Low and high spatial resolution time series fusion for improved land cover map production

Abstract

In the coming years, several optical space-borne systems with high resolution, high temporal frequency revisit and constant viewing angles will be launched. The availability of these data opens the opportunity for the development of new applications which require to closely monitor the temporal trajectory of the characteristics of land surfaces. However, due to cloud cover and even to some rapid changes, a higher temporal resolution may be needed for some applications. One of the ways to improve the temporal resolution for these satellites is to merge their data with higher temporal resolution systems. For now, these other systems will fatally have a lower spatial resolution or a limited field of view. The goal of our work is to assess the usefulness of image fusion techniques for the joint use of Proba-V/Sentinel-3 data and Venus/Sentinel−2 images for land-cover monitoring. We are interested in the generation of land-cover maps and time profiles of surface reflectances with a spatial resolution of 10 to 30 m. with an update frequency of about 10 days.