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High-resolution remote sensing mapping of global land water

  • Research Paper
  • Special Topic: Remote Sensing and Global Change
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Abstract

Land water, one of the important components of land cover, is the indispensable and important basic information for climate change studies, ecological environment assessment, macro-control analysis, etc. This article describes the overall study on land water in the program of global land cover remote sensing mapping. Through collection and processing of Landsat TM/ETM+, China’s HJ-1 satellite image, etc., the program achieves an effective overlay of global multi-spectral image of 30 m resolution for two base years, namely, 2000 and 2010, with the image rectification accuracy meeting the requirements of 1:200000 mapping and the error in registration of images for the two periods being controlled within 1 pixel. The indexes were designed and selected reasonably based on spectral features and geometric shapes of water on the scale of 30 m resolution, the water information was extracted in an elaborate way by combining a simple and easy operation through pixel-based classification method with a comprehensive utilization of various rules and knowledge through the object-oriented classification method, and finally the classification results were further optimized and improved by the human-computer interaction, thus realizing high-resolution remote sensing mapping of global water. The completed global land water data results, including Global Land 30-water 2000 and Global Land 30-water 2010, are the classification results featuring the highest resolution on a global scale, and the overall accuracy of self-assessment is 96%. These data are the important basic data for developing relevant studies, such as analyzing spatial distribution pattern of global land water, revealing regional difference, studying space-time fluctuation law, and diagnosing health of ecological environment.

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Correspondence to LiJun Chen.

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Liao, A., Chen, L., Chen, J. et al. High-resolution remote sensing mapping of global land water. Sci. China Earth Sci. 57, 2305–2316 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-014-4918-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-014-4918-0

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