scholarly journals BULC-U: Sharpening Resolution and Improving Accuracy of Land-Use/Land-Cover Classifications in Google Earth Engine

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacky Lee ◽  
Jeffrey Cardille ◽  
Michael Coe
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Mato Grosso ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Advanced Analysis ◽  
Google Earth Engine

Remote sensing is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift, in which approaches interpreting one or two images are giving way to a wide array of data-rich applications. These include assessing global forest loss, tracking water resources across Earth’s surface, determining disturbance frequency across decades, and many more. These advances have been greatly facilitated by Google Earth Engine, which provides both image access and a platform for advanced analysis techniques. Within the realm of land-use/land-cover (LULC) classifications, Earth Engine provides the ability to create new classifications and to access major existing data sets that have already been created, particularly at global extents. By overlaying global LULC classifications—the 300-m GlobCover 2009 LULC data set for example—with sharper images like those from Landsat, one can see the promise and limits of these global data sets and platforms to fuse them. Despite the promise in a global classification covering all of the terrestrial surface, GlobCover 2009 may be too coarse for some applications. We asked whether the LULC labeling provided by GlobCover 2009 could be combined with the spatial granularity of the Landsat platform to produce a hybrid classification having the best features of both resources with high accuracy. Here we apply an improvement of the Bayesian Updating of Land Cover (BULC) algorithm that fused unsupervised Landsat classifications to GlobCover 2009, sharpening the result from a 300-m to a 30-m classification. Working with four clear categories in Mato Grosso, Brazil, we refined the resolution of the LULC classification by an order of magnitude while improving the overall accuracy from 69.1 to 97.5%. This “BULC-U” mode, because it uses unsupervised classifications as inputs, demands less region-specific knowledge from analysts and may be significantly easier for non-specialists to use. This technique can provide new information to land managers and others interested in highly accurate classifications at finer scales.

scholarly journals Maximum Fraction Images Derived from Year-Based Project for On-Board Autonomy-Vegetation (PROBA-V) Data for the Rapid Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Areas in Mato Grosso State, Brazil

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Luis Godinho Cassol ◽  
Egidio Arai ◽  
Edson Eyji Sano ◽  
Andeise Cerqueira Dutra ◽  
Tânia Beatriz Hoffmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Confusion Matrix ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Validation Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Mato Grosso ◽  
Fraction Images

This paper presents a new approach for rapidly assessing the extent of land use and land cover (LULC) areas in Mato Grosso state, Brazil. The novel idea is the use of an annual time series of fraction images derived from the linear spectral mixing model (LSMM) instead of original bands. The LSMM was applied to the Project for On-Board Autonomy-Vegetation (PROBA-V) 100-m data composites from 2015 (~73 scenes/year, cloud-free images, in theory), generating vegetation, soil, and shade fraction images. These fraction images highlight the LULC components inside the pixels. The other new idea is to reduce these time series to only six single bands representing the maximum and standard deviation values of these fraction images in an annual composite, reducing the volume of data to classify the main LULC classes. The whole image classification process was conducted in the Google Earth Engine platform using the pixel-based random forest algorithm. A set of 622 samples of each LULC class was collected by visual inspection of PROBA-V and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images and divided into training and validation datasets. The performance of the method was evaluated by the overall accuracy and confusion matrix. The overall accuracy was 92.4%, with the lowest misclassification found for cropland and forestland (<9% error). The same validation data set showed 88% agreement with the LULC map made available by the Landsat-based MapBiomas project. This proposed method has the potential to be used operationally to accurately map the main LULC areas and to rapidly use the PROBA-V dataset at regional or national levels.

scholarly journals ASSESSING THE ACCURACY OF LAND USE LAND COVER (LULC) MAPS USING CLASS PROPORTIONS IN THE REFERENCE DATA

2020 ◽  
Vol V-3-2020 ◽  
pp. 669-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. C. Fonte ◽  
L. See ◽  
J. C. Laso-Bayas ◽  
M. Lesiv ◽  
S. Fritz
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Reference Data ◽  
Accuracy Assessment ◽  
Reference Database ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Mixed Pixels ◽  
Land Cover Map

Abstract. Traditionally the accuracy assessment of a hard raster-based land use land cover (LULC) map uses a reference data set that contains one LULC class per pixel, which is the class that has the largest area in each pixel. However, when mixed pixels exist in the reference data, this is a simplification of reality that has implications for both the accuracy assessment and subsequent applications of LULC maps, such as area estimation. This paper demonstrates how the use of class proportions in the reference data set can be used easily within regular accuracy assessment procedures and how the use of class proportions can affect the final accuracy assessment. Using the CORINE land cover map (CLC) and the more detailed Urban Atlas (UA), two accuracy assessments of the raster version of CLC were undertaken using UA as the reference and considering for each pixel: (i) the class proportions retained from the UA; and (ii) the class with the majority area. The results show that for the study area and the classes considered here, all accuracy indices decrease when the class proportions are considered in the reference database, achieving a maximum difference of 16% between the two approaches. This demonstrates that if the UA is considered as representing reality, then the true accuracy of CLC is lower than the value obtained when using the reference data set that assigns only one class to each pixel. Arguments for and against using class proportions in reference data sets are then provided and discussed.

scholarly journals Specifying the relationship between land use/land cover change and dryness in central Vietnam from 2000 to 2019 using Google Earth Engine

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thy T. M. Pham ◽  
The-Duoc Nguyen ◽  
Han T. N. Tham ◽  
Thi N. K. Truong ◽  
Nguyen Lam-Dao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Central Vietnam ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
The Relationship

scholarly journals Land Use/Land Cover Changes and Their Driving Factors in the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau Based on Geographical Detectors and Google Earth Engine: A Case Study in Gannan Prefecture

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3139
Author(s):  
Chenli Liu ◽  
Wenlong Li ◽  
Gaofeng Zhu ◽  
Huakun Zhou ◽  
Hepiao Yan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Optical Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Landsat Images ◽  
Lulc Changes ◽  
Google Earth Engine

As an important production base for livestock and a unique ecological zone in China, the northeast Tibetan Plateau has experienced dramatic land use/land cover (LULC) changes with increasing human activities and continuous climate change. However, extensive cloud cover limits the ability of optical remote sensing satellites to monitor accurately LULC changes in this area. To overcome this problem in LULC mapping in the Ganan Prefecture, 2000–2018, we used the dense time stacking of multi-temporal Landsat images and random forest algorithm based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The dynamic trends of LULC changes were analyzed, and geographical detectors quantitatively evaluated the key driving factors of these changes. The results showed that (1) the overall classification accuracy varied between 89.14% and 91.41%, and the kappa values were greater than 86.55%, indicating that the classification results were reliably accurate. (2) The major LULC types in the study area were grassland and forest, and their area accounted for 50% and 25%, respectively. During the study period, the grassland area decreased, while the area of forest land and construction land increased to varying degrees. The land-use intensity presents multi-level intensity, and it was higher in the northeast than that in the southwest. (3) Elevation and population density were the major driving factors of LULC changes, and economic development has also significantly affected LULC. These findings revealed the main factors driving LULC changes in Gannan Prefecture and provided a reference for assisting in the development of sustainable land management and ecological protection policy decisions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document