Mapping evergreen forests using new phenology index, time series Sentinel-1/2 and Google Earth Engine

Evergreen forests are sensitive to climate change and their role in the exchange of carbon, water, and energy in terrestrial ecosystems is irreplaceable. The temporal and spatial variation of the evergreen forest is closely related to forest monitoring and management in China, which has a far-reaching impact on forest protection and sustainable development. However, the lack of annual fine resolution maps of evergreen forests limits our exploration of the evolution of the spatiotemporal patterns of evergreen forests. Therefore, it is necessary to timely and accurately maps evergreen forests with high spatial resolution. We used a new phenology index of NDVImax-NDVIwinter_max to identify evergreen forests at the 10-m scale. First, we mapped annual 2019 land cover types to obtain the forest mask. Second, we calculated the classification phenology index by extracting the difference between evergreen forests and deciduous forests in phenological characteristics. Finally, we extracted the evergreen forest in 2019 from the annual forest map based on the constructed phenological indicators. The kappa coefficient of our annual forest map for 2019 was 0.92, and the overall, producer and user accuracies were 97.98%, 90.09%, and 97.46%, respectively. The kappa coefficient of the annual evergreen forest map in 2019 was 0.98, and the overall, producer and user accuracies were 99.73%, 97.84%, and 99.68%, respectively. Our study shows that the new phenological index can identify and map evergreen forests on complex landforms dominated by evergreen-deciduous mixed forests, which can be applied to other regions and years in China. The results of this study have reference value for evaluating the spatial distribution and resource management of evergreen forests.

Automated summary

Evergreen forests play a crucial role in the exchange of carbon, water, and energy in terrestrial ecosystems and are sensitive to climate change. However, the lack of fine-resolution maps of evergreen forests hampers our understanding of their spatiotemporal patterns. Therefore, it is necessary to map evergreen forests with high spatial resolution in a timely and accurate manner.