LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING USING A LANDSCAPE MODELLING APPROACH 
Robert P. Gauthier 
Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, 
: 1 
588 Booth Street © In: 
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0Y7 Crta 
Tel: 2 
Commission VII, Working Group 1 e-ma 
KEYWORDS: local environmental, landscape, spectro-spatial transformations, optical @ Re 
Labo 
ABSTRACT Pradc 
Tel: 
A new Local Environmental Applications Program (LEAP) has been initiated at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. The use e-ma 
of high spatial resolution optical remote sensing data is essential to the development of local environmental applications which 
refer to effects occuring on small spatial scales. The aerial extent of such effects however, may be quite large. The term local 
therefore refers to the scale at which a given environmental effect occurs and not to small surface areas. Examples of such KEY 
situations and current case studies will be presented. The treatment of high spatial resolution optical images over large surfaces 
for the extraction of specific biophysical information requires reduction of the image data to a physically meaningful parameter, . ABS 
  
the surface reflectance. Information extraction from the surface reflectance images is performed with what is referred to as a 
landscape model. In this context, such a model incorporates the transformation of the remote sensing data into surface 
reflectance, spectro-spatial transformations for the derivation of valued ecosystem components (VEC) and algorithms for the 
scaling of such transformations as a function of the spatial scale of the environmental parameters involved. These transformations 
are necessarily based on the behaviour of the VEC surface reflectance as a function of the usual optical remote sensing | 
parameters (e.g. geometry, illumination, atmospheric scattering) as well as on environmental parameters such as local | dram 
meteorology, wildlife habitat, annual hydrological cycles, etc. This paper presents the physical principles for the construction of 
such landscape models and a preliminary case study of an environmental baseline of valued ecosystem components in the area NOA 
around a proposed large scale mining development in Voisey's Bay, Labrador. The various problems associated with baselining phen 
such a remote site will be addressed. 
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708 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 7, Budapest, 1998