Fine-grained wetland classification for national wetland reserves using multi-source remote sensing data and Pixel Information Expert Engine (PIE-Engine)

ABSTRACT

Timely and accurate wetland information is necessary for wetland resource management. Recent advances in machine learning and remote sensing have facilitated cost-effective monitoring of wetlands. However, reliable methods for fine-grained and rapid wetland mapping are still lacking. To address the issue, a wetland sample set with 20 categories for China was collected based on a sampling strategy that combines automatic sample generation and visual interpretation. Simultaneously, a novel multi-stage method for fine-grained wetland classification was proposed, which integrates pixel-based and object-based strategies using ensemble learning algorithms and multi-source remote sensing data. First, a pixel-based ensemble learning algorithm was implemented to classify five rough wetland categories and six non-wetland categories. Second, an object-based ensemble learning approach was designed to separate the water cover in the pixel-based classification results into eight detailed categories. Third, the merged pixel-based and object-based classification results were refined with knowledge-based post-processing procedures to identify 14 fine-grained wetland categories. Results using the Pixel Information Expert Engine (PIE-Engine) cloud platform proved the effectiveness of the proposed wetland classification method. The overall accuracy, kappa, and weighted F1 reached 87.39%, 82.80%, and 86.02%, respectively. The adopted ensemble learning algorithm yielded better performance than classifiers such as CatBoost, random forest, and XGBoost. The incorporation of spectral, texture, shape, topographic, and geographic features from multi-source data contributed to differentiating wetland categories. According to the relative contribution, spectral indexes (NDVI and NDWI), texture features (sum average and contrast), and topographic features (slope and elevation) were identified as important leading predictors for the first-stage pixel-based classification. Shape features (shape index and compactness) and auxiliary features (geographic location) were crucial predictors for the second-stage object-based classification. Compared with other products, our 10-m wetland mapping results for national wetland reserves were rich in detail and fine in categories. Overall, the constructed sample set and developed classification method show promise in laying a foundation for large-scale wetland mapping. The derived wetland maps can provide support for wetland protection and restoration.

KEYWORDS:

• Wetland mapping
• remote sensing
• ensemble learning
• pixel-based classification
• object-based classification
• PIE-Engine

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to ESA and Google for providing the satellite data.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request by contact with corresponding authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15481603.2023.2286746

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42301461]; Open Research Fund Program of Key Laboratory of Digital Mapping and Land Information Application, Ministry of Natural Resources [ZRZYBWD202210].