Integrating Multiresolution and Multitemporal Sentinel-2 Imagery for Land-Cover Mapping in the Xiongan New Area, China

Accurate land use/land cover (LULC) mapping over a large area is essential to environmentally sustainable development. Recently, the Chinese government established a new national economic zone called the Xiongan New Area, and along with the upcoming large-scale urban construction, this area will inevitably experience a dramatic LULC change, which will threaten the local ecological balance. In this article, we proposed a two-stage approach for LULC mapping in the Xiongan New Area ahead of the forthcoming dense urban construction. The first stage is to obtain base-class maps through a supervised imagery classification. Specifically, we designed a new object-based framework consisting of automatic image segmentation, pixel-based probabilistic estimation, and area-weighted probability statistics for Sentinel-2 multiresolution imagery classification. The second stage is an LULC map refinement process in which the temporal features of each land use category are extracted to refine the LULC classification. Through the implementation of the proposed two-stage approach, an LULC map containing permanent water, temporal water, natural vegetation, barren land, built-up land, and cropland categories can be produced. Through an accuracy assessment, the proposed multiresolution imagery classification method achieved the highest overall accuracy of 88.58 and an average accuracy (AA) of 87.78 compared with conventional classification methods. After obtaining the refined LULC map, we find that the current Xiongan New Area is in a less developed state, that is, cropland accounts for the highest proportion of 51.59, which is followed by natural vegetation (22.38) and built-up land (15.69).

Automated summary

Accurate LULC mapping is essential for sustainable development, especially in areas undergoing dramatic changes like the Xiongan New Area in China. A two-stage approach was proposed in this article, consisting of supervised imagery classification to obtain base-class maps and a refinement process based on temporal features. The proposed method achieved high accuracy and revealed the current state of land use in the Xiongan New Area.