Moist deciduous forest identification using MODIS temporal indices data

Abstract

The present research aims to extract moist deciduous forest (MDF) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) temporal data by using the fuzzy c-means (FCM)-based noise clustering (NC) soft classification approach. Seven-date temporal MODIS data were used to identify MDF, and temporal Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) data were used as reference data for testing. Different types of spectral indices were used to generate the temporal data set combinations for both MODIS and AWiFS. The NC resolution parameter delta was optimized to achieve the best output. It was found that for both AWiFS and MODIS data, optimum NC outputs were obtained when reached close to 10⁵. For assessment of the accuracy, NC classified outputs were optimized using the entropy approach. The optimized data set of AWiFS was then used for assessing the accuracy of the optimized data set of MODIS using fuzzy error matrix (FERM), composite operators (MIN-MIN, MIN-PROD, and MIN-LEAST), and a sub-pixel confusion-uncertainty matrix (SCM). It was found that the temporal data set combination corresponding to ‘Three’ date yields the highest overall accuracy for all accuracy assessment techniques. In all cases, the ‘Three’ date combination corresponds to the three scenes pertaining to different phenological activity of the MDF. This ‘Three’ date combination, along with the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), yielded the highest overall accuracy values, namely 94.88% and 94.84% for MIN-LEAST and MIN-PROD, respectively.

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions in improving the manuscript.