This year, like the last 3 years, we go back again to France, next to the Vercors region, for an exiting field-campaign with the TU Delft Bachelor 2nd year Applied Earth Sciences students!
Coordinated by Dr. J.C. (Jan Kees) Blom & Dr. Roderik Lindenbergh, the students will have 2 key goals during this field-campaign: a geology goal (geology excursion, analyses of the geological formation, etc…), and a remote sensing goal. I will be there assisting the students with the data, the technology tools, and preparing their reports for this last goal.
The remote sensing goal is about performing a land cover classification based on optical spectral measurements acquired by satellites. GPS way points will be used to locate and identify reference land cover spectral signatures. The last years, we exploited the LandSat 8 data. But this year, for the first time, we will work with the very new Sentinel-2 reflectance measurements.
This is a good opportunity for the students to discover what satellite instruments measure, how we can interpret these measurements, and which parameters we have to pay carefully attention. A good introduction for further studies on remote sensing if they are interested in the future!
Among all the questions that we will have to investigate with the students?
- How does each type of surface reflect the Sunlight in each spectral band (visible, infrared…)?
- Which land covers may be easily distinguished in a Sentinel-2 data?
- What does Sentinel-2 indicate us about the vegetation type, and its evolution?
- How to compute the spectral signatures of a river? Deciduous / coniferous forest? Farmlands? Cities? Agriculture? Bare soils?
- How to define a reference land cover? How to locate it w.r.t. Sentinel-2 pixel?
- How to create a supervised land cover classification tool? And a prior training site?
Everything is ready now! In 1 week, we start this campaign! And in about 4 weeks, we should have altogether performed a Sentinel-2 land cover classification of the Vesc & Vercors area!
If you want to know more, have a look to the campaigns of the previous years! And follow our journey through the French valleys via Twitter @JChimotResearch, or @GRS_TUDelft! Regular updates will be posted!
Great thanks to Adriaan van Natijne for all the preparation of the Sentinel-2 data sets (atmospheric corrected)!
More information?
Homepage Julien Chimot: a journey in Earth observation satellite science 
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