A Comparative Analysis of Three Multispectral Images in Classification with Different Methods

Benefited from the increased satellite observations with medium spatial resolution, land use/cover mapping at local to global scales has provided important supports for society and academy community. For specific purposes (e.g., disaster assessment, detecting surface abrupt change), it is needed to increase the observation frequency, through combining different satellite sensors (i.e. as virtual constellation). However, many factors challenge this combination in practice, in which the comparability issue in sensor settings should be considered among various payload platforms. In this study, from the perspective of practical application, a comparative analysis of land use/cover mapping was investigated, with focusing on three observations by the Gaofen-1 (GF-1) wide field of view (WFV), Sentinel-2A Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI), and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) respectively. Four methods were implemented in classification experiments. Preliminary results showed that the Sentinal-2A MSI outperformed the GF-1 WFV and the Landsat-8 OLI in classification, no matter which classifier was considered. Meanwhile, the higher spatial resolution of the GF-1 WFV certainly compensated its lack of spectral channels compared against the Landsat-8 OLI. The choice of methods affected classification for a specific observation, while the more suitable classifier varied among sensors. This study underlines the compatibility issue in land use/cover mapping with different observations.