Global Land Cover Classification Based on Microwave Polarization and Gradient Ratio (MPGR) - Geoinformatics for Intelligent Transportation - page 22

Fig. 1 AMSR-E image with MPGR value range for a polarization ratio (PR 36.5) and b gradient
ratio GR-V (36.5 18.7). In panel a, the dark red areas indicate deserts, dark blue represents dense

vegetation, and the color in between correspond to mixed vegetation. In panel b, dark red
highlights desert regions, and light red showing vegetation condition, yellow and sky blue showing
mixed vegetation (30/09/2011). Both images clearly differentiate land and water on earth after
polarization or gradient ratio

-

high frequencies also can be used to evaluate the in fl uence of soil moisture and

barren sparsely vegetation/bare soil.
In Fig. 2 evergreen needle leaf and broad leaf forest have higher temperatures
than deciduous forest, but both forest types have lower temperatures than shrub
land and savanna. Mixed forest has a much smaller range of standard deviations and
always falls between evergreen and deciduous forest (Fig. 2 ). Close shrub has lower
temperature and a smaller standard deviation than open shrub. Wetland has lower
temperature than grassland and cropland due to water content. Built-up area has
higher standard deviation than other land cover classes except for water and ice
(Fig. 2 ). But in Fig. 2 it is hard to

find a clear set of parameters that can uniquely
identify all of the 17 land surface type. Thus, we utilize MPGR which combines
much of the information and may potentially separate the 17 land surface type.