A superresolution land-cover change detection method using remotely sensed images with different spatial resolutions

The development of remote sensing has enabled the acquisition of information on land-cover change at different spatial scales. However, a trade-off between spatial and temporal resolutions normally exists. Fine-spatial-resolution images have low temporal resolutions, whereas coarse spatial resolution images have high temporal repetition rates. A novel super-resolution change detection method (SRCD)is proposed to detect land-cover changes at both fine spatial and temporal resolutions with the use of a coarse-resolution image and a fine-resolution land-cover map acquired at different times. SRCD is an iterative method that involves endmember estimation, spectral unmixing, land-cover fraction change detection, and super-resolution land-cover mapping. Both the land-cover change/no-change map and from–to change map at fine spatial resolution can be generated by SRCD. In this study, SRCD was applied to synthetic multispectral image, Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) multispectral image and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) multispectral image. The land-cover from–to change maps are found to have the highest overall accuracy (higher than 85%) in all the three experiments. Most of the changed land-cover patches, which were larger than the coarse-resolution pixel, were correctly detected

SFSDAF: an enhanced FSDAF that incorporates sub-pixel class fraction change information for spatio-temporal image fusion

Spatio-temporal image fusion methods have become a popular means to produce remotely sensed data sets that have both fine spatial and temporal resolution. Accurate prediction of reflectance change is difficult, especially when the change is caused by both phenological change and land cover class changes. Although several spatio-temporal fusion methods such as the Flexible Spatiotemporal DAta Fusion (FSDAF) directly derive land cover phenological change information (such as endmember change) at different dates, the direct derivation of land cover class change information is challenging. In this paper, an enhanced FSDAF that incorporates sub-pixel class fraction change information (SFSDAF) is proposed. By directly deriving the sub-pixel land cover class fraction change information the proposed method allows accurate prediction even for heterogeneous regions that undergo a land cover class change. In particular, SFSDAF directly derives fine spatial resolution endmember change and class fraction change at the date of the observed image pair and the date of prediction, which can help identify image reflectance change resulting from different sources. SFSDAF predicts a fine resolution image at the time of acquisition of coarse resolution images using only one prior coarse and fine resolution image pair, and accommodates variations in reflectance due to both natural fluctuations in class spectral response (e.g. due to phenology) and land cover class change. The method is illustrated using degraded and real images and compared against three established spatio-temporal methods. The results show that the SFSDAF produced the least blurred images and the most accurate predictions of fine resolution reflectance values, especially for regions of heterogeneous landscape and regions that undergo some land cover class change. Consequently, the SFSDAF has considerable potential in monitoring Earth surface dynamics