Monitoring Sahelian floodplains using Fourier analysis of MODIS time‐series data and artificial neural networks

Abstract

Fourier analysis of Moderate Resolution Image Spectrometer (MODIS) time‐series data was applied to monitor the flooding extent of the Waza‐Logone floodplain, located in the north of Cameroon. Fourier transform (FT) enabled quantification of the temporal distribution of the MIR band and three different indices: the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). The resulting amplitude, phase, and amplitude variance images for harmonics 0 to 3 were used as inputs for an artificial neural network (ANN) to differentiate between the different land cover/land use classes: flooded land, dry land, and irrigated rice cultivation. Different combinations of input variables were evaluated by calculating the Kappa Index of Agreement (KIA) of the resulting classification maps. The combinations MIR/NDVI and MIR/EVI resulted in the highest KIA values. When the ANN was trained on pixels from different years, a more robust classifier was obtained, which could consistently separate flooded land from dry land for each year.

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by BOF, the Special Research Fund of Ghent University, Belgium, under contract number B/05884/01. Thanks are due to Lieven Verbeke, Eva De Clercq, Frieke Van Coillie, Koen Mertens, and Claudia De Pus for their valuable comments. The comments of two anonymous reviewers were also helpful in improving the manuscript.