Highlight of the month

Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis

IES' Forest Action has recently demonstrated a novel analysis method to detect connection / disconnection features, perforations and islanding in any two dimensional digital image, e.g. a satellite picture of a forest.
Called Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA), this promising technology shows a great potential in many different fields: From land cover analysis for various environmental purposes to risk assessment on rivers and wetlands, from the quest for pathological deviations in medical imagery to online quality control in industry using automated product pictures.

The MSPA method is based on the use of a binary (pixel) map of the picture, which is analyzed with a customized sequence of mathematical operators. The results are mutually exclusive feature classes, describing the geometry and connectivity of the spatial arrangement of the various image objects. This segmentation is a purely geometric process which can be applied to images of any origin (optical, radar and thermal satellite data, medical & forensic science, microscopy, etc.).

MSPA LEGEND

The Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis is already used by many important Institutions as the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE), the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the US Forest Service (USFS), the US Environmental Protection Agency and Landscope America.

Deforestation in Amazonia takes place around the main roads

The same fishbone shaped deforestation pattern as above,
but rendered quantifiable and qualitatively analyzed by IES' MSPA software
and visualized as an image overlay in Google Earth

Within the United States, green infrastructure projects rely on classical geographic information system (GIS) techniques for mapping and are mainly implemented by states and local jurisdictions as static assessments that do not routinely incorporate information on land-cover change. JRC-IES provided MSPA is now used as a complementary way to map green infrastructure, extending the geographic scope to the conterminous United States, and incorporate land-cover change information.

MSPA software can solve mazes by detecting pixels continuity

The software is applied to forest management, sustainable conservation, wood production, disease prevention, and provision of amenity. Moreover, the USFS has started to include pattern descriptors in national and international protocols.

For further information, please visit:

http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download/software/guidos

http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download/data/MSPA-Maps

http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download/data/google-earth-overlays

http://www.forestthreats.org/tools/landcover-maps/mspa

or contact directly peter.vogt@jrc.ec.europa.eu