ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/isprsjprs

A data mining approach for evaluation of optimal time-series of MODIS

data for land cover mapping at a regional level
Fuqun Zhou a,⇑, Aining Zhang a, Lawrence Townley-Smith b
a
Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, 588 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0Y7, Canada
b
Agriculture-Ago Food Canada, Science and Technology Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1800 Hamilton Street, Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 4L2, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Optical Earth Observation data with moderate spatial resolutions, typically MODIS (Moderate Resolution
Received 4 January 2013 Imaging Spectroradiometer), are of particular value to environmental applications due to their high tem-
Received in revised form 24 May 2013 poral and spectral resolutions. Time-series of MODIS data capture dynamic phenomena of vegetation and
Accepted 17 July 2013
its environment, and are considered as one of the most effective data sources for land cover mapping at a
Available online 21 August 2013
regional and national level. However, the time-series, multiple bands and their derivations such as NDVI
constitute a large volume of data that poses a significant challenge for automated mapping of land cover
Keywords:
while optimally utilizing the information it contains. In this study, time-series of 10-day cloud-free
Land cover
Time-series imagery
MODIS composites and its derivatives – NDVI and vegetation phenology information, are fully assessed
Data mining to determine the optimal data sets for deriving land cover. Three groups of variable combinations of
Information extraction MODIS spectral information and its derived metrics are thoroughly explored to identify the optimal com-
Optimal variable combination binations for land cover identification using a data mining tool.
MODIS data The results, based on the assessment using time-series of MODIS data, show that in general using a
longer time period of the time-series data and more spectral bands could lead to more accurate land
cover identification than that of a shorter period of the time-series and fewer bands. However, we reveal
that, with some optimal variable combinations of few bands and a shorter period of time-series data, the
highest possible accuracy of land cover classification can be achieved.
Crown copyright Ó 2013 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS)
Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Optical Earth Observation (EO) data with medium spatial reso-
lution, typically MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradi-
ometer), are of particular value to environmental applications and
are considered as the most effective data sources for land cover
mapping at regional and national scales due to their high temporal
and spectral resolutions. Time-series of EO data, including from
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), SPOT VGT,
and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS),
have been widely used in land cover identification (Hirosawa
et al., 1996; Kasischke and French, 1997; Liang, 2001; Friedl
et al., 2002; Bagan et al., 2005; Latifovic and Pouliot, 2005; Xiao
et al., 2005; Matsuoka et al., 2007; Wardlow et al., 2007; Carrão
et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2008; Clark et al., 2010; Lv and Liu,
2010; Wardlow and Egbert, 2010; Colditz et al., 2012a) and for land
cover dynamics assessment and land cover change detection
(Jakubauskas et al., 2002; Yang and Lo, 2002; Huttich et al.,
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: fuqun.zhou@nrcan.gc.ca (F. Zhou).
2007; Donohue et al., 2008; Giriraj et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2011;
Alcantara et al., 2012).
Time-series of EO data have many advantages compared to a
single time image for land cover identification (Maxwell et al.,
2002a) as the former captures dynamic spectral information of
vegetation at various vegetation growth stages. In some of these
studies, the derived metrics from the time-series EO spectral infor-
mation such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
(Fuller, 1998; Azzalil and Menentil, 1999; Weiss et al., 2001; Hill
and Donald, 2003; Hilla et al., 2004; Knight et al., 2006; Wardlow
and Egbert, 2008; Baldi et al., 2008; Evrendilek and Gulbeyaz,
2008; Kleynhans et al., 2011; Fensholt and Proud, 2012; Neeti
et al., 2012) and vegetation phenology are used (Reed et al.,
1994; de Beurs and Henebry, 2004; Lupo et al., 2007; Bradley
and Mustard, 2008). These derived metrics augment the data
dimension and enrich the information for vegetation mapping
and monitoring.
However, the time-series, multiple bands and their derivations
constitute a large volume of data that poses a significant challenge
for automated mapping of land cover. How to optimally use this
wealth of information and maximally realize its advantages
remains an issue. For example:

0924-2716/$ - see front matter Crown copyright Ó 2013 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2013.07.008
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
(1) Would the utilization of all the information available give
the highest accuracy for land cover identification?
(2) Would utilization of only a portion of the time-series of data
(for example, a few spectral bands, shorter time period or
the derived metrics such as NDVI, vegetation phenology)
achieve similar or better accuracy than using of all the
information?
(3) Would utilization of the derived metrics such as NDVI and
vegetation phenology metrics combined with spectral bands
(fewer bands) result in the same or higher accurate land
cover maps?
(4) If the answers to questions 2 or/and 3 are positive, what
combinations of bands and time-periods of data and NDVI
or vegetation phenology may lead to the optimal result?
Maxwell et al. (2002a,b) examined AVHRR time-series data (16-
day composites) for land cover identification, and addressed some
of the above questions. In their first study (Maxwell et al., 2002a),
they evaluated the effect of reducing the number of composite
periods and altering the spacing of those composite periods on
land cover classification accuracy. They found that the number of
composite periods can be halved, reducing from fourteen (14)
composite dates to seven (7) composite dates, without significantly
reducing overall classification accuracy, and that concentrating
more composites near the beginning and end of the growing sea-
son, as compared to using evenly spaced time periods, produced
slightly higher classification values. The study result was similar
to the earlier studies by McGwire et al. (1992) and Ehrlich and
Lambin (1996).
In another study, Maxwell et al. (2002b) assessed the reduction
of spectral dimensionality of the AVHRR bands while retaining
information needed for land cover mapping. For AVHRR, they con-
cluded that three channels among five are necessary for effective
land cover type discrimination.
Recently, Biradar et al. (2007) assessed the best spectral bands
and timing of imagery for land use – land cover class separation
using Landsat ETM+ and Terra MODIS data (16-day composites).
Their study found that using certain bands and time-series period
combinations of both datasets can better separate land cover and
land use in their small study area. Although these studies have an-
swered some of the above questions, further studies are needed to
fully explore the optimal reduced dataset combinations for land
cover identification for potential monitoring operations at a regio-
nal scale. Moreover, although NDVI and vegetation phenology de-
rived from time-series of spectral bands are increasingly used for
characterizing land cover and detecting land cover change, their
contributions along with the spectral bands as well as their opti-
mal combination for accurate land cover mapping need a thorough
evaluation.
This study tries to answer the above questions by fully explor-
ing the time-series of MODIS 10-day cloud-free composites in the
growing season to identify the optimal variable combinations for
land cover identification at a regional level. As the possible combi-
nations of the time-series of MODIS data and its derivatives are
enormous, we have developed and evaluated four variable combi-
nation models to identify the optimal combination of variables for
land cover mapping which is described in section below.
2. Study area, data and method
2.1. Study area
The area under the study is the southern agriculture region of
Saskatchewan, Canada as shown in Fig. 1. Saskatchewan is in the
central part of the Canadian Prairies and is bounded on the west
115
by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east
by Manitoba of Canada, and on the south by the states of Montana
and North Dakota, USA.
Saskatchewan is vast – 651,900 km2 and contains two major
natural regions: the boreal forest in the north and the prairies in
the south. The southern half of Saskatchewan contains almost half
of Canada’s total cultivated farmland. Saskatchewan continues to
be a leader in cereal crop production across the country supplying
5% of the world’s total exported wheat and is Canada’s most impor-
tant grain-producing region. Saskatchewan also produces oilseeds
such as canola, flaxseed, mustard, sunflower and safflower. In the
northern part of the province, forestry is also a significant industry.
Overall, annual crop land dominates the study region, with sub-
stantial pasture/perennial crop land such as alfalfa. Forest land is
mainly distributed in the north. (http://www.agricul-
ture.gov.sk.ca/Saskatchewan_Picture/ – accessed on August 31st,
2012).
2.2. EO data and derived variables
MODIS sensors aboard the Terra satellites provide global cover-
age every one to two days, acquiring data in 7 spectral bands suit-
able for land surface applications, with a spatial resolution of
250 m (bands 1–2) or 500 m (bands 3–7). It is one of the most ad-
vanced sensors available for large-scale terrestrial applications
(Salomonson et al., 1989). To facilitate use of the datasets, Canada
Centre for Remote Sensing has developed a technology to produce
10-day cloud-free composites of Terra MODIS’ 7 bands (1–7) cov-
ering Canada and North America. In addition, bands 3–7 are down-
scaled from the original spatial resolution of 500 m to 250 m (Luo
et al., 2008). Therefore all the 7 bands of the 10-day cloud-free
MODIS composites used in the study have the same spatial resolu-
tion and dimension.
Canada is located at high latitude and has only one growing sea-
son. For this study, only the data in the growing season (April to
October) is included. The selected time-series datasets span
7 months and each month has 3 composites. In total, 21 compos-
ites are available in the period of the vegetation growing season.
Considering all the 7 bands for each composite, there is a total of
147 ‘bands’ or layers of the selected time series.
Two additional datasets, NDVI and a set of vegetation phenolog-
ical metrics in the vegetation-growing season, are derived from the
time-series of MODIS bands and analyzed. As NDVI is derived from
MODIS bands 1 and 2, it has the same length of the MODIS compos-
ites, i.e., there are 3 NDVI values per month, and in total, a time-
series of 21 NDVI variables are derived during the studied season.
A time-series of NDVI of three typical vegetation types (annual
crop, native grass and deciduous tree) are shown in Fig. 2a, c,
and e. It can be seen that the three types of vegetation, in general,
have different NDVI patterns.
Vegetation phenology represents stages of growth or develop-
ment of plants which occur during a growing season, and apply
to both natural vegetation (e.g. trees, and grassland) and cultivated
crops. NDVI responds to the growth of vegetation which differs
with land cover and can be captured by EO sensors with a high re-
visit frequency. Vegetation phenological curves can be derived
from a time-series of NDVI (Fig. 2) and described by phenological
parameters from the curves (Fig. 3). The phenology curves of three
typical vegetation types (annual crop, native grass, and deciduous
tree) are shown in Fig. 2b, d, and f. In this study, a total of 11 veg-
etation phenological parameters were derived from the phonology
curves using the TIMESAT package (Jönsson and Eklundh, 2003).
We discuss these parameters and their applications in detail in la-
ter sections.
Fig. 2 shows the typical time-series of NDVI in a growing season
and the derived vegetation phenological curve of three different
116 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
Fig. 1. The study area.
types of vegetation. The three vegetation types have different NDVI
values at various growing stages and therefore different phenolog-
ical curves. The phenological curves filter out some of the noise in
the NDVI time series. The typical annual crop has a narrow shape,
indicating a short growing period, and the peak of the curve is of-
ten during July. Native grass has a flat but relatively constant NDVI
distribution over the growing season. The typical deciduous tree
has the largest NDVI over almost all the growing season.
With all the spectral information (time-series of MODIS 10-day
cloud-free 7 band composites) and the derived data (time-series of
NDVI, and phenology parameters), there are a number of possible
variable combinations that could be useful for land cover identifi-
cation. To fully explore the optimal variable combinations for land
cover identification, a data mining methodology is developed to
identify the optimal variable combinations for achieving land cover
mapping by using a commercial data mining tool See5/C5.0.
MODIS became operational in 2000 and there is a circa 2000
land cover map (c2000 map) in the study area which was gener-
ated from Landsat ETM images. Therefore year 2000 is selected
for the evaluation of the optimal variable combination for the land
cover mapping using the c2000 map (Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada, 2012) as the reference.
2.3. Classification scheme
The circa 2000 land cover map of Saskatchewan has 12 land
cover types, ten of them are included in the study, and the other
2 are disregarded as in total they consist of about only 0.6% of
the land area, and due to the objective of the study for land cov-
er identification at regional level. The 10 land cover types and
their description are listed in Table 1. For the study, it is not
critical to separate deciduous, coniferous, and mixed forest land
cover. They are grouped into forest land cover type in the study.
Wetland was masked out before the mapping. All the analysis
and results described below are based on the redefined land cov-
er types.
2.4. Data mining approach
The datasets used in this study as described above are time-
series of 10-day cloud-free MODIS 7 bands composites and their
derived NDVI and vegetation phenological metrics. As a variety
and a large volume of data is available, the main objective of
the study is to identify the optimal spectral or/and the spectrally
derived variable combinations and time period which could pro-
duce land cover maps with the highest possible accuracy. In-
stead of selecting a few variable combinations subjectively for
the evaluation, this study develops 4 variable combination mod-
els and thoroughly evaluates all possible variable combinations
with various time periods to explore the optimal variable set
which can achieve the highest possible accuracy of land cover
identification.
Fig. 4 shows the workflow of the data mining process. The input
data are stored in the variable space and extracted into a feature
space using the data mining process, which uses feature extractors
to convert the variables into features. Then the data mining models
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129 117

Fig. 2. Time-series of NDVI variables and phenology curves of three typical vegetation types: at the left are NDVI time series: (a) Annual crop; (c) native grass; (e) deciduous
tree. At the right (b), (d), and (f) are the corresponding fitted phenology curves.

are trained and verified using training and verification features
respectively before they are deployed to the data of the entire
study area.
The data mining tool used in the study is See5/C5.0, a commer-
cial and generic tool that extracts patterns from the input data into
the form of a decision tree or rule sets for aiding decision-making.
See5/C5.0 has been applied by several studies in land cover classi-
fication based on remote sensing (Keane et al., 2004; Pal and Math-
er 2003; Kumar et al., 2010; Evrendilek and Gulbeyaz, 2011;
Boryan et al., 2011; Boulila et al., 2011; Colditz et al., 2012b;
Schneider, 2012). It has been designed to analyze large volumes
of data and incorporates innovations such as adaptive boosting,
which constructs multiple classifiers for ensemble classification.
When boosting is enabled, multiple classifiers are created; each
classifier votes for its predicted classes and the votes are counted
to determine the final classes (Quinlan, 1996). In these studies,
ten ensemble classifiers (with See5/C5 boost option 10 trials) have
been found to be the optimum improving accuracy and were used
for all the models.
The variables of the input EO and EO-derived metrics in the var-
iable space can be described as:
(a) Spectral data of MODIS time-series of 10-day cloud-free
composites: spectral(bt)
where b e (1, . . . , 7) (band index of the cloud-free composite) and
t e (1, . . . , 21) (time index of the time-series of cloud-free
composites).
(b) Derived NDVI time-series: NDVI(t)
where t e (1, . . . , 21) (time index of the NDVI time-series).
(c) Vegetation phenological parameters: VPP(k)
118 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

X
m X
n
n1 ðm; nÞ ¼ spectralðbt Þ mP3 ð1Þ
b¼1 t¼1

X
n X
m
n2 ðm; nÞ ¼ ðNDVIðtÞ þ spectralðbt ÞÞ b P 3; mPb ð2Þ
t¼1 b¼3

X
11 X
m X
n
n3 ðm; nÞ ¼ VPPðkÞ þ spectralðbt Þ b P 3; mPb ð3Þ
k¼1 b¼3 t¼1

X
l
n4 ðlÞ ¼ VPPðkÞ ð4Þ
k¼1

where n(m, n) is the feature model with parameters m and n;

Fig. 3. Illustration of a phenology curve and some of phenology parameters (the
original figure from Eklundh and Jonsson (2012)). The black line is the NDVI curve
and the red line is the fitted function. The phenology features include: (a) date of
beginning of growing season; (b) date of end of season; (c) date of reaching 80% of
seasonal amplitude (rising); (d) date of reaching 80% of seasonal amplitude
(declining); (e) maximum value; (f) seasonal amplitude; (g) growing season length;
(h) small seasonal integral (area between the base level and the phonology curve);
and (i) large seasonal integral (area below phenology curve).
where k e (1, . . . , 11) (index of phenology parameters).
As shown above and in Fig. 4, the variable space contains time-
series of spectral information spectral(bt), derived NDVI(t), and
vegetation phenology parameters VPP(k). Four feature models are
constructed to extract variable combinations from the variable
space into the feature space; each of them generates a large
number of feature sets:
m e (1, . . . , 7) the MODIS band index; n e (1, . . . , 21) a composite in-
dex of the time-series; l e (1 . . . , 11) the phenology parameter index;
P
and maxmin is the operator of variable combinations from min to max
(max P min).
Model 1 n1(m, n) generates features with minimum 3 spectral
bands and maximum 7 bands of various time-series periods from
one single time stamp to the entire length of the time-series; Mod-
el 2 n2(m, n) generates features of NDVI and at least 1 spectral band
and maximum 5 (exclusive bands 1 and 2) in various lengths of the
time-series; and Model 3 n3(m, n) generates features of vegetation
phenology parameters and at least 1 spectral band and maximum 5
(exclusive bands 1 and 2) with various time-series lengths; Model
4 n4(l) generates features of various combinations of vegetation
phenology parameters. For the Models 2 and 3 as shown in Eqs.
(2) and (3), in order to avoid redundancy, bands 1 and 2 are ex-
cluded from the feature extraction when spectral bands are com-
bined with NDVI or phenology metrics.

Table 1
Major land cover types and their description.

Land cover type Description

Annual cropland Annually cultivated cropland and woody perennial crops. Includes annual field crops, vegetables, summer fallow, orchards and
vineyards
Water bodies Lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams, salt water, etc.
Developed land Land predominantly built-up or developed; including vegetation associated with these cover conditions. This may include road
surfaces, railway surfaces, buildings and paved surfaces, urban areas, parks, industrial sites, mine structures and farmsteads
Native grassland Predominantly native grasses and other herbaceous vegetation, may include some shrubland cover. Land used for range or native
unimproved pasture may appear in this class
Perennial (perennial cropland Periodically cultivated cropland. Includes tame grasses and other perennial crops such as alfalfa and clover grown alone or as
and pasture) mixtures for hay, pasture or seed
Shrubland Predominantly woody vegetation of relatively low height (generally ±2 m)
Forest land
Deciduous forest Predominantly broadleaf/deciduous forests or treed areas
Coniferous forest Predominantly coniferous forests or treed areas
Mixed forest Mixed coniferous and broadleaf/deciduous forests or treed areas
Wetland Land with a water table near/at/above soil surface for enough time to promote wetland or aquatic processes (semi-permanent or
permanent wetland vegetation, including fens, bogs, swamps, sloughs, marshes, etc.)

Training Data

Variable Space
Spectral (bt) Feature space
NDVI (t) Decision Tree
Feature of variable Data Ming
VPP(k) for Land Cover
Extractor combinations See5/C5.0
Classification

Verification Data Land Cover

Classification

Fig. 4. EO-based data mining procedures for land cover identification.

 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
In the feature space, each feature set, i.e., a combination of vari-
ables with a time period (either a single time slot – one composite,
or multiple time frames – multiple composites) generated by Mod-
el 1, 2, 3 or 4, is processed by the data mining tool and then eval-
uated to determine if any variable combination can sufficiently
identify all the land cover types of the study.
2.5. Sampling strategies
Point samples like ground reference collected from field survey
using GPS are not the best representations for both model training
and verification of land cover study using MODIS images due to its
medium spatial resolution. As the ground dimension of the MODIS
data used in the study is 250 m by 250 m, a pixel may be mixed by
two or more land cover types on the ground. If one of the land cov-
er types in such pixel is sampled and then used to represent the en-
tire pixel either for model training or verification, the result does
not reflect the true situation. In order to avoid this situation, in-
stead, an area sampling method is used in the study.
A pixel of EO images (especially with a medium or coarse spatial
resolution) could have three land cover situations: (1) only one
land cover type; (2) a dominant land cover; or (3) mixed land cover
types. A pixel with only one land cover type (situation 1) is called a
homogeneous pixel. A pixel with a dominant land cover (situation
2) is defined as within the ground dimension of the pixel there are
two or more land cover types, but among those land cover types,
one land cover type covers more than a half of the ground area,
and other land cover types occupy the rest area of the pixel. A pixel
of the situation 3 can be called a heterogeneous pixel of which the
ground surface of the pixel is covered by multiple land cover types,
but without a dominant one.
Homogeneity, dominance, and heterogeneity described above
are relative terms and changeable depending on the scale of a
study. When they are applied to EO-based applications, they are
determined by the spatial resolution of imagery in relation to the
size of features on the ground. For this study, the three types of
landscape settings are distinguished within the dimension of a
MODIS pixel.
The c2000 map was used to identify and evaluate the distribu-
tion of these pixel types within the study area. The c2000 map is
raster-based and generated mainly from Landsat ETM images,
and its spatial resolution is 30 m. Each pixel of the map is assigned
one land cover, therefore every pixel of the reference map can be
considered as a homogeneous one. When a MODIS pixel is super-
imposed on the land cover map, it covers about 64 pixels of the
land cover map. A MODIS pixel is identified as homogeneous if
and only if all the corresponding 64 pixels of the c2000 map have
the same land cover, or as dominant if more than one land cover
types are found, but 32 or more sub-pixels have the same land cov-
er (the dominant one), or as heterogeneous (other land cover com-
binations). Within the study area, the proportion of homogeneous
and dominant (MODIS) pixels is 48.16%, and 47.76%, respectively.
In total, they occupy about 96% of the study area. Only about 4%
of the area is occupied by multiple land cover types (heterogene-
ity) without a dominant land cover defined above.
In this study, we used only homogeneous samples for model
training, but had two sampling strategies for model verification:
(1) homogeneous samples only and (2) dominant and homoge-
neous samples. The latter samples represent about 96% of the land-
scape of the study region. All the samples are selected randomly
within the study area and 1000 samples were gathered indepen-
dently for each of the land cover types. Deciduous, coniferous,
and mixed forest were sampled and classified separately, but their
results were aggregated as forest land. Therefore, as a group, forest
land has 3000 samples in total.
119
3. Result and analysis
3.1. Results and analysis of homogeneous pixels for training and
verification
Using the methodology developed in Section 2.4: (1) Model 1
(Eq. (1)) of spectral band combinations only, (2) Model 2 (Eq. (2))
of NDVI/spectral band combinations, (3) Model 3 (Eq. (3)) of phe-
nology parameter/band combinations, and (4) Model 4 (Eq. (4))
of phenology parameter combinations only. This section will dis-
cuss the results of the first 3 models (Models 1, 2 and 3) of the var-
iable combinations, and then discuss the results of Model 4 in
Section 3.6.
In the first three groups of variable combinations, each variable
associates with a time period. To simplify the analysis, the unit of
the time-series period is 1 month. Therefore all the 3 composites
within a month are arranged as a unit. That means that if a month
of the time-series is considered for evaluation, all the data of the
three composites within the month are used.
Table 2 shows the lowest and highest Kappa values of the three
models for land cover identification using homogeneous pixels for
both training and verification processes. The highest Kappa values
of the three models are very similar, but the lowest has large vari-
ations. The NDVI and one spectral band of a single time stamp
(1 month) yields the lowest Kappa (0.55), while the combination
of band and vegetation phenology parameters yields the highest
low-end Kappa (0.75). An analysis of the Kappa values of different
variable combinations reveals that, in general, the longer the
length of the time-series of data, the higher the Kappa value, and
thus the higher identification accuracy. This observation suggests
that time series data are more informative than a single snapshot
image for pattern recognition of land cover. For example, the
low-end Kappa for phenology/spectral band combinations had a
much larger value than that of other two combinations as phenol-
ogy parameters are derived from all the data in a full growing
season.
In the following sections, the analysis is based on the accuracy
of land cover classification against the verification samples, instead
of using Kappa value. Table 3 shows the result of one of the optimal
NDVI/band variable combinations (one from the variable combina-
tion group with the highest Kappa). The confusion matrix patterns
of the land cover types are typical of the 3 models with the highest
Kappa. The numbers in bold in the diagonal of the matrix represent
the pixels that are correctly classified and suggest that the optimal
variable combinations (the highest overall accuracy) can discrimi-
nate most of the land cover types with an overall average accuracy
of about 89%. The land covers of water bodies, forest land, annual
cropland, and developed land all have accuracies over 90%. Peren-
nial land has the lowest accuracy (76%). In the land covers with
accuracies below 80%, perennial cover and native grassland are of-
ten misclassified as each other (130 and 184 out of 1000 samples,
respectively). The perennial land includes seeded grasslands which
are similar to native grassland in spectral signature and phenology.
Shrubland and forest are also misclassified with each other, as the
main difference between them is height and density. In many sit-
uations, they likely have similar spectral signatures and phenology.
Although the native grassland and perennial land are difficult to
separate from each other, they are easily distinguished from the
other land cover types. Only 8 out of 1000 samples of perennial
land are classified as forest land cover, and no grassland is misla-
beled as forest land. Twenty-six and 50 out of 1000 samples of
grassland and perennial land are misclassified as cropland, respec-
tively. Developed land has an accuracy of 93%. Although it does
not confuse with water bodies, it confuses with all other types of
land cover slightly. Water has the least confusion with others.
120 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

Table 2
Kappa of land cover classification.

Model No. of variable combinations Kappa

Lowest Highest
Spectral bands with various time-series periods 12,573 0.58 0.84
NDVI + spectral bands with various time-series periods 3937 0.55 0.85
Phenology metrics + spectral bands with various time-series periods 3937 0.75 0.84

Table 3
Accuracy matrix of a band/NDVI combination for land cover classification (one of the best variable combinations).

Land cover type Cropland Forest land Shrub land Grassland Perennial Developed Water %
Cropland 934 12 36 18 93.40
Forest land 4 2872 102 22 95.73
Shrubland 10 118 798 22 44 6 2 79.80
Grassland 26 8 760 184 20 2 76.00
Perennial 50 8 26 130 758 28 75.80
Developed 22 6 8 12 26 926 92.60
Water 2 2 2 2 992 99.20
Average 87.50

3.2. Results of homogeneous pixels for training and dominant pixels for that, if not all, the majority of the 64 sub-pixels of a MODIS pixel
verification are cropland. The accuracy of developed land cover decreases the
most from about 92% to about 75%, and the accuracy of water
In the study region, about 52% of the land cover is not homoge- bodies drops more than 10%. Other land covers yield a lower accu-
neous based on the spatial dimension of a MODIS pixel and 30 m racy (about 4–8% lower). The results are explainable because the
c2000 map. Therefore, we conducted an evaluation using homoge- land covers other than the dominant one within a MODIS pixel
neous samples for model training, but dominant land cover sam- would contribute to the spectral information, which makes it more
ples for model verification. Statistically, the verification samples difficult to accurately identify the dominant land cover. The degree
represent about 96% of all the MODIS pixels of the study region. of the confusion may depend on the number and the types of land
The same three groups of features (Models 1, 2, and 3) described covers within the pixels of a dominant land cover.
above were evaluated. Table 4 lists the agreement percent of land
cover types of the best results of the three groups of variable com- 3.3. Time-series of band variable combinations
binations, respectively.
In comparison with the results of using homogeneous pixels for In Section 3.2, the best results of land cover identification
both training and verification, the optimal variable combinations of from all possible band variable combinations of various time-
the three groups using homogeneous pixels for training and dom- series periods were presented. In this section, we will present
inant pixels for verification yield similar but lower accuracy. How- and analyze the statistics of all the results of band variable com-
ever, the overall averaged accuracy of all the land cover binations (Eq. (1)) based on the evaluation of homogeneous land
identification is above 80%. Although there are some differences cover samples for model training, and dominant land cover
in the results for each land cover type, overall they are similar to samples for validation. As described in Section 3.1, in order to
the results using homogenous samples: cropland and forest land make the statistical analysis concise, the time series of data
and water bodies have highest accuracy, and perennial and grass- are assessed in a unit of 1 month, leading to a total of 12,753
land have the lowest. possible band variable combinations of the time-series data with
It can be seen, from comparison of Tables 3 and 4, that the over- a condition that any variable combination must have at least 3
all averaged accuracy decreases about 9% using dominant pixels for bands. For example, a combination can be bands 1, 2, and 6 in
verification, which is likely caused by land cover mixing within a April; or bands 1, 2, and 6 in April and May, or bands 1, 2, 3,
pixel. The accuracy of cropland cover type decreases the least from and 6 in June, July and August, and so on.
93% to 90%. This is because cropland in Saskatchewan is usually Two groups of statistical results for the band variable combina-
in large parcels relative to the MODIS pixel size. Once cropland tions are analyzed. One group presents the results of a fixed num-
cover becomes a dominant land cover within a pixel, it is likely ber of bands vs. various time-series periods; and the other presents
the results of a fixed time-series period vs. various numbers of
Table 4 bands. Fig. 5 shows the overall averaged accuracy of land cover
Maximum overall averaged accuracy of land cover identification using dominant classification with a fixed number of bands and various time-series
pixels for verification (one of the best combinations of each group). periods, and Fig. 6 shows the overall averaged accuracy of land
Land cover type The highest overall accuracy (%) cover classification with a fixed time-series period and various
numbers of bands.
Model 1 (Eq. (1)) Model 2 (Eq. (2)) Model 3 (Eq. (3))
As shown in Fig. 5, in general, when the number of bands is
Cropland 89.20 89.80 90.40 fixed, the overall averaged accuracy gains with the increase of
Forest land 86.29 85.56 84.53
Shrubland 71.00 72.40 71.80
time-series length. For example, 3 band combinations from
Grassland 71.20 71.60 71.60 1-month time period could produce an overall averaged accuracy
Perennial 71.40 71.20 71.40 about 73%; when the length of the time-series is increased to
Developed 74.20 75.60 75.00 2 months, the averaged accuracy is improved by about 3% to about
Water 86.60 86.20 89.40
76%. This implies that the reduced accuracy of a smaller number of
Overall average 80.27 80.39 80.35
bands can be compensated by a longer time-series length. This
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129 121

No. of Bands: 3 No. of Bands: 4

82 82

Accuracy (%)
Accuracy (%)
80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series length (in month) Time-series length (in month)
(a) (b)
No. of Bands: 5 No. of Bands: 6
82 82

Accuracy (%)
Accuracy (%)

80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series length (in month) Time-series length (in month)
(c) (d)
No. of Bands: 7
82
Accuracy (%)

80
78
76
74
72
70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series length (in month)
(e)
Fig. 5. Overall averaged accuracy and uncertainty of band combinations grouped by a fixed number of bands and various time period. The uncertainty is the standard
deviation.

observation applies to all the other cases of a fixed number of band
combinations. However, the accuracy improvement with the
increasing time-series length is not linear, with the incremental
improvement of accuracy being reduced as time series length is in-
creased. In one case, using all 7 bands and increasing the time ser-
ies from 6 to 7 months, increasing the time-series length causes a
slight reduction (approximately 0.5%) in accuracy. This similar
phenomenon was reported by Pouliot et al. (2009) and is caused
by feature saturation.
These patterns indicate that time-series data do help improve
the land cover classification accuracy, but there are diminishing re-
turns from increasing the length and eventually the improvement
is small. For example, when 5 bands are used, the overall accuracy
increases only about 1% from time-series length 3 months to
7 months. As data with a longer time-series length would involve
more processes (such as geometrical and radiometric corrections)
and more computation, there is a trade-off of computational cost
and accuracy improvement.
The uncertainty bars shown in Fig. 5 are the standard deviation
of all the results of the possible combinations of each group. In
general, the accuracy of the combinations with fewer bands and
a shorter time-series period has a larger uncertainty than that of
the combinations with more bands and longer time-series. This
means that when fewer bands with a shorter time-series length
are used in land cover classification, choosing a ‘right’ band combi-
nation for a better accuracy is more critical than using the data of
more bands and a longer time-series.
Similarly, as shown in Fig. 6, when the time-series period is
fixed the overall averaged accuracy is higher when more bands
are utilized. There are also diminishing returns from increasing
the number of bands, particularly above 4 bands. Moreover, when
the length of time-series is 5 months or longer, there is almost no
improvement from 6 bands to 7. In the case of 7 month period, the
accuracy even decreases from 6 bands to 7 bands.
It is worth mentioning that as discussed above, more
uncertainty is associated with variable combinations of a shorter
time-series length and fewer bands. Therefore carefully selecting
the band and the time period for an optimal variable
combination to achieve the best possible accurate output is
necessary, especially when a short period and a fewer bands are
used.
Of the 12,736 possible combinations (Eq. (1)) with various num-
bers of bands and time-series periods, there are 439 combinations
whose accuracy is over 80%. As shown in Fig. 7a, among the 439
band combinations that produced higher accuracy classifications,
bands 1 and 2 have the highest occurrences – band 2 is part of
all the band combinations, and band 1 is involved in 95% of the
band combinations. They are followed by band 6. Band 5 has the
lowest occurrences, with band 4 and band 7 having just a little
bit higher occurrences than that of band 5. Therefore, bands 1, 2
and 6 have an advantage over other bands of generating higher
accuracy outputs in terms of band selection. The better perfor-
mance of Bands 1 and 2 is due to their higher (original) spatial res-
olution, and are in the spectral range of red and near infrared range
122 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

Time-series period -1 month Time-series period -2 months

82 82

Accuracy (%)
Accuracy (%)
80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(a) (b)
Time-series period -3 months Time-series period - 4 months
82 82
Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)
80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(c) (d)
Time-series period - 5 months Time-series period - 6 months
82 82
Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)

80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
3 4 5 6 7 3 4 5 6 7
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(e) (f)
Time-series period - 7 months
82
Accuracy (%)

80
78
76
74
72
70
3 4 5 6 7
No. of Bands
(g)
Fig. 6. Overall averaged accuracy and uncertainty of various number of spectral band combinations grouped by a fixed time period. The uncertainty is the standard deviation.

Histogram of individual band for Histogram of Individual month for

overall accuracy over 80% overall accuracy over 80%
500 400
Occurrence

Occurrence

400 300
300 200
200 100
100 0
0
ril

ay

ne

ly

st

er
be
Ju

gu
Ap

ob
M

Ju

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
em
Au

ct
O
pt
Se

Band
(a) (b)
Fig. 7. Histogram of individual band (a) and month (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
Histogram of number of bands for
overall accuracy over 80%
200
150
Occurrence
100
50
0 0
3 4 5 6
Number of Bands
(a)
Fig. 8. Histogram of the bands (a) and percentage (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.
Histogram of time-series period for
overall accuracy over 80%
200
Occurence
150
100
50
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Time-series length in month
(a)
Fig. 9. Histogram of time-series period (a) and percentage (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.
which are very good for vegetation identification. Band 6 is in the
range of middle infrared, and is also good for identifying
vegetation.
Fig. 7b shows individual month occurrence for the variable
combinations whose accuracy is over 80%. It can be seen that al-
most all the months have the similar number of occurrences and
no single month stands out although August and October have a
slightly higher occurrence. This means that, in terms of the time
factor, no period of the growing season is critical for land cover
classification, but rather a time-series period of EO observations
is required.
Furthermore, among the 439 variable combinations with over-
all average accuracy exceeding 80%, combinations involving 5
bands have the highest number (159), followed by combinations
of 4 bands (137) (Fig. 8a). Combinations with 7 bands are the least
common. However, in terms of classification accuracy exceeding
80%, the combinations engaging all 7 bands have the highest per-
cent, and combinations of 3 bands have the lowest (Fig. 8b). This
implies that the combinations with more bands have a higher
probability of producing a higher accuracy output. As the percent-
age of fewer bands for generating a higher accurate output is low, it
further confirms that when fewer bands are used, band selection is
essential for achieving a high accuracy result.
When time-series length was examined, combinations with
only 1 or 2 months did not produce any output with accuracy
over 80% (Fig. 9a). Band combinations with a time-series period
of 5 months have the highest occurrence, and following by those
of 6 months. As in the combinations of numbers of bands, the
longest period (7 months) has the highest probability of produc-
ing a high accuracy output. The probability of combinations with
a time-series length of 3 months for a good result is very small
and for the combinations of a time-series of length of 1 or
2 months, the probability is 0 (Fig. 9b). This further confirms that
123
Percent of number of bands for
overall accuracy over 80%
20
15
Percent (%)
10
5
7 3 4 5 6 7
Number of Bands
(b)
Percent of time-series period for
overall accuracy over 80%
25
20
Percent (%)
15
10
5
7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series length in month
(b)
data with a longer time-series length is preferable for land cover
classification.
3.4. NDVI and band combinations with various time-series lengths
As NDVI is derived from bands 1 and 2 of time-series MODIS
data, the NDVI is used to replace bands 1 and 2 in all the band com-
binations involving them (Eq. (2)) to determine if NDVI contributes
more to the accuracy of land cover classification than bands 1 and
2 directly. In this model band 1 and band 2 in the form of NDVI are
always present in the exploration. As presented in Section 3.3,
bands 1 and 2 contribute mostly to the higher accuracy results of
land cover classification. In the exploration, NDVI is combined with
one or more bands from among band 3 to 7 with various time peri-
ods of 1 month or more. As in the spectral band analysis above, the
land cover classification accuracies are assessed by two groups –
one group is a fixed number of bands from 1 to 5 with various
time-series periods in the unit of month from 1 to 7; and the other
is a fixed time-series period from 1 to 7 months with different
number of bands (3–5). The statistical results of the assessment
are shown in Figs. 10–13.
As shown in Fig. 10, the results were similar to the band
variable analysis; lower accuracy outputs are resulted from the
variable combinations of NDVI with few bands and a shorter
time-series period. The low end of the averaged accuracy of the
NDVI with one band within 1-month period is about 71%, and
the high end of the accuracy is over 80% which can be achieved
with NDVI plus 3 bands or more within a time period of 5 months
or longer or NDVI plus 2 bands or more within a time-series period
of 6 months or longer. It is noted that except for the combinations
of a shorter time-series periods of 1 or 2 months, in general, NDVI/
band variable combinations could perform the same as or even
better than that of band variable combinations (Fig. 5 vs. Fig. 10).
124 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

Overall Averaged Accuracy Overall Averaged Accuracy

No. of Bands: 1 No. of Bands: 2
82 82

Accuracy (%)
80 80

Accuracy (%)
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month Time-series period in month
(a) (b)
Overall Averaged Accuracy Overall Averaged Accuracy
No. of Bands: 3 No. of Bands: 4
82 82
Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)
80 80
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month Time-series period in month
(c) (d)
Overall Averaged Accuracy
No. of Bands: 5
82
Accuracy (%)

80
78
76
74
72
70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month
(e)
Fig. 10. Overall averaged accuracy and its uncertainty of NDVI and spectral combinations. Uncertainty is the standard deviation.

As it can be seen from Fig. 10, the uncertainty of the most combi-
nations is a little smaller compared to those of band combinations;
therefore, combinations of NDVI with the same number of bands
and the same length of the period perform similarly or even better.
Fig. 11 shows overall average accuracy and uncertainty grouped
by fixed time period in months and various numbers of bands.
When the time period is more than 4 months, the accuracy differ-
ences among various numbers of bands are small, however, when
only 1 month of data are used, the overall accuracies are only from
about 71% (NDVI plus one band) to about 76% (NDVI and all 5
bands). Hence, it is confirmed again that time-series can improve
the accuracy of land cover classification.
In total, there are 3937 possible NDVI/band combinations.
Among them, 421 (11%) combinations produced overall averaged
accuracy over 80%, with the maximum of 81%. The distribution of
the occurrences of these combinations is shown in Figs. 12 and
13. The majority combinations are those of 2–4 bands (Fig. 12a)
and 4–6 month period (Fig. 13a). The highest frequency of more
accurate classifications is NDVI plus 3 bands and 5 month period.
However, when the percentage of each combinations is considered,
the combinations with 4 or 5 bands have the similar and highest
frequency (Fig. 12b), and, in term of time scale, the combinations
with the time period of 6 months have the highest frequency
(Fig. 13b). Although these results indicate that variable combina-
tions with a longer period or more bands, in general, could have
a larger chance to produce good results, if selected correctly,
variable combinations with a shorter period (say NDVI + 2 or 3
bands, and a time series of 4 or 5 months) could also have a good
chance to reach the similar results.
Furthermore, in terms of band contribution, as shown in Fig. 14a,
band 6 had the highest representation, and then followed by bands
4 and 3. Therefore, combinations including NDVI and bands 6, 4 and
3 could have the highest probability of producing a land cover clas-
sification with higher accuracy. On the opposite, a combination
with band 5 has the lower chance of producing good results.
For time period contribution, October has the most occurrences
and is followed by the months of April, May and June. September
has the lowest frequency (Fig. 14b). Hence, choosing the months
of October, April, May or June has the better opportunity to pro-
duce a better land cover map. As April, May and June show a higher
frequency of higher accurate land cover classification, it suggests
that it is possible to generate an accurate land cover map by
mid-season from MODIS data.
3.5. Phenology metrics and band variable combinations
As discussed in Section 2.2 and shown in Fig. 3, vegetation phe-
nology metrics are derived from time-series of NDVI in a full veg-
etation growing season. Eleven phenology parameters are used to
describe a vegetation phenology pattern: they are (a) time for
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129 125

Time-series period: 1 month Time-series period: 2 month

82 82

Accuracy (%)
80 80

Accuracy (%)
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(a) (b)
Time-series period: 3 month Time-series period: 4 month
82 82
80 80

Accuracy (%)
Accuracy (%)

78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(c) (d)
Time-series period: 5 month Time-series period: 6 month
82 82
80 80
Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)

78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
No. of Bands No. of Bands
(e) (f)
Time-series period: 7 month
82
80
Accuracy (%)

78
76
74
72
70
1 2 3 4 5
No. of Bands
(g)
Fig. 11. Overall averaged accuracy and its uncertainty of NDVI and a fixed time-series period with various numbers of bands. Uncertainty is the standard deviation.

Histogram of number of bands for Percent of number of bands for overall

overall accuracy over 80% accuracy over 80%
200 25
Occurrence

Percent (%)

150 20
15
100
10
50
5
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Number of Bands Number of Bands
(a) (b)
Fig. 12. Histogram of the bands combined with NDVI (a) and percentage (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.
126 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129

Histogram of time-series period for Percent of time-series period for overall

overall accuracy over 80% accuracy over 80%
200 50

Percent (%)
Occurence
150 40
30
100
20
50 10
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series length in month Time-series length in month
(a) (b)
Fig. 13. Histogram of time-series period of band and NDVI combinations (a) and percentage (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.

Histogram of individual band for Histogram of Individual month for

overall accuracy over 80% overall accuracy over 80%
350 400
300

Occurrence
300
Occurrence

250
200 200
150 100
100
50 0
0

ril

ay

ne

ly

st

er
be
Ju
Ap

gu

ob
M

Ju
3 4 5 6 7

em
Au

ct
O
pt
Band

Se
(a) (b)
Fig. 14. Histogram of NDVI and individual band (a) and month (b) for overall averaged accuracy over 80%.

the start of the season – time for which the left edge has increased
to a user defined level (e.g., 20% of the seasonal amplitude) mea-
sured from the left minimum level; (b) time for the end of the sea-
son – time for which the right edge has decreased to a user defined
level measured from the right minimum level; (g) length of the
season; (j) base level – the average of the left and right minimum
values; time for the middle of the season – the mean value of the
times for which, respectively, the left edge has increased to the
80% level (c) and the right edge has decreased to the 80% level
(d); (e) largest data value for the fitted function during the season;
(f) seasonal amplitude – difference between the maximal value and
the base level; rate of increase at the beginning of the season – cal-
culated as the ratio between the values evaluated at the season
start and at the left 80% level divided by the corresponding time
difference; rate of decrease at the end of the season – calculated
as the ratio between the values evaluated at the season end and
at the right 80% level divided by the corresponding time difference;
(i) large seasonal integral – integral of the function describing the
season from the season start to the season end; and (h) small sea-
sonal integral – integral of the difference between the function
describing the season and the base level from season start to sea-
son end (Jönsson and Eklundh, 2003).
The phenology metrics and spectral band combinations (Eq. (3))
for land cover classification exploration consist of all phenology
parameters plus one or more bands (bands 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) within var-
ious time-series periods. In order to avoid redundancy, bands 1 and
2 are excluded from all the combinations as they were used to
compute the NDVI time series which then were used to derive
the phenology parameters. For the evaluation, like other models,
overall averaged classification accuracies are analyzed from two
groups: a group of a fixed number of bands with various time-ser-
ies period, and the other of a fixed time-series period with various
numbers of bands.
The low-end of the overall accuracies of all the combinations is
higher than that of any variable combinations of other models (Eqs.
(1) and (2)). This is expected because vegetation phenology param-
eters are derived from the data of a full vegetation growing season.
The high end of the overall accuracies is a little more than 80% that
is similar to the high-end accuracy of other variable combinations.
Fig. 15 shows the overall accuracy of a fixed number (1–5) of
bands (3–7) with various time-series periods. Although, in general,
the variable combinations with more bands and a longer time-ser-
ies period would produce a higher accuracy, the accuracy improve-
ment with the increase of the time-series period from 3 months to
longer periods is not substantial. The accuracy difference from the
lowest to the highest due to the time-series period difference is
within 2% for almost for all combinations. For example, for the
combinations of 2 bands and phenology parameters, the overall
averaged accuracy of 1 month time-series period is about 78%,
and the accuracy of 7 month period is above 79%; and for the com-
binations of 5 bands and phenology parameters, the averaged
accuracy of 1 month period is about 79%, and the accuracy of
7 month time-series is slightly lower than 80%. Although the max-
imum accuracy of the combinations can be over 80% with 4 or 5
bands and 5 month time-series period or longer, the accuracy dif-
ference among these combinations is not substantial. Therefore,
any combinations of phenology parameters with more than 2
bands and 3 month time-series period would produce accuracy
similar to those of combinations with more bands and a longer
time-series period. This is likely because phenologic metrics con-
tribute significantly in the land cover classification.
The observations above can be confirmed from Fig. 15a–e. All
the overall accuracies of all the variable combinations are within
the range of 78–80% (except the combinations of phenology
parameters plus 1 band in less than 4 month time period). It is also
noted that the uncertainties of all the combination groups are
smaller than that of the combinations of other models. This implies
that what bands used additional to phenology parameters are not
critical if a certain number of bands (P2) and time-series period
(P3 months) are utilized.
Although phenology metrics are useful information for land
cover identification, one obvious disadvantage of using the
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129 127

No. of Bands: 1 No. of Bands: 2

82 82
80 80

Accuracy (%)

Accuracy (%)
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month Time-series period in month
(a) (b)
No. of Bands 3 No. of Bands: 4
82 82
80
Accuracy (%)

80

Accuracy (%)
78 78
76 76
74 74
72 72
70 70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month Time-series period in month
(c) (d)
No. of Bands: 5
82
80
Accuracy (%)

78
76
74
72
70
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time-series period in month
(e)
Fig. 15. Overall averaged accuracy of phenology metrics and time-series period with a fixed number of spectral bands. Uncertainty is the standard deviation.

phenology parameters is that it requires the data spanning a full information. In general, higher overall accuracy was achieved with
vegetation growing season. This is a severe constraint to most opti- an increase in the number of phenology variables (Fig. 16). Simi-
cal sensors as cloud cover may prevent obtaining full season data. larly to the other tests, there is large increase in accuracy when
Furthermore, if land cover information is needed before the end of only a few metrics are used and the increase diminishes as the
vegetation growing season, phenology metric does not help at all. number of metrics used increases. For example, when 2 variables
instead of one are used, the overall accuracy improves from about
42% to 53%; when the number of variables is increased to 6, the
3.6. Vegetation phenology overall accuracy reaches about 72%. Once the number of parame-
ters included exceeds 6, the overall accuracy only increases
For the final assessment, we tested the full range of phenology slightly. For example, from 6 variables to 10 variables, the overall
metrics, combinations of one to all parameters to assess if they are accuracy increases only about 2% from 72% to about 74%.
sufficient to distinguish different land covers without additional Like the other types of variable combinations for land cover
classification, accuracy uncertainty is bigger for a smaller number
of variable combinations and accuracy variation is smaller when
Overall Averaged Accuracy
80 the number of variables is 9 or more. The choice of metrics which
70 are selected for land cover identification is not critical if a large
number of variables (>9) is used. However, when the number of
60
Accuracy (%)

variables is decreased, as shown in Fig. 15, the performance of dif-

50
ferent variable combinations in each group will be substantially
40
different.
30
Overall, phenology parameters derived from seasonal time-ser-
20 ies of EO data without other information are not the best metrics
10 for land cover identification as its overall best accuracy is lower
0 than those of other types of variable combinations. Compared to
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
phenology with band combinations of Model 3 (Eq. (3)), the accu-
Number of Phenology Metric
racy is about 5% lower. One reason of the lower accuracy is that
Fig. 16. Overall averaged accuracy and uncertainty of land cover classification with
although phenology metrics are derived from the data of a full veg-
phenology metrics. etation growing season, only two bands (MODIS bands 1 and 2) are
128 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
involved in the phenology parameters computation. As mentioned
above, one of the drawbacks of using phenology parameters for
land cover identification is that they require the data of a full veg-
etation growing season. If we need land cover information before
the end of a growing season, it cannot be fulfilled using phenology
information.
4. Conclusions
EO-based land cover mapping and its subsequent transitional
land assessment at a regional and national level require large cov-
erage and adequate spatial and temporal resolutions of EO data.
MODIS data is a reasonable choice due to its large swath, medium
spatial resolution, and its daily capability of image acquisition.
This study fully explored, with the developed data mining strat-
egy, the potential of the time-series of MODIS data (10-day cloud-
free composites) in various forms for land cover classification at a
regional level. In particular, MODIS spectral bands, and its derived
NDVI and vegetation phenology metric were studied through var-
iable combinations of different numbers of bands and various
time-series periods for optimal utilization of the time-series of
MODIS data for land cover mapping. This study concludes that:
(a) Time-series of MODIS data would produce more accurate
output than single time stamped data. The accuracy
improvement can reach about 10%.
(b) In general, variable combinations of a longer time-series
length and more spectral bands could produce the higher
accuracy outputs among all possible variable combinations;
However, reducing time period from 7 to 3 months and
spectral bands from 7 to 4 would decrease the accuracy
about only 2%, but trim down the data volume by a factor
of about 4.
(c) Variable combinations with more bands and a longer time-
series length not only produce higher accuracy outputs,
but also a smaller uncertainty, which means that when a
longer period of time-series and more bands are incorpo-
rated for land cover identification, the selection of what
bands in what period is not critical as long as the selected
data consist of enough number of bands with enough time
period. Therefore, MODIS data at early or middle season
are sufficient to produce the best possible accurate outputs
of land cover identification.
(d) Of the 4 groups of variable combinations, although the low-
end accuracy for land cover classification is different, three
of the variable combinations (Models 1, 2 and 3) can reach
the similar high-end accuracy. Although NDVI and vegeta-
tion phenology provide us with some extra options, MODIS
spectral band data by itself can produce the same highest
possible accuracy of land cover classification as those with
additional information.
(e) As the phenology parameters are derived from the data of a
full vegetation growing season, other types of variable com-
binations are preferable, especially in order to meet the
requirement of an early or middle season land cover
identification.
(f) Although promising, based on our evaluations, the useful-
ness of time-series MODIS data for land cover identification
also depends on the homogeneity–heterogeneity of the
landscape being studied. The degree of landscape homoge-
neity–heterogeneity, i.e., the degree of mixed information
within a pixel, is a function of the spatial distribution pat-
terns of land cover and the size of land parcels relative to
the MODIS pixels. Thus heterogeneity affects the accuracy
of land cover identification. Therefore, an initial analysis of
landscape of homogeneous/heterogeneity needs to be
conducted in order to determine if medium spatial resolu-
tion of EO data such as MODIS is sufficient for land cover
mapping of a region.
Aknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Drs. Ian Olthof, and Junhua Li
for their valuable comments that have improved this manuscript.
The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Prof.
Song, the associate editor of the journal for their insightful cri-
tiques, which led to significant improvements of the manuscript.
The long-term satellite record team of Canada Centre for Remote
Sensing is acknowledged for the provision of input data. This re-
search is partially financed by Canadian Space Agency through
the Government Related Initiatives Program.
References
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2012. ISO 19131 Land Cover for Agricultural
Regions of Canada, Circa 2000 – Data Product Specification. <http://
www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/display-
afficher.do?id=1343322562230&lang=eng#a8>.
Alcantara, C., Kuemmerle, T., Prishchepov, A.V., Radeloff, V.C., 2012. Mapping
abandoned agriculture with multi-temporal MODIS satellite data. Remote
Sensing of Environment 124 (2012), 334–347.
Azzalil, S., Menentil, M., 1999. Mapping isogrowth zones on continental scale using
temporal Fourier analysis of AVHRR-NDVI data. International Journal of Applied
Earth Observation and Geoinformation 1 (1), 9–20.
Bagan, H., Wang, Q., Watanabe, M., Yang, Y., Ma, J., 2005. Land cover classification
from MODIS EVI times-series data using SOM neural network. International
Journal of Remote Sensing 26 (22), 4999–5012.
Baldi, G., Nosetto, M.D., Aragón, R., Aversa, F., Paruelo, J.M., Jobbágy, E.G., 2008.
Long-term satellite NDVI data sets: evaluating their ability to detect ecosystem
functional changes in South America. Sensors 8, 5397–5425. http://dx.doi.org/
10.3390/s8095397.
Biradar, C.M., Thenkabail, P.S., Lslam, Md.A., Anputhas, M., Tharme, R., Vithanage, J.,
Alankara, R., Gunasinghe, S., 2007. Establishing the best spectral bands and
timing of imagery for land use-land cover (LULC) class separability using
Landsat ETM+ and Terra MODIS data. Canadian Journal Remote Sensing 33 (5),
421–444.
Boryan, C., Yang, Z., Mueller, R., Craig, M., 2011. Monitoring US agriculture: the US
department of agriculture, national agricultural statistics service, cropland data
layer program. Geocarto International 2011, 1–18.
Boulila, W., Farah, I.R., Ettabaa, K.S., Solaiman, B., Ghézala, H.B., 2011. A data mining
based approach to predict spatiotemporal changes in satellite images.
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13
(2011), 386–395.
Bradley, B., Mustard, J., 2008. Comparison of phenology trends by land cover class: a
case study in the Great Basin, USA. Global Change Biology 14, 334–346, doi:
10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01479.
Carrão, H., Gonçalves, P., Caetano, M., 2008. Contribution of multispectral and
multitemporal information from MODIS images to land cover classification.
Remote Sensing of Environment 112 (2008), 986–997.
Clark, M.I., Aide, T.M., Grau, H.R., Riner, G., 2010. A scalable approach to mapping
annual land cover at 250 m using MODIS time series data: a case study in the
dry chaco ecoregion of South America. Remote Sensing of Environment 114
(2010), 2816–2832.
Colditz, R.R., Saldaña, G.L., Maeda, P., Espinoza, J.A., Tovar, C.M., Victoria, A., 2012a.
Generation and analysis of the 2005 land cover map for Mexico using 250 m
MODIS data. Remote Sensing of Environment 123 (2012), 541–552.
Colditz, R.R., Schmidt, M., Conrad, C., Hansen, M.C., Dech, S., 2012b. Land cover
classification with coarse spatial resolution data to derive continuous and
discrete maps for complex regions. Remote Sensing of Environment 115 (2011),
3264–3275.
de Beurs, K.M., Henebry, G.M., 2004. Land surface phenology, climatic variation, and
institutional change: analyzing agricultural land cover change in Kazakhstan.
Remote Sensing of Environment 89 (2004), 497–509.
Donohue, R.J., Roderick, M.L., McVicar, T.R., 2008. Deriving consistent long-term
vegetation information from AVHRR reflectance data using a cover-triangle-
based framework. Remote Sensing of Environment 112 (2008), 2938–2949.
Ehrlich, D., Lambin, E.F., 1996. Broad scale land-cover classification and interannual
climatic variability. International Journal of Remote Sensing 17, 845–862.
Eklundh L., Jönsson, P., 2012. Timesat 3.1 Software manual.
Evrendilek, F., Gulbeyaz, O., 2008. Deriving vegetation dynamics of natural
terrestrial ecosystems from MODIS NDVI/EVI data over Turkey. Sensors 8,
5270–5302, doi: 10.3390/s8095270.
Evrendilek, F., Gulbeyaz, O., 2011. Boosted decision tree classifications of land cover
 F. Zhou et al. / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 84 (2013) 114–129
over Turkey integrating MODIS, climate and topographic data. International
Journal of Remote Sensing 32 (12), 3461–3483.
Fensholt, R., Proud, S.R., 2012. Evaluation of earth observation based global long
term vegetation trends — comparing GIMMS and MODIS global NDVI time
series. Remote Sensing of Environment 119 (2012), 131–147.
Friedl, M.A., McIver, D.K., Hodges, J.C.F., Zhang, X.Y., Muchoney, D., Strahler, A.H.,
Woodcock, C.E., Gopal, S., Schneider, A., Cooper, A., Baccini, A., Gao, F., Schaaf, C.,
2002. Global land cover mapping from MODIS algorithms and early results.
Remote Sensing of Environment 83 (2002), 287–302.
Fuller, D.O., 1998. Trends in NDVI time series and their relation to rangeland and
crop production in Senegal, 1987–1993. International Journal of Remote
Sensing 19 (10), 2013–2018.
Giriraj, A., Irfan-Ullah, M., Murthy, MSR., Beierkuhnlein, C., 2008. Modelling spatial
and temporal forest cover change patterns (1973–2020): a case study from
South Western Ghats (India). Sensors 8, 6132–6153, doi: 10.3390/s8106132.
Hill, M.J., Donald, G.E., 2003. Estimating spatio-temporal patterns of agricultural
productivity in fragmented landscapes using AVHRR NDVI time series. Remote
Sensing of Environment 84 (2003), 367–384.
Hilla, M.J., Donalda, G.E., Hyderb, M.W., Smith, R.C.G., 2004. Estimation of pasture
growth rate in the south west of Western Australia from AVHRR NDVI and
climate data. Remote Sensing of Environment 93 (2004), 528–545.
Hirosawa, Y., Marsh, S.E., Kliman, D.H., 1996. Application of standardized principal
component analysis to land-cover characterization using multitemporal AVHRR
data. Remote Sensing of Environment 58, 267–281.
Huttich, C., Herold, M., Schmullius, C., Egorov, V., Bartalev, S.A., 2007. Indicators of
Northern Eurasia’s land-cover change trends from SPOT-VEGETATION time-
series analysis 1998–2005. International Journal of Remote Sensing 28 (18),
4199–4206.
Jakubauskas, ME., Peterson, DL., Kastens, JH., Legates, D.R., 2002. Time series remote
sensing of landscape-vegetation interactions in the Southern Great Plains.
Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 68 (10), 1021–1030.
Jönsson, P., Eklundh, L., 2003. Seasonality extraction from satellite sensor data. In:
Chen, C.H. (Ed.), Frontiers of Remote Sensing Information Processing. World
Scientific Publishing, pp. 487–500.
Kasischke, E.S., French, N.H.F., 1997. Constraints on using AVHRR composite index
imagery to study patterns of vegetation cover in boreal forests. International
Journal of Remote Sensing 18 (11), 2403–2426.
Keane, R.E., Cary, G.J., Davies, I.D., Flannigan, M.D., Gardner, R.H., Lavorel, S., Lenihan,
J.M., Li, C., Rupp, T.S., 2004. A classification of landscape fire succession models:
spatial simulations of fire and vegetation dynamics. Ecological Modelling 179
(2004), 3–27.
Kleynhans, W., Olivier, J.C., Wessels, K.J., Salmon, B.P., van den Bergh, F., Steenkamp,
K., 2011. Detecting land cover change using an extended kalman filter on
MODIS NDVI time-series data. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE 8
(3), 507–511.
Knight, J.F., Lunetta, R.L., Ediriwickrema, J., Khorram, S., 2006. Regional scale land-
cover characterization using MODIS-NDVI 250 m multi-temporal imagery: a
phenology based approach. GIScience and Remote Sensing 43 (1), 1–23.
Kumar, U., Kerle, N., Punia, M., Ramachandra, T.V., 2010. Perceptron and decision
tree from MODIS data. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing 38 (4),
592–603, doi: 10.1007/s12524-011-0061-y.
Latifovic, R., Pouliot, D., 2005. Multitemporal land cover mapping for Canada:
methodology and products. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 31 (5), 347–
363.
Liang, S., 2001. Land-cover classification methods for multiyear AVHRR data.
International Journal of Remote Sensing 22 (8), 1479–1493.
Liu, Y., Wang, X., Guo, M., Tani, H., Matsuoka, N., Matsumura, S., 2011. Spatial and
temporal relationships among NDVI, climate factors, and land cover changes in
Northeast Asia from 1982 to 2009. GIScience and Remote Sensing 48 (3), 371–
393, doi: 10.2747/1548-1603.48.3.371.
Luo, Y., Trishchenko, A.P., Khlopenkov, K.V., 2008. Developing clear-sky, cloud and
cloud shadow mask for producing clear-sky composites at 250-meter spatial
129
resolution for the seven MODIS land bands over Canada and North America.
Remote Sensing of Environment 112 (12), 4167–4185.
Lupo, F., Linderman, M., Vanacker, V., Bartholome, E., Lambin, E.F., 2007.
Categorization of land-cover change processes based on phonological
indicators extracted from time series of vegetation index data. International
Journal of Remote Sensing 28 (11), 2469–2483.
Lv, T., Liu, C., 2010. Study on extraction of crop information using time-series
MODIS data in the Chao Phraya Basin of Thailand. Advances in Space Research
45 (2010), 775–784.
Matsuoka, M., Hayasaka, T., Fukushima, Y., Honda, Y., 2007. Land cover in East Asia
classified using Terra MODIS and DMSP OLS products. International Journal of
Remote Sensing 28 (2), 221–248.
Maxwell, S.K., Hoffer, R.M., Chapman, P.L., 2002a. AVHRR composite period
selection for land cover classification. International Journal of Remote Sensing
23, 5043–5059.
Maxwell, S.K., Hoffer, R.M., Chapman, P.L., 2002b. AVHRR channel selection for land
cover classification. International Journal of Remote Sensing 23, 5061–5073.
McGwire, K.C., Fairbanks, D.H.K., Estes, J.E., 1992. Examining regional vegetation
associations using multi-temporal AVHRR imagery. In: Proceedings of the
National ASPRS/ACSM 1992 Annual Convention, Bethesda, Maryland, pp. 304–
313.
Neeti, N., Rogan, J., Christman, Z., Eastman, J.R., Millones, M., Schneider, L., Nickl, E.,
Schmook, B., Turner II, B.L., Ghimire, B., 2012. Mapping seasonal trends in
vegetation using AVHRR-NDVI time series in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.
Remote Sensing Letters 3 (5), 433–442.
Pal, M., Mather, P.M., 2003. An assessment of the effectiveness of decision tree
methods for land cover classification. Remote Sensing of Environment 86, 554–
565.
Pouliot, D., Latifovic, R., Fernandes, R., Olthof, I., 2009. Evaluation of annual forest
disturbance monitoring using a static decision tree approach and 250 m MODIS
data. Remote Sensing of Environment 113 (2009), 1749–1759.
Quinlan, J.R., 1996. Bagging, boosting, and C4.5. In: Proceedings AAAI-96 Fourteenth
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Portland, OR.
Reed, B.C., Brown, J.F., VanderZee, D., Loveland, T.R., Merchant, J.W., Ohlen, D.O.,
1994. Measuring phenological variability from satellite imagery. Journal of
Vegetation Science 5, 703–714.
Salomonson, VV., Barnes, WL., Maymon, PW., Montgomery, HE., Ostrow, H., 1989.
MODIS: advanced facility instrument for studies of the earth as a system. IEEE
Transactions on Geoscience Remote Sensing 27 (2), 145–153.
Schneider, A., 2012. Monitoring land cover change in urban and peri-urban areas
using dense time stacks of Landsat satellite data and a data mining approach.
Remote Sensing of Environment 124 (2012), 689–704.
Wardlow, B.D., Egbert, S.L., 2008. Large-area crop mapping using time-series MODIS
250 m NDVI data: an assessment for the US Central Great Plains. Remote
Sensing of Environment 112 (2008), 1096–1116.
Wardlow, B.D., Egbert, S.L., 2010. A comparison of MODIS 250-m EVI and NDVI data
for crop mapping: a case study for southwest Kansas. International Journal of
Remote Sensing 31 (3), 805–830.
Wardlow, B.D., Egbert, S.L., Kastens, J.H., 2007. Analysis of time-series MODIS 250 m
vegetation index data for crop classification in the US Central Great Plains.
Remote Sensing of Environment 108 (2007), 290–310.
Weiss, E., Marsh, S.E., Pfirman, E.S., 2001. Application of NOAA-AVHRR NDVI time-
series data to assess changes in Saudi Arabia’s rangelands. International Journal
of Remote Sensing 22 (6), 1005–1027.
Xiao, X., Boles, S., Liu, J., Zhuang, D., Frolking, S., Li, C., Salas, W., Moore III, B., 2005.
Mapping paddy rice agriculture in southern China using multi-temporal MODIS
images. Remote Sensing of Environment 95 (2005), 480–492.
Yang, X., Lo, C.P., 2002. Using a time series of satellite imagery to detect land use
and land cover changes in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. International
Journal of Remote Sensing 23 (9), 1775–1798.
Zhang, X., Sun, R., Zhang, B., Tong, Q., 2008. Land cover classification of the North
China Plain using MODIS EVI time series. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and
Remote Sensing 63, 476–48.