The period of spontaneous development of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam has caused uncontrollably environmental problems occurred. Besides, the concrete surface caused increasing surface temperatures, reducing evaporation, consequently heating up urban space. This paper presents the results of the application of Landsat satellite images to study the urban thermal environment from the thermal infrared channel by capability of object surface emissivity for the northern part of Ho Chi Minh City. The Landsat satellite images was used for exploratory research to date 21-01-2014. The method to extract land surface temperature (LST) from thermal infrared bands with emissivity determined by the characteristics of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values has created detailed results according to resolution of the reflectance bands. In addition, the relationship between the heating element and land cover variables (impervious surface, bare soil, vegetation and water) is also considered in order to find the relationship determining factor affecting the urban thermal environment. The study results showed that the developing urban area is where the high temperature exits. A giant heat island is formed on the central area of the city with temperature ranging from 32oC to 44oC and above. Besides, impervious surface is a major factor contributing in the warmth of the thermal environment in the city with the highest number of positive correlation (R = 0.87), whereas vegetation is factor that impact to reduce heat with the highest number of negative correlation (R = -0.84). In Ho Chi Minh City there is only one ground meteorological station, so its temperature number does not express the thermal environment in the whole city. These results are a good reference for local city authorities in urban spatial planning during climate change period nowadays.

At the request of the authors, the proceedings paper [1] will be retracted. Four coauthors, Maurício Zacharias Moreira, Eloisa Domingues, Fernando Peres Dias and Luiz Roberto de Campos Jacintho, do not endorse the content in the paper presented by the main author. We apologize to our readership for any inconvenience caused.

Reference

1. Macedo, R.; Santos, J.; Dias, F.; Moreira, M.; Jacintho, L.; Domingues, E. Mapping of Land Use and Land Cover on Brazil. In Proceedings of the 1st International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing, 22 June–5 July 2015; Sciforum Electronic Conference Series, 2015, Volume 1, d007; doi:10.3390/ecrs-1-d007.

Retraction of the Proceedings Paper: https://sciforum.net/conference/ecrs-1/paper/2834

The geophysical observatory in the Antarctic Spanish Station Juan Carlos I (BAE), on Livingston Island (62.6S, 60.4W), has been monitoring the magnetic field in the Antarctic region for more than fifteen years. In 2004, a vertical incidence ionospheric sounder was incorporated to the observatory, which brings a significant added value in a region with low density of geophysical data. A High Frequency (HF) communications system was installed in 2004 in order to transmit the geomagnetic station recordings throughout the year, due to the fact that the BAE is only accessible during the austral summer. As the power supply is very limited when the station is not accessible, we had to design a low-power HF transceiver with a very simple antenna, due to environmental restrictions. Moreover, the flow of information is unidirectional, so the modulation has to be extremely robust since there is no retransmission in case of error. This led us to study the main parameters of the ionospheric channel (Signal to Noise Ratio -SNR-, delay spread, Doppler spread and availability) with narrowband and wideband soundings, and the design of modulations specially adapted to very low SNR scenarios with high levels of interference. In this poster, a review of the design of our remote geophysical observatory and associated transmission system from Antarctica to Spain (12760 km) during the last decade is presented.

The seismic vulnerability analysis of urban environments is an operational issue that concerns the comprehensive knowledge of both building structural features and soils geophysical parameters, especially when considering areas that are prone to hydrogeological and seismic disasters. The protection of such environments, together with the population growth and the urbanization processes, requires a multi-disciplinary approach aiming at providing both an effective assessment of urban resources and synthetic parameters for managing post crisis events, restoration activities and search & rescue operations. Within such a framework, airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Hyperspectral sensors have demonstrated to be powerful remote sensing instruments, whose jointly use allow providing meaningful parameters to describe both the topographic settings of urbanized areas and the buildings properties, in terms of geometrical, spectral and structural features. Based on this rationale, in this study, the operational benefits obtained by combining airborne LiDAR and Hyperspectral measurements are provided to support the seismic vulnerability assessment of urban seismic areas. The digital elevation model as well as the building height and the shape of the observed area are gathered by using airborne LiDAR measurements. Spectral and structural information of urban buildings are provided through the supervised classification of IMSpectorV10E VNIR (wavelength range between 400 and 1000nm subdivided into 503 bands) measurements acquired by the IPERGEO sensor. The objective is to combine the different products provided by LiDAR and Hyperspectral image processing analysis within a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, to evaluate the intrinsic properties of buildings (e.g. perimeter, covered area, height and type of roofs) together with the topographic features of the surrounding area (e.g. the surface height and slope) for providing synthetic parameters and thematic maps useful for seismic assessment and mitigation purposes, such as: (i) the identification of steep slope areas, (ii) the analysis of building roof typology for supporting the evaluation of structural load conditions, (iii) the detection of critical structures (e.g. asbestos buildings), (iv) the identification of primary roads (in terms of escape or access routes) for supporting search and rescue operations, (v) the analysis of main road conditions after building collapses. Meaningful experimental results, gathered for the historical center of Cosenza city (Italy), allow demonstrating the benefits of the proposed approach for both seismic assessment and mitigation purposes.

The present work is supported and funded by Ministero dell'Università, dell'Istruzione e della Ricerca (MIUR) under the project PON01-02710 "MASSIMO" - "Monitoraggio in Area Sismica di SIstemi MOnumentali".

Ore Mountains (west of the Czech republic) are an example of the area that suffered from severe environmental pollution originating in coal mining and heavy industry leading to massive dieback of the local Norway spruce forests between 1970’ and 1990’. The situation became getting better at the end of 1990’ after significant decrease of pollution loads. In 1998, ASAS airborne hyperspectral data were used to study the health status of the Norway spruce forests in this area. New hyperspectral data acquisition (APEX) was organized in 2013. Therefore there is a unique opportunity to study recovery of the originally damaged forest stands and compare them with the stands that have been less affected by environmental pollution. The analysis was conducted assessing a set of 16 vegetation indices to provide complex information on vegetation foliage biochemistry, canopy biophysics and structure. Five of them (NDVI, NDVI₇₀₅, VOG₁, MSR and TCARI/OSAVI) showing the best results were employed to study their spatial gradients as well as temporal changes. The obtained results indicate that the original significant differences between the damaged and undamaged stands have been generally levelled until 2013, although it is still possible to detect some signs of the previous damages in several cases.