 2000, - Integration of multispectral ERS.2 SAR and Landsat TM data for soil moisture assessment”- Int. Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote sensing XVIII ISPRS Congress , Amsterdam, Holland, http://www.fotogrametria.agh.edu.pl/5terra
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Mularz S., Drzewiecki W., Pirowski T., Merging Landsat TM images and airborne photographs for monitoring of open-cast mine area – XIX Kongres ISPRS, International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Amsterdam 2000.
Mularz S., Drzewiecki W., Pirowski T., Thematic information content assessment of aerial and satellite data fusion, - Cadastre, Photogrammetry, Geoinformatics – Modern Technologies and Development Perspectives. Proceedings of 2-nd International Conference, October 17-19, 2000, Lviv, National University „Lvivska Polytechnica”
