Carsten Pathe

Friedrich Schiller University Jena | FSU · Department of Geography

The EO4GEO Body of Knowledge (BoK) forms a structure of concepts and relationships between them, describing the domain of Earth Observation and Geo-Information (EO/GI). Each concept carries a short description, a list of key literature references and a set of associated skills which are used for job profiling and curriculum building. As the EO/GI d...

Die ökonomisch und ökologisch nachhaltige Bewirtschaftung pflanzenbaulicher Nutzflächen setzt umfangreiches Expertenwissen und Prozessverständnis voraus. Zur Vereinfachung und weiteren Automatisierung der zukünftigen Bewirtschaftung sollen Teile dieses Wissens und Verständnisses digital verfügbar gemacht werden. Modular aufgebaute und flexibel konf...

This is the first version of the White Paper Citizen Science Strategy 2030 for Germany. This version is out for consultation from 8/8/21-30/9/2021 and will then be revised with received comments and reviews accordingly. Consultation website: www.citizen-science-weissbuch.de

In this study, a dense Copernicus Sentinel-1 time series is analyzed to gain a better understanding of the influence of undergrowth vegetation, in particular of eagle fern (Pteridium aquilinum), on the C-band SAR signal in a temperate forest in the Free State of Thuringia, Germany. Even if signals from the ground below the canopy may not be expecte...

The field of Earth Observation (EO) and Geoinformation (GI) is gaining more and more importance due to the increasing number of data and data processing algorithms to respond even more accurately to a variety of challenges in many application areas. In order to follow recent activities and align the exponential evolution of datasets and recent proc...

Data collection strategies and the data quality vary for a given parameter among citizen science projects. This hampers the merging of different data sets and thereby the reusability of the data. Modular designed applications for mobile devices (Apps) offer a framework to foster the standardisation of data collection methods. At the same time, they...

Data collection strategies and the quality of the collection vary for parameters that are measured or observed in different citizen science projects. This makes it difficult to merge data of the same kind from different projects and thus hampers the reuse of data. Modular designed and customizable applications for mobile devices (Apps) represent a...

In this study, we analyze Sentinel-1 time series data to characterize the observed seasonality of different land cover classes in eastern Thuringia, Germany and to identify multi-temporal metrics for their classification. We assess the influence of different polarizations and different pass directions on the multi-temporal backscatter profile. The...

There is no doubt that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) will play an increasing role in Earth observation in the near future. The field of application is very broad and includes aspects of environmental monitoring, security, humanitarian aid, or engineering. In particular, drones with camera systems are already widely used. The capability to compute u...

There is no doubt that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) will play an increasing role in Earth observation in the near future. The field of application is very broad and includes aspects of environmental monitoring, security, humanitarian aid, or engineering. In particular drones with camera systems are already widely used. The capability to compute ul...

Citizen Science operiert an der Schnittstelle von Technik-, Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Die Einbindung von Nicht-Fachwissenschaftler*innen in die Konzeption und Durchführung von Forschungsprojekten ermöglicht und erfordert die Entwicklung innovativer Bildungskonzepte, welche Wissensvermittlung und wissenschaftlichen Mehrwert beispielsweise dur...

The amount and spatial distribution of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) were estimated using a range of regionally developed methods using Earth Observation data for Poland, Sweden and regions in Indonesia (Kalimantan), Mexico (Central Mexico and Yucatan peninsula), and South Africa (Eastern provinces) for the year 2010. These regions are represent...

Sensor Observation Service (SOS) is a web specification standard defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) as a part of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite. SOS defines a web service interface built with the intention to allow users to discover, access, and manage sensor data and meta-data in an interoperable and standardized way. The SOS stand...

In order to produce meaningful e-learning offers for the Earth observation (EO) sector, it is important to describe the heritage the educational tools and material that is utilized nowadays. This chapter gives some fundamental definitions of terms that are widely used in the field of online education. Furthermore, a historic overview of MOOCs is gi...

This paper presents and assesses spatially explicit estimates of forest growing stock volume (GSV) of the northern hemisphere (north of 10°N) from hyper-temporal observations of Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) backscattered intensity using the BIOMASAR algorithm. Approximately 70,000 ASAR images at a pixel size of 0.01° were used t...

Radar time series are powerful means to improve retrieval algorithms about land surface characteristics in the following ways: (i) as information for identification of land surface conditions, (ii) as source of multivariate statistics for mapping methodologies, (iii) to select the right scene(s) for dedicated retrieval procedures, or (iv) to train...

Since the 1970s, radar remote sensing techniques have evolved rapidly and are increasingly employed in all fields of earth sciences. Applications are manifold and still expanding due to the continuous development of new instruments and missions as well as the availability of very high-quality data. The trend worldwide is towards operational employm...

The second volume of the "Let's embrace space" publication presents, in a concise and illustrative way, the results of 55 projects funded under the EU Space Research Programme. The first volume was published in 2011 and is also available at the EU Bookshop. This book shows the research results of space research projects in the field of Earth Observ...

Retrieval of forest growing stock volume (GSV) has been shown to be feasible with C-band backscatter data using hyper-temporal stacks. In this paper, we report on the generation of pan-boreal estimates of forest GSV representative for the year 2010 using Envisat ASAR ScanSAR backscatter measurements. More than 67,000 image strips acquired between O...

The European Space Agency is currently developing Sentinel-1, a constellation of two polar-orbiting C-band radar satellites for operational Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) applications. The Sentinel-1 mission is designed for continuous and operational monitoring. The goal is to map the European land mass once every four days in Interferometric Wide...

Man-made structures in mountainous areas are prone to hazards related to geological, geomorphic, hydrological or extreme weather phenomena. The estimation of potential damage is important to plan countermeasures. Beside of the data on vulnerable man-made structures, spatial data are needed on the topography to model the possible disaster scenarios....

To address the needs of the hydrological community for medium resolution soil moisture dataset an approach developed at the TU WIEN for the coarse resolution ERS/METOP datasets has been transferred to medium resolution SAR data. This work was performed within the ESA Tiger Innovator project SHARE and introduces an operational soil moisture monitori...

Soil moisture has been identified as a land surface parameter of great importance in various fields of application. Based on long-term time series data of various radar sensors, change detection methods for scatterometer and ScanSAR data are presented. After data processing and model parameter estimation, individual radar backscatter measurements a...

Soil moisture as a key element in global cycles of water, energy and carbon has been is in the focus of the active remote sensing community for more than three decades now. Due to technical and methodological constraints, operational soil moisture retrieval from conventional strip-map mode SAR data still is not available. Experiences with temporal...

The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) on board of the satellite ENVISAT can be operated in Global Monitoring (GM) mode. ASAR GM mode has delivered the first global, multi-year C-band backscatter data set in HH polarization at a spatial resolution of 1 km. This study investigates if ASAR GM can be used for retrieving soil moisture using a cha...

This paper elaborates on recent advances in the use of ScanSAR technologies for wetland-related research. Applications of active satellite radar systems include the monitoring of inundation dynamics as well as time series analyses of surface soil wetness. For management purposes many wetlands, especially those in dry regions, need to be monitored f...

Permanent water bodies not only store dissolved CO(2) but are essential for the maintenance of wetlands in their proximity. From the viewpoint of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting wetland functions comprise sequestration of carbon under anaerobic conditions and methane release. The investigated area in central Siberia covers boreal and sub-arctic env...

The high spatio-temporal variability of soil moisture is the result of atmosphericforcing and redistribution processes related to terrain, soil, and vegetation characteristics.Despite this high variability, many field studies have shown that in the temporal domainsoil moisture measured at specific locations is correlated to the mean soil moisture c...

Wetlands in semiarid regions such as the Okavango Delta depend not only on local rainfall but also on external inflow. Flooding patterns can be estimated if the precipitation and other hydrological parameters of the contributing area are known. The water is intermediately stored in the soil and either evaporates, is taken up by plants or contribute...

Soil moisture is an important parameter for hydrological modeling and crop yield prediction. The ability of radar sensors to monitor SM has been demonstrated in numerous studies. Yet, only coarse resolution (>25km) SM products are available over the European continent. In this work, the soil moisture product derived from the ERS scatterometer data...

The potential of the ERS-1/2 scatterometer global soil moisture product has been shown in several studies. The ASCAT sensor on-board the METOP satellite is extending the 16 year time series of the ERS-1/2 scatterometer as a source for extracting information for ocean and land applications. Calibrated ASCAT data will continue the scatterometer globa...

Permanent water bodies not only store dissolved CO2 but are essential for the maintenance of wetlands in their proximity. From the viewpoint of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting wetland functions comprise sequestration of carbon under anaerobic conditions and methane release. The investigated area in central Siberia covers boreal and sub-arctic envir...

The Okavango Delta of northern Botswana is a fast-changing system of canals and floodplains which serves as an important wetland habitat. The area of the wetland is highly dependent on local source of precipitation as well as on external inflow from the upper Okavango River. The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) is an active remote sensing i...

Boreal peatland covers large areas on the northern hemi- sphere and thus plays an important role especially as car- bon storage. Results from a range of microwave sensors have already shown a large potential for hydrological ap- plications. We tested the ScanSAR system ENVISAT ASAR Global Mode (1km) time series for wetland mon- itoring in boreal en...

1.Knowledge about the distribution and types of wetlands is in high demand by ecosystem modellers for full greenhouse gas accounting. The scope of this paper is to demonstrate the suitability of satellite radar data for the delineation of wetlands in the tundra and boreal forest biomes of central Siberia.2.An area of more than 3 million km2 in cent...

Spaceborne scatterometers and radiometers offer soil moisture information with resolutions in the order of a few tens of kilometres. However, hydrologic users often request a resolution in the order of 1 km. Based on the insight that surface soil moisture in part is driven by large scale atmospheric forcing, a temporal analysis was carried out betw...

and a key element in the Earths energy, water and carbon cycle. Monitoring soil moisture over large areas is only feasible using remote sensing. In this paper, a change detection approach based on an extensive Envisat ASAR Global Mode data archive is presented. Actual backscatter measurements are compared to two reference values representing dry an...

Soil moisture is a key element in the global hydro- logic, energy and carbon cycle. Knowledge about the location specific sensitivity of radar backscatter can be used for operational determination of relative soil moisture over large regions. This approach has been developed for C-Band scatterometer and trans- ferred to C-Band ScanSAR within the ES...

ABSTRACT ScanSAR systems such as ENVISATs ASAR Global Mode allow monitoring ,of dynamic ,processes at medium,resolution. Hence they are especially useful for ,monitoring hydrologic processes such as soil moisture and inundation dynamics. In this paper we present two studies which investigate the capabilities ofScanSAR ASAR Global Mode (1 km resolut...

An area in central Siberia (partial coverage of Turukhansky und Yeniseysky districts) was investigated using satellite data. It covers freshwater ecosystems of non-forested peatlands in boreal forests. The satellite data represent the growing seasons of 2003/2004.Microwave data were acquired by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrumen...

Soil moisture is a crucial parameter for hydrological modelling. It reflects soil properties as well as hydrometeorological conditions. A processing chain for ENVISAT derived soil moisture (1km) was setup within the ESA Tiger DUE Innovator project SHARE for hydrometeorological applications in the SADC region. It complements the ERS scatterometer da...

This paper elaborates on recent advances in exploitation of ScanSAR technologies for wetland related research. This comprises monitoring of inundation dynamics as well as time series analyses of surface soil wetness. In case of the ENVISAT ASAR instrument, data availability of the rather coarse Global Mode (GM, 1km) depends on request priorities of...

First Page of the Article

The potential of Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) for measuring soil moisture has been recognised about 30 years ago, but still today the search for suitable sensors and widely applicable soil moisture retrieval algorithms is on-going. Because it is now important to find new directions in SAR soil moisture research, the current state of the art in...

Radar remote sensing has been identified as a potential technique for delineation of wetlands due to its capability to monitor changes in water surface area, sensitivity to soil moisture and weather/daytime independency. High temporal resolution of ENVISAT ASAR wide swath data promotes multi-temporal analysis which is required for the detection of...

The lack of global soil moisture data has spurred research in the field of microwave remote sensing. Both passive (radiometers) and active (scatterometer) microwave data are very sensitive to the moisture content of the surface soil layer. To retrieve soil moisture, the effects of vegetation, surface roughness, and heterogeneous land cover must be...

This paper presents the first results of a study investigating the impact of plant surface wetness on thematic SAR data analysis. The investigations are based on SAR data recorded on two days at different times and extensive field measurements of plant parameters and microclimatological data acquired during the data take. The results show an influe...

This paper presents the first results of the TerraDew project. The investigation focus on the effect of dew and interception on the radar backscatter signal of agricultural vegetation. The impact differ with respect to frequency, polarization and crop type. The strongest influence on the radar signal is found at the cross-polarized L-band. No impac...

This paper presents the first results of the TerraDew research project about the effects of free vegetation water on the radar backscatter signal. The investigations are based on intensive SAR and field measurements of diurnal free vegetation water changes in different vegetation types. The results show a systematic backscatter influence in depende...