Seasonal characterization and discrimination of savannah physiognomies in Brazil using hyperspectral metrics from Hyperion/EO-1

ABSTRACT

The seasonal characterization and discrimination of savannahs in Brazil are still challenging due to the high spatial variability of the vegetation cover and the spectral similarity between some physiognomies. As a preparatory study for future hyperspectral missions that will operate with large swath width and better signal-to-noise ratio than the current orbital sensors, we evaluated six Hyperion images acquired over the Estação Ecológica de Águas Emendadas, a protected area in central Brazil. We studied the seasonal variations in spectral response of the savannah physiognomies and tested their discrimination in the rainy and dry seasons using distinct sets of hyperspectral metrics. Floristic and structural attributes were inventoried in the field. We considered three sets of metrics in the data analysis: the reflectance of 146 Hyperion bands, 22 narrowband vegetation indices (VIs), and 24 absorption band parameters. The VIs were selected to represent vegetation structure, biochemistry, and physiology. The depth, area, width, and asymmetry of the major absorption bands centred at 680 nm (chlorophyll), 980, and 1200 nm (leaf water) and 1700, 2100, and 2300 nm (lignin-cellulose) were calculated on a per-pixel basis using the continuum removal method. Using feature selection and multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), we tested the discriminatory capability of these metrics and of their combined use for vegetation discrimination in the rainy and dry seasons. The results showed that the spectral modifications with seasonality were stronger with the savannah woodland-grassland gradient represented by decreasing tree height, basal area, tree density and biomass and by increasing canopy openness. We observed a reflectance increase in the red, red edge, and shortwave (SWIR) intervals towards the dry season. In the near-infrared, the reflectance differences between the physiognomies were smaller in the dry season than in the rainy season. From the 22 VIs, the visible atmospherically resistant index (VARI), visible green index (VIg), and normalized difference infrared index (NDII) were the most sensitive indices to water stress and vegetation cover, presenting the largest rates of changes between the rainy (March) and dry (August) seasons in shrub and grassland areas. Absorption band parameters associated with the lignin-cellulose spectral features in the SWIR increased towards the dry season with great amounts of non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) in the herbaceous stratum. The opposite was observed for the 680 nm chlorophyll absorption band and the 980 and 1200 nm leaf water features. In general, the number of selected metrics necessary for vegetation discrimination was lower in the dry season than in the rainy season. The best MDA-classification accuracy was obtained in the dry season using nine VIs (79.5%). The combination of different hyperspectral metrics increased the classification accuracy to 81.4% in the rainy season and to 84.2% in the dry season. This combination added a gain higher than 10% for the classification of shrub savannah, open woodland savannah and wooded savannah.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Instituto Brasília Ambiental (IBRAM) for the research authorization 06/2015 (project number 391.000.740/2015). Field assistance provided by the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa – Cerrados), especially by José Ferreira Paixão, was highly appreciated. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [grant numbers 304291/2013-7 and 303228/2013-0].