Performances of conventional fusion methods evaluated for inland water body observation using GF-1 image

Satellite remote sensing of inland water body requires a high spatial resolution and a multiband narrow spectral resolution, which makes the fusion between panchromatic (PAN) and multi-spectral (MS) images particularly important. Taking the Daquekou section of the Qiantang River as an observation target, four conventional fusion methods widely accepted in satellite image processing, including pan sharpening (PS), principal component analysis (PCA), Gram-Schmidt (GS), and wavelet fusion (WF), are utilized to fuse MS and PAN images of GF-1. The results of subjective and objective evaluation methods application indicate that GS performs the best, followed by the PCA, the WF and the PS in the order of descending. The existence of a large area of the water body is a dominant factor impacting the fusion performance. Meanwhile, the ability of retaining spatial and spectral informations is an important factor affecting the fusion performance of different fusion methods. The fundamental difference of reflectivity information acquisition between water and land is the reason for the failure of conventional fusion methods for land observation such as the PS to be used in the presence of the large water body. It is suggested that the adoption of the conventional fusion methods in the observing water body as the main target should be taken with caution. The performances of the fusion methods need re-assessment when the large-scale water body is present in the remote sensing image or when the research aims for the water body observation.