Juliane Huth

• Dipl.-Ing.
• Head of Team Coasts and River Basins at German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Monitoring and analysing vegetation trends and their climatic drivers is useful to understand possible impacts of climate change on vegetation. In this study, we analysed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) trends at 1 km² resolution for spring (March–May), summer (June–August), and autumn (September–November) for individual biogeographic...

In response to economic and environmental challenges like sea-level rise, salinity intrusion, groundwater extraction, sand mining, and sinking delta phenomena, the demand for solutions to adapt to changing conditions in riverine environments has increased significantly. High-quality analyses of land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics play a critica...

Cropland monitoring is important for ensuring food security in the context of global climate change and population growth. Freely available satellite data allow for the monitoring of large areas, while cloud-processing platforms enable a wide user community to apply remote sensing techniques. Remote sensing-based estimates of cropped area and crop...

One-third of Germany’s land surface area is covered by forest (around 11.4 million hectares), and thus, it characterizes the landscape. The forest is a habitat for a large number of animal and plant species, a source of raw materials, important for climate protection, and a well-being refuge for people, to name just a few of its many functions. Dur...

Remote sensing multi-decadal time-series provide important information for analysing long-term environmental change. The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) has been providing data since the early 1980s. Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series derived thereof can be used for monitoring vegetation conditions. This stud...

Drought is a recurring natural climatic hazard event over terrestrial land; it poses devastating threats to human health, the economy, and the environment. Given the increasing climate crisis, it is likely that extreme drought phenomena will become more frequent, and their impacts will probably be more devastating. Drought observations from space,...

In the past decades, various Earth observation-based time series products have emerged, which have enabled studies and analysis of global change processes. Besides their contribution to understanding past processes, time series datasets hold enormous potential for predictive modeling and thereby meet the demands of decision makers on future scenari...

Urbanization is an environmental transformation process that the conversion of rural and natural areas into urban settlements. Accompanied by a rural-urban migration, this process has been rapidly accelerated since the second half of the last century. In 1950, 30 percent of the world's population lived in urban agglomerations. This proportion has i...

Asia is the world's largest regional aquaculture producer, accounting for 88 percent (75 million tons) of the total global production, and has been the main driver of global aquaculture growth in recent years. The five largest aquaculture producing countries all come from Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh. The farming of fish, s...

Central Europe was hit by several unusually strong periods of drought and heat between 2018 and 2020. These droughts affected forest ecosystems. Cascading effects with bark beetle infestations in spruce stands were fatal to vast forest areas in Germany. We present the first assessment of canopy cover loss in Germany for the period of January 2018–A...

Anthropogenic activities like urbanization, intense land use and unsustainable land management practices together with an increase in weather and climate extremes, including longer and more severe droughts and an intensification of precipitation events, lead to a strong increase in soil erosion risk. The Lake Kivu and Ruzizi River basin, located in...

Central Europe was hit by several unusually strong periods of drought and heat between 2018 and 2020. These droughts affected forest ecosystems. While the annual tree crown condition assessments report generally rather bad conditions of the four dominant tree species in Germany, namely spruce, pine, beech and oak, many other tree species also show...

Asia dominates the world’s aquaculture sector, generating almost 90 percent of its total annual global production. Fish, shrimp, and mollusks are mainly farmed in land-based pond aquaculture systems and serve as a primary protein source for millions of people. The total production and area occupied for pond aquaculture expanded rapidly in coastal r...

Asia is the world’s most important region for aquaculture and generates almost 90 percent of the total production. The farming of fish and shrimp in land-based aquaculture systems expanded mainly along the shorelines of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, and is a primary protein source for millions of people. The production of fish and shri...

Wetlands are among the most productive and essential ecosystems on earth, but they are also highly sensitive and vulnerable to climate change and human disturbance. One of the current scientific challenges is to integrate high-resolution remote sensing data of wetlands with wildlife movements, a task we achieve here for dynamic waterbird movements....

Long-term Earth observation (EO) time series are an inevitable source for past quantification and analysis as well as future forecasting of land surface dynamics. This study investigates the joint use of geoscientific time series over the last two decades, including EO-based MODIS vegetation indices, DLR Global WaterPack, DLR Global SnowPack, and D...

Forests in Germany cover around 11.4 million hectares and, thus, a share of 32% of Germany’s surface area. Therefore, forests shape the character of the country’s cultural landscape. Germany’s forests fulfil a variety of functions for nature and society, and also play an important role in the context of climate levelling. Climate change, manifested...

In China, freshwater is an increasingly scarce resource and wetlands are under great pressure. This study focuses on China’s second largest freshwater lake in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River—the Dongting Lake—and its surrounding wetlands, which are declared a protected Ramsar site. The Dongting Lake area is also a research region of focus w...

Given the growing world population and rising demand for fish and seafood, aquaculture is becoming the main source of aquatic food in human consumption and a primary protein source for millions of people. Since 1990, the world aquaculture production increased from 13 to over 80 million tonnes and is currently valued at USD 231 billion. The cultivat...

Irrespective of administrative boundaries, river basins are natural spatial units covering the entire land area. They provide many resources, including freshwater, which is essential for the environment and human society, as well as irrigation water and hydropower. At the same time, river basins are highly pressured i.e. by human induced environmen...

This study examines the potential of open geodata sets and multitemporal Landsat satellite data as the basis for the automated generation of land use and land cover (LU/LC) information at large scales. In total, six openly available pan-European geodata sets, i.e., CORINE, Natura 2000, Riparian Zones, Urban Atlas, OpenStreetMap, and LUCAS in combin...

Globally, the number of dams increased dramatically during the 20th century. As a result, monitoring water levels and storage volume of dam-reservoirs has become essential in order to understand water resource availability amid changing climate and drought patterns. Recent advancements in remote sensing data show great potential for studies pertain...

River deltas and estuaries belong to the most significant coastal landforms on our planet and are usually very densely populated. Nearly 600 million people live in river deltas, benefiting from the large variety of locational advantages and rich resources. Deltas are highly dynamic and vulnerable environments that are exposed to a wide range of nat...

The Research Centre for Environmental Information Science (RCEIS) was established in March 2014. In the long-term vision RCEIS shall become a Sino-German competence centre and research platform for Earth systems observation and modelling by combining expertise in the fields of environmental and information sciences using modern information technolo...

In joint research initiatives with focus on interdisciplinary environmental research, such as the ongoing Catch Mekong Project or the recent projects WISDOM and DELIGHT, scientists of different disciplines work together to answer questions related to a broader social-environmental theme. In this context, environmental information systems have prove...

Deforestation in the tropics today continues inexorably with severe implications for biodiversity conservation, climate regulation and ecosystem services such as carbon storage. The rapid expansion of the agricultural frontier, cattle ranching and illegal logging has converted the world’s last remnants of tropical forest into isolated patches endan...

The farming of aquatic organisms, such as fish, shrimp and mollusks has experienced considerable growth during the past 30 years. In this study, we present a method for the derivation of aquaculture ponds from high resolution SAR time series data and its potential for the approximation of aquaculture harvest volume. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 missio...

In joint research initiatives with focus on interdisciplinary environmental research, such as the ongoing Catch Mekong Project or the recent projects WISDOM and DELIGHT, scientists of different disciplines work together to answer questions related to a broader social-environmental theme. In this context, environmental information systems have prove...

Aufgrund des wachsenden sozio-ökonomischen Drucks in Küstenzonen, nimmt auch der Stress, dem die Küstenökosysteme ausgesetzt sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund sind aktuelle Informationen und Wissen über den Status unserer Umwelt und deren Veränderungen essentiell für ein nachhaltiges Management der Küstenzonen und deren Funktionen, sowie für die Beurtei...

Aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing animal food production sectors worldwide, became the main source of valuable animal protein in many countries and offers great potentials for global food security. While capture fisheries production stagnated over the past years, aquaculture has seen a remarkably increase from 6.2 Mio tones in 1983 to 70.2...

The German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has gained a lot of experience in surface water extraction from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for various application domains within the last years. In this context four operational approaches have been developed which jointly form the so called DFD Water Suite:...

This chapter presents the evolvement of an environmental information system, built for the Mekong Delta, in the context of the German-Vietnamese research project WISDOM (Water related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta). The WISDOM project (2007-2014) belonged to a group of Integrated Water Resources Management,...

The extent of water surfaces and their inherent temporal dynamics are key parameters governing the hydrological cycle. Information on water surfaces such as delineation of water extent, permanent water bodies, partially and temporarily inundated regions, and flooded areas, as well as on specific surface water dynamics is considered beneficial for h...

In recent years, the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has gained a lot of experience in water surface extraction from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for various application domains. In this context, four approaches have been developed, which jointly form the so-called DFD Water Suite: The Water Mask...

Earth Observation using radar remote sensing is a valuable tool for the monitoring large scale inundation over time. This study performs a time series analysis using 18 ENVISAT/ASAR Wide Swath Mode data sets for the year 2008 and 13 TerraSAR-X Stripmap data sets for the year 2013/2014 to characterize inundation patterns in the Yellow River Delta, l...

River deltas are surrounded by water, shaped by water, influenced and affected by precipitation and inundation, and will be increasingly threatened by sea level rise. In view of this, the observation and mapping of water surfaces is central to most monitoring activities in river deltas, e.g. monitoring of environmental dynamics, wetland changes, an...

In the “Water-related Information System for the sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam“ project, an internet-based information system was built to support integrated water, land and coastal resource management. The system was deployed on servers in Ho Chi Minh City and was officially handed over to Vietnamese institutions in early...

Monitoring of net primary productivity (NPP) is especially important for the fragile ecosystems in arid and semi-arid regions. Great interest exists in observing large-scale vegetation dynamics and understanding spatial and temporal patterns of NPP in these areas. In this study we present results of NPP obtained with the model BETHY/DLR for Kazakhs...

Monitoring of net primary productivity (NPP) is especially important for the fragile ecosystems in arid and semi-arid regions. Great interest exists in observing large-scale vegetation dynamics and understanding spatial and temporal patterns of NPP in these areas. In this study we present results of NPP obtained with the model BETHY/DLR for Kazakhs...

Satellite remote sensing is a valuable tool for monitoring flooding. Microwave sensors are especially appropriate instruments, as they allow the differentiation of inundated from non-inundated areas, regardless of levels of solar illumination or frequency of cloud cover in regions experiencing substantial rainy seasons. In the current study we pres...

This is a user manual, which comes along with the software package TWOPAC, which can be requested from our group (email adresses inside the book)

Satellite-based multispectral imagery and/or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data have been widely used for vegetation characterization, plant physiological parameter estimation, crop monitoring or even yield prediction. However, the potential use of satellite-based X-band SAR data for these purposes is not fully understood. A new generation of X-ba...

During recent years, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data have been increasingly used for flood mapping. New radar satellites especially, such as TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-2 and COSMO-SkyMed, provide high-resolution data with high potential for fast and reliable detection of inundated areas. This article compares three simple approaches to derive water a...

We present a novel and innovative automated processing environment for the derivation of land cover (LC) and land use (LU) information. This processing framework named TWOPAC (TWinned Object and Pixel based Automated classification Chain) enables the standardized, independent, user-friendly, and comparable derivation of LC and LU information, with...

Vietnam is one of the world's largest rice exporting countries since the mid-1990s and the fifth producer country in the world of the global production. Of which, the fertile Mekong Delta at the southern tip of Vietnam accounts for more than half of the rice production. In addition, the Vietnamese are among the world top five rice consumers. This m...

Food security has currently become a key global issue due to rapid population growth in many parts of Asia, as well as the effects of climate change. For this reason, there is a need to develop a spatio-temporal monitoring system that can accurately assess rice area planted and rice production. Changes in rice cultivation systems have been observed...

ABSTRACT: Efficient and sustainable Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) requires computer based Decision Support Systems (DSS) supporting operational management and strategic policy-making and planning. Spatial data and related technologies provide information on abiotic, biotic and socioeconomic conditions which are crucial for effective...

ABSTRACT: Knowing the real value of an ecosystem service is playing an important role in our life, it can be an important feedback signal to the management of human activities in natural ecosystem. Remote sensing data have been used in a wide range of applications such as land cover, biodiversity, species richness monitoring, inventory of forest qu...

ABSTRACT: Semantic web facilitates a new generation of web applications. It has been applied in many fields so far, e.g. for medicine, bioinformatics, social web. Up to now, the semantic web is well known as an effective infrastructure to enhance visibility of knowledge on the web. It provides a common interoperable framework in which information i...

ABSTRACT: Land cover classification from satellite imagery provides base data for planning activities in several fields like integrated water resources management, land management, etc. The WISDOM project (www.wisdom.caf.dlr.de) aims for the implementation of a water-related information system to support planning activities within Vietnamese instit...

The German–Vietnamese water-related information system for the Mekong Delta (WISDOM) project supports business processes in Integrated Water Resources Management in Vietnam. Multiple disciplines bring together earth and ground based observation themes, such as environmental monitoring, water management, demographics, economy, information technology...

The Mekong Delta in Vietnam offers natural resources for several million inhabitants. However, a strong population increase, changing climatic conditions and regulatory measures at the upper reaches of the Mekong lead to severe changes in the Delta. Extreme flood events occur more frequently, drinking water availability is increasingly limited, soi...

The Mekong Delta in Vietnam offers natural resources for several million inhabitants. However, a strong population increase, changing climatic conditions and regulatory measures at the upper reaches of the Mekong lead to severe changes in the Delta. Extreme flood events occur more frequently, drinking water availability is increasingly limited, soi...

Der Beitrag stellt zwei pixelbasierte Verfahren zur Extraktion von Wasseroberflächen aus SAR-Daten gegenüber. Zum einen werden glatte Wasserflächen mit Hilfe von Schwellwerten klassifiziert, im zweiten Ansatz werden Wasser- von Landflächen anhand von Homogenitätskriterien getrennt. Als Datengrundlage dienten TerraSAR-X, sowie Envisat ASAR Datensätz...