Phenology-Based Mapping to Monitor Land Cover/Land Use Dynamics in Ecuador

Abstract:

Land Use Land Cover (LULC) maps are critical for land policy management and for evaluating and monitoring natural resources which are mandatory for sustainable development. LULC maps are helpful in countries like Ecuador, where land cover changes have been caused by agricultural expansion, wood extraction for fuel, the establishment of cacao and banana plantations, mining, and road construction. The last national LULC map of Ecuador was generated using satellite data from 2014, consequently, this map does not reflect the current LULC status and therefore, it is not accurate today. A simple, free and repeatable mapping method is required to enable government institutions to monitor their natural resources sustainably at various spatial and temporal scales. We implemented Phenology-Based Synthesis (PBS) mapping using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform [1] and adapted the algorithm in such a way that in addition to land cover, also land use is mapped. Optical data collections were gathered from both Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 satellite in order to obtain LULC maps during yearly periods (from 2017 up to 2019) at different spatial and spectral resolutions. We used the Copernicus Global Land Cover (CGLC) [2] as reference LULC map and provided a critical analysis of the PBS classification results to compare the resulting maps which showed a consistent representation of the LULC patterns, with vegetation and non-vegetation types well described across the country. Furthermore, we evaluate the impact of spectral, spatial and temporal resolution differences for both small study areas as well as the three prevailing Ecuadorian climate regions. Finally, the entire country was mapped. These results confirm that the adapted PBS mapping approach might be considered as a reliable, replicable and a low cost tool to monitor LULC in places that experience drastic land cover changes.

References:

[1] D. Simonetti, E. Simonetti, Z. Szantoi, A. Lupi, and H. D. Eva, “First results from the phenology-based synthesis classifier using landsat 8 imagery, ”IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1496–1500, 2015.

[2] M. Buchhorn, B. Smets, L. Bertels, M. Lesiv, N.-E. Tsendbazar,M. Herold, and S. Fritz, “Copernicus Global Land Service:Land Cover 100m: epoch 2015: Globe,” 10 2019. [Online].

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