Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2601.11603

The use of spectral indices in environmental monitoring of smouldering coal-waste dumps

Anna Abramowicz·Michal Laska·Adam Nadudvari·Oimahmad Rahmonov
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate the applicability of environmental indices in the monitoring of smouldering coal-waste dumps. A dump located in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin served as the research site for a multi-method analysis combining remote sensing and field-based data. Two UAV survey campaigns were conducted, capturing RGB, infrared, and multispectral imagery. These were supplemented with direct ground measurements of subsurface temperature and detailed vegetation mapping. Additionally, publicly available satellite data from the Landsat and Sentinel missions were analysed. A range of vegetation and fire-related indices (NDVI, SAVI, EVI, BAI, among others) were calculated to identify thermally active zones and assess vegetation conditions within these degraded areas. The results revealed strong seasonal variability in vegetation indices on thermally active sites, with evidence of disrupted vegetation cycles, including winter greening in moderately heated root zones - a pattern indicative of stress and degradation processes. While satellite data proved useful in reconstructing the fire history of the dump, their spatial resolution was insufficient for detailed monitoring of small-scale thermal anomalies. The study highlights the diagnostic potential of UAV-based remote sensing in post-industrial environments undergoing land degradation but emphasises the importance of field validation for accurate environmental assessment.

Explore related subjects

physics.geo-phphysics.ins-detstat.AP

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Anna Abramowicz, Michal Laska, Adam Nadudvari, Oimahmad Rahmonov. 2026-01-26. The use of spectral indices in environmental monitoring of smouldering coal-waste dumps. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2025.101865

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of Pre-Trained Vision Foundation Models for Active and Passive Seismic Data Denoising

The demand for high-resolution subsurface imaging and continuous Earth monitoring has driven rapid growth in active and passive seismic data from dense geophone deployments, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) arrays, and large-scale 2D and 3D surveys. This expansion makes complex noise suppression increasingly challenging, especially when signal fidelity must be preserved. Conventional supervised deep learning methods are often task-specific, require large paired datasets, and can suffer from domain shift under new acquisition conditions. Foundation models offer a promising alternative, but pre-training seismic foundation models from scratch requires massive domain-specific data and substantial computation. We propose an efficient framework that repurposes general-purpose Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) for geophysical tasks through Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning. The architecture uses a pre-trained VFM, a DINOv3 encoder, adapted with Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to enable effective feature adaptation with few additional parameters. To improve robustness under unseen field conditions without ground truth, we introduce a kurtosis-guided unsupervised test-time adaptation module that updates only LoRA parameters during inference. This module self-calibrates the model to site-specific noise by identifying information-rich regions via kurtosis and performing self-training without labeled data. Experiments on public exploration seismic images and DAS vertical seismic profiling data from the Utah FORGE site show that the framework matches or outperforms domain-specific models. Tests on unseen cross-site data from a land survey in China and the Groß Schönebeck geothermal site in Germany further demonstrate strong generalization and effective signal-noise separation. These results highlight the potential of adapting pre-trained VFMs to data-intensive problems in exploration seismology.

physics.geo-ph↗
arXiv2026

Shallow-to-deep velocity model building via diffusion models-Part I: Method and Proof of concept

Seismic velocity model building (VMB) is fundamental for understanding subsurface structures. Traditional methods demand high-quality starting models and, also, remain limited in resolution in coverage and computationally intensive. Recent generative diffusion model-based approaches capture statistical priors to support traditional inversion methods, but these approaches do not account for the top to bottom progression of information (layer stripping) involved in surface recorded data, where deep velocity information depends on the shallow. To address this issue, we propose a depth-progressive diffusion framework that constructs velocity models incrementally from shallow to deep by propagating prior information. Our method trains on paired shallow-deep velocity patches with variable overlap and explicit depth encoding, integrating multiple geophysical constraints including well logs and seismic images (representing structural information). During inference, we synthesize overlapping depth slices using a progressive algorithm and merge them with Gaussian-weighted blending to eliminate boundary artifacts. This approach leverages both learned geological distributions and observed shallow priors while providing uncertainty quantification. Extensive numerical experiments on in-distribution tests and an out-of-distribution test demonstrate excellent VMB accuracy with a strong correlation between predicted uncertainty and actual errors. As a proof of concept, this part I employs idealized structural constraints derived from vertical reflectivity to validate the methodological framework. The companion paper (Part II) extends the approach to realistic structural constraints relying on migrated images with field data applications.

physics.geo-ph↗
arXiv2026

Shallow-to-deep velocity model building via diffusion models-Part II: Realistic scenarios

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) requires accurate initial velocity models to avoid cycle-skipping, but constructing such models remains challenging in practice. Building on the depth-progressive diffusion framework introduced in Part~I, which relied on idealized reflectivity constraints, this work adapts the methodology to realistic exploration scenarios. We replace perfect structural information with migration-derived attributes extracted from seismic images, and introduce smooth background velocity models from tomography as additional conditioning inputs. The framework jointly leverages background/migration velocity, migrated structural information, and sparse well measurements to synthesize high-resolution velocity models through depth-progressive generation. Validation on synthetic examples demonstrates superior accuracy compared to conventional interpolation and alternative deep learning methods, with generated models successfully initializing FWI and mitigating cycle-skipping even in complex geological structures. Field data confirms practical applicability: despite training on synthetic data, the method generalizes effectively to field conditions, producing velocity models with synthetic data response that nearly match observed seismic data. As a result, this framework establishes a practical pathway to deploy generative diffusion models for velocity model building under realistic constraints.

physics.geo-ph↗