Land-Cover Mapping of Agricultural Areas Using Machine Learning in Google Earth Engine

2020 ◽  
pp. 721-736
Author(s):  
Florencia Hastings ◽  
Ignacio Fuentes ◽  
Mario Perez-Bidegain ◽  
Rafael Navas ◽  
Angela Gorgoglione
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Agricultural Areas

Synthetic sampling for spatio-temporal land cover mapping with machine learning and the Google Earth Engine in Andalusia, Spain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Bindereif ◽  
Tobias Rentschler ◽  
Martin Batelheim ◽  
Marta Díaz-Zorita Bonilla ◽  
Philipp Gries ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Sampling Methods ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Machine Learning Applications ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Spatio Temporal

<p>Land cover information plays an essential role for resource development, environmental monitoring and protection. Amongst other natural resources, soils and soil properties are strongly affected by land cover and land cover change, which can lead to soil degradation. Remote sensing techniques are very suitable for spatio-temporal mapping of land cover mapping and change detection. With remote sensing programs vast data archives were established. Machine learning applications provide appropriate algorithms to analyse such amounts of data efficiently and with accurate results. However, machine learning methods require specific sampling techniques and are usually made for balanced datasets with an even training sample frequency. Though, most real-world datasets are imbalanced and methods to reduce the imbalance of datasets with synthetic sampling are required. Synthetic sampling methods increase the number of samples in the minority class and/or decrease the number in the majority class to achieve higher model accuracy. The Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) is a method to generate synthetic samples and balance the dataset used in many machine learning applications. In the middle Guadalquivir basin, Andalusia, Spain, we used random forests with Landsat images from 1984 to 2018 as covariates to map the land cover change with the Google Earth Engine. The sampling design was based on stratified random sampling according to the CORINE land cover classification of 2012. The land cover classes in our study were arable land, permanent crops (plantations), pastures/grassland, forest and shrub. Artificial surfaces and water bodies were excluded from modelling. However, the number of the 130 training samples was imbalanced. The classes pasture (7 samples) and shrub (13 samples) show a lower number than the other classes (48, 47 and 16 samples). This led to misclassifications and negatively affected the classification accuracy. Therefore, we applied SMOTE to increase the number of samples and the classification accuracy of the model. Preliminary results are promising and show an increase of the classification accuracy, especially the accuracy of the previously underrepresented classes pasture and shrub. This corresponds to the results of studies with other objectives which also see the use of synthetic sampling methods as an improvement for the performance of classification frameworks.</p>

scholarly journals Automatic Land-Cover Mapping using Landsat Time-Series Data based on Google Earth Engine

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (24) ◽  
pp. 3023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuai Xie ◽  
Liangyun Liu ◽  
Xiao Zhang ◽  
Jiangning Yang ◽  
Xidong Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Land Cover Classification ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Thematic Mapper ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Google Earth Engine

The Google Earth Engine (GEE) has emerged as an essential cloud-based platform for land-cover classification as it provides massive amounts of multi-source satellite data and high-performance computation service. This paper proposed an automatic land-cover classification method using time-series Landsat data on the GEE cloud-based platform. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land-cover products (MCD12Q1.006) with the International Geosphere–Biosphere Program (IGBP) classification scheme were used to provide accurate training samples using the rules of pixel filtering and spectral filtering, which resulted in an overall accuracy (OA) of 99.2%. Two types of spectral–temporal features (percentile composited features and median composited monthly features) generated from all available Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data from the year 2010 ± 1 were used as input features to a Random Forest (RF) classifier for land-cover classification. The results showed that the monthly features outperformed the percentile features, giving an average OA of 80% against 77%. In addition, the monthly features composited using the median outperformed those composited using the maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) with an average OA of 80% against 78%. Therefore, the proposed method is able to generate accurate land-cover mapping automatically based on the GEE cloud-based platform, which is promising for regional and global land-cover mapping.

scholarly journals Integration of Machine Learning and Open Access Geospatial Data for Land Cover Mapping

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 1907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Mardani ◽  
Hossein Mardani ◽  
Lorenzo De Simone ◽  
Samuel Varas ◽  
Naoki Kita ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Satellite Images ◽  
National Level ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Sustainable Food

In-time and accurate monitoring of land cover and land use are essential tools for countries to achieve sustainable food production. However, many developing countries are struggling to efficiently monitor land resources due to the lack of financial support and limited access to adequate technology. This study aims at offering a solution to fill in such a gap in developing countries, by developing a land cover solution that is free of costs. A fully automated framework for land cover mapping was developed using 10-m resolution open access satellite images and machine learning (ML) techniques for the African country of Lesotho. Sentinel-2 satellite images were accessed through Google Earth Engine (GEE) for initial processing and feature extraction at a national level. Also, Food and Agriculture Organization’s land cover of Lesotho (FAO LCL) data were used to train a support vector machine (SVM) and bagged trees (BT) classifiers. SVM successfully classified urban and agricultural lands with 62 and 67% accuracy, respectively. Also, BT could classify the two categories with 81 and 65% accuracy, correspondingly. The trained models could provide precise LC maps in minutes or hours. they can also be utilized as a viable solution for developing countries as an alternative to traditional geographic information system (GIS) methods, which are often labor intensive, require acquisition of very high-resolution commercial satellite imagery, time consuming and call for high budgets.

scholarly journals Evaluating Combinations of Temporally Aggregated Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 for Land Cover Mapping with Google Earth Engine

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Carrasco ◽  
Aneurin O’Neil ◽  
R. Morton ◽  
Clare Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Satellite Data ◽  
Cloud Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Temporal Aggregation ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Composite Approach ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Sentinel 2

Land cover mapping of large areas is challenging due to the significant volume of satellite data to acquire and process, as well as the lack of spatial continuity due to cloud cover. Temporal aggregation—the use of metrics (i.e., mean or median) derived from satellite data over a period of time—is an approach that benefits from recent increases in the frequency of free satellite data acquisition and cloud-computing power. This enables the efficient use of multi-temporal data and the exploitation of cloud-gap filling techniques for land cover mapping. Here, we provide the first formal comparison of the accuracy between land cover maps created with temporal aggregation of Sentinel-1 (S1), Sentinel-2 (S2), and Landsat-8 (L8) data from one-year and test whether this method matches the accuracy of traditional approaches. Thirty-two datasets were created for Wales by applying automated cloud-masking and temporally aggregating data over different time intervals, using Google Earth Engine. Manually processed S2 data was used for comparison using a traditional two-date composite approach. Supervised classifications were created, and their accuracy was assessed using field-based data. Temporal aggregation only matched the accuracy of the traditional two-date composite approach (77.9%) when an optimal combination of optical and radar data was used (76.5%). Combined datasets (S1, S2 or S1, S2, and L8) outperformed single-sensor datasets, while datasets based on spectral indices obtained the lowest levels of accuracy. The analysis of cloud cover showed that to ensure at least one cloud-free pixel per time interval, a maximum of two intervals per year for temporal aggregation were possible with L8, while three or four intervals could be used for S2. This study demonstrates that temporal aggregation is a promising tool for integrating large amounts of data in an efficient way and that it can compensate for the lower quality of automatic image selection and cloud masking. It also shows that combining data from different sensors can improve classification accuracy. However, this study highlights the need for identifying optimal combinations of satellite data and aggregation parameters in order to match the accuracy of manually selected and processed image composites.

Mapping Land Coverage in the Kapuas Watershed Using Machine Learning in Google Earth Engine

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-395
Author(s):  
Trida Ridho Fariz ◽  
Ely Nurhidayati
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
Open Land ◽  
Google Earth Engine ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
Processing Platform

Land cover information is essential data in the management of watersheds. The challenge in providing land cover information in the Kapuas watershed is the cloud cover and its significant area coverage, thus requiring a large image scene. The presence of a cloud-based spatial data processing platform that is Google Earth Engine (GEE) can be answered these challenges. Therefore this study aims to map land cover in the Kapuas watershed using machine learning-based classification on GEE. The process of mapping land cover in the Kapuas watershed requires about ten scenes of Landsat 8 satellite imagery. The selected year is 2019, with mapped land cover classes consisting of bodies of water, vegetation cover, open land, and built-up area. Machine learning that tested included CART, Random Forest, GMO Max Entropy, SVM Voting, and SVM Margin. The results of this study indicate that the best machine learning in mapping land cover in the Kapuas watershed is GMO Max Entropy, then CART. This research still has many limitations, especially mapped land cover classes. So that research needs to be developed with more detailed land cover classes, more diverse and multi-time input data.

scholarly journals Mapping the Land Cover of Africa at 10 m Resolution from Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data with Google Earth Engine

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qingyu Li ◽  
Chunping Qiu ◽  
Lei Ma ◽  
Michael Schmitt ◽  
Xiao Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Land Cover Mapping ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Climate Zone ◽  
Analysis Experiment ◽  
Natural Land ◽  
Land Cover Map ◽  
Google Earth Engine

The remote sensing based mapping of land cover at extensive scales, e.g., of whole continents, is still a challenging task because of the need for sophisticated pipelines that combine every step from data acquisition to land cover classification. Utilizing the Google Earth Engine (GEE), which provides a catalog of multi-source data and a cloud-based environment, this research generates a land cover map of the whole African continent at 10 m resolution. This land cover map could provide a large-scale base layer for a more detailed local climate zone mapping of urban areas, which lie in the focus of interest of many studies. In this regard, we provide a free download link for our land cover maps of African cities at the end of this paper. It is shown that our product has achieved an overall accuracy of 81% for five classes, which is superior to the existing 10 m land cover product FROM-GLC10 in detecting urban class in city areas and identifying the boundaries between trees and low plants in rural areas. The best data input configurations are carefully selected based on a comparison of results from different input sources, which include Sentinel-2, Landsat-8, Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), Night Time Light (NTL) Data, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST). We provide a further investigation of the importance of individual features derived from a Random Forest (RF) classifier. In order to study the influence of sampling strategies on the land cover mapping performance, we have designed a transferability analysis experiment, which has not been adequately addressed in the current literature. In this experiment, we test whether trained models from several cities contain valuable information to classify a different city. It was found that samples of the urban class have better reusability than those of other natural land cover classes, i.e., trees, low plants, bare soil or sand, and water. After experimental evaluation of different land cover classes across different cities, we conclude that continental land cover mapping results can be considerably improved when training samples of natural land cover classes are collected and combined from areas covering each Köppen climate zone.

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