Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

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Journal of Environmental Management

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

A novel approach for estimation of aboveground biomass of a carbon-rich

mangrove site in India
S.M. Ghosh a, M.D. Behera a, ∗, B. Jagadish a, A.K. Das b, D.R. Mishra c
a
Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences; Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India
b
Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad, India
c
Department of Geography, University of Georgia, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Mangroves can play a crucial part in climate change mitigation policies due to their high carbon-storing capacity.
Aboveground biomass However, the carbon sequestration potential of Indian mangroves generally remained unexplored to date. In this
Sentinel 1 and 2 study, multi-temporal Sentinel-1 and 2 data-derived variables were used to estimate the AGB of a tropical
Machine learning regression
carbon-rich mangrove forest of India. Ensemble prediction of multiple machine learning algorithms, including
Ensemble modeling
BhitarKanika wildlife sanctuary
Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosted Model (GBM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB), were used for AGB
Uncertainty assessment prediction. The multi-temporal dataset was used in two different ways to find the most suitable method of using
them. The results of the analysis showed that the modeling field measured AGB with individual date data values
results in estimates with root mean square errors (RMSE) ranging from 149.242 t/ha for XGB to 151.149 t/ha for
the RF. Modeling AGB with the average and percentile metrics of the multi-temporal image stack improves the
prediction accuracy of AGB, with RMSE ranging from 81.882 t/ha for the XGB to 74.493 t/ha for the RF. The
AGB modeling using ensemble prediction showed further improvement in accuracy with an RMSE of 72.864 t/ha
and normalized RMSE of 11.38%. In this study, the intra-seasonal variation of Sentinel-1 and 2 data for
mangrove ecosystems was explored for the first time. The variations in remotely sensed variables could be
attributed mainly to soil moisture availability and rainfall in the mangrove ecosystem. The efficiency of Sentinel-
1 and 2 data-derived variables and ensemble prediction of machine learning models for Indian mangroves were
also explored for the first time. The methodologies established in this study can be used in the future for accurate
prediction and repeated monitoring of AGB for mangrove ecosystems.

1. Introduction Aboveground Biomass (AGB) serves as a good indicator of vegetation

Mangrove forests are one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the
tropics as they can accumulate almost four times carbon per unit area
compared to other forests (Donato et al., 2011). Although mangroves
cover only 0.7% of the world’s tropical forests, their high carbon-storing
capacity emphasizes mangroves’ importance in alleviating climate
change (Giri et al., 2011). Mangrove deforestation is happening at a rate
of 0.39% per year globally (Hamilton and Casey, 2016), contributing to
around 10% of emissions from deforestation alone (Donato et al., 2011).
Interestingly, the Indian mangrove forests have increased by 181
km2–4921 km2 during 2015–2017 as per the Forest Survey of India es­
timate (FSI, 2017), in contrast to the decrease in mangrove forests of the
Indian Ocean region such as in Indonesia and Malaysia (Murdiyarso
et al., 2015).
carbon storage in forests, which almost maintains a thumb rule of 50
percent of the total biomass (Houghton et al., 2009). Therefore, the
estimation of AGB of mangrove forests would provide more insight into
its understudied carbon dynamics. Most of the mangrove forests are
distributed in low-income developing or underdeveloped countries.
Therefore, they are understudied concerning their carbon sequestration
potential, and more so, using multi-sensor and multi-temporal satellite
data combined with extensive field measurements. AGB estimation
studies increasingly integrate field measurements to remote
sensing-based models that provide estimates over time and space (Dash
et al., 2020). Studies have reported a strong correlation between foliage
biomass and trunk biomass and utilized it to predict AGB using vege­
tation indices (VIs) (Roy, 1989; Günlü et al., 2014). However, vegetation
canopy reflectances used to compute VIs get saturated at higher biomass

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mdbehera@coral.iitkgp.ac.in (M.D. Behera).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112816
Received 3 March 2021; Received in revised form 11 May 2021; Accepted 16 May 2021
Available online 21 May 2021
0301-4797/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S.M. Ghosh et al.
levels making empirical VI-based AGB estimations erroneous (Mutanga
and Skidmore, 2004). Longer wavelength L-band SAR data demon­
strated a good correlation for tropical forest AGB (Behera et al., 2015).
In contrast, C-band SAR data suffers from the saturation problem at a
low biomass range (Imhoff, 1993).
In recent years, satellite-based AGB estimation research received a
substantial boost with the availability of high-resolution Sentinel 1 and
2 data. The Sentinel-2 derived VIs demonstrated better relationships
with AGB in comparison to Sentinel-1 SAR backscatter values (Ghosh
and Behera, 2018; Castillo et al., 2017; Chang and Shoshany, 2016).
Berninger et al. (2018) used Sentinel-1 and PALSAR data together for
AGB estimation of mangroves in Kalimantan (Indonesia) and observed
up to 353 t/ha AGB with a correlation of 0.63. Castillo et al. (2017)
measured up to 346 t/ha AGB in Palawan (Philippines) with a high
correlation (0.84) using Sentinel-1 and 2 data synergy and machine
learning algorithms. However, they did not consider the impact of the
high intra-seasonal variability of the satellite data on AGB estimate.
The VIs derived from optical sensors have considerable intra-
seasonal variability (Gonzalez Del Castillo et al., 2018; Ardö et al.,
2014; Chikoore and Jury, 2010). Multiple studies conducted on Indian
tropical forests showed a rise in VIs values in the post-rainy season (Al
Balasmeh and Karmaker, 2020; Nischitha et al., 2014; Chandrasekar
et al., 2006), while the VIs of mangrove forests have shown a prominent
negative trend (Songsom et al., 2019; Pastor-Guzman et al., 2018). As
field sampling for AGB data collection can last from a few days
(Kachamba et al., 2017) to months (Gillerot et al., 2018) to years (Mauya
et al., 2015; Hamdan et al., 2014) depending on the accessibility and
extent of the study site, there could be several remote sensing datasets
available for correlation over the period. As there could be high intra-
and inter-seasonal variations of satellite data due to varied weather
conditions over a period, the selection of an appropriate method for
using multi-temporal data in AGB estimation modeling is challenging
and may affect the estimation accuracy.
Sentinel sensors provide several overpasses during a period of field
measurements. Thus, the accuracy of AGB estimation using Sentinel
series data would depend on the temporal data use. Huang et al. (2018)
have shown multi-temporal Sentinel-1 data use by averaging to improve
the AGB estimate’s accuracy. However, the arithmetic mean of the
multi-temporal data may provide misleading information about the data
trends in the absence of any prior knowledge on data distribution values
(Derrible and Ahmad, 2015) and is also affected by extreme values
(Gupta, 2012). Forkuor et al. (2020) used single-year time series values
of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data for a tropical savannah forest to show
that dry season images are the most crucial variables in AGB estimation.
Wittke et al. (2018) showed that multi-temporal features did not
improve the biophysical parameter retrieval accuracy for a boreal forest.
However, the temporal variation of Sentinel-2 data-derived indices and
any appropriate method to handle the data has not been studied yet for
AGB estimation of mangrove forests.
AGB estimation using remote sensing variables is generally achieved
using parametric regression (Ali et al., 2015). Most studies assume that
AGB and its optical response follow a standard empirical relationship,
either linear, logarithmic, or polynomial (Feliciano et al., 2017; Heis­
kanen, 2006; Sinha et al., 2016). Though these methods are simple to
implement and produce reasonably accurate results, the AGB and its
reflectance response captured in remote sensing images tend to be more
convoluted (Ali et al., 2015). Recent advances in machine learning al­
gorithms have enabled researchers to accurately model the complex
relationship between AGB and remote sensing variables (Ghosh and
Behera, 2021; Martins Silva et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019). Decision
tree-based models such as Random Forest have shown great promise in
forest biophysical parameters estimation (Breiman, 2001), including
AGB (Ghosh et al., 2020; Ghosh and Behera, 2018; Furtado et al., 2016).
Two other decision tree-based machine learning models, gradient
boosted models (Friedman, 2002) and extreme gradient boosting (Chen
and Guestrin, 2016), have been used successfully in multiple studies for
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Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816
vegetation parameter estimations (Dube et al., 2014; Elith et al., 2008;
Pham et al., 2020; Samat et al., 2020). Different machine learning al­
gorithms often produce slightly different but comparable results (Gar­
cía-Gutiérrez et al., 2015; Ghosh et al., 2020). However, an ensemble
model can combine the predictions from different algorithms and pro­
duce more robust results, such as for classification (Du et al., 2012;
Tinoco et al., 2013) and forest parameter estimation (Zhang et al.,
2018).
Mangroves can play a crucial role in UNFCCC’s Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) program to miti­
gate climate change (Ahmed and Glaser, 2016). Aziz et al.’s (2016)
study on Malaysia’s Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve showed the
implementation of REDD + could help in maintaining ecological and
socio-economic sustainability. Preparation of AGB maps is a crucial
component in that aspect as they can help identify the main factors
behind carbon emission from the forest (Corona-Núñez et al., 2021).
There is an urgent need to prepare the AGB maps for the mangroves of
India to make them an integral part of the REDD + program. The
methodological framework of this work was aimed at achieving multiple
objectives that are crucial for accurate estimation of mangrove forest
AGB, such as (i) an uncertainty assessment of the field measured data
with 304 stratified random quadrats, (ii) finding a suitable method for
the use of the multi-temporal data to address field estimated
AGB-remote sensing variable correlation, and (iii) use of ensemble
prediction of machine learning models in AGB estimation. The study was
undertaken in the mangrove forests of Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary
(BWS), Odisha, located on India’s eastern coast at the delta of Brahmani
and Baitarani rivers (Parida and Kumari, 2020).
2. Materials and methodology
2.1. Study area and field data collection
Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary (BWS) is an estuary located in
eastern India adjoining the Bay of Bengal in the delta of Brahmani and
Baitarani rivers (Figure 1). BWS accommodates 75 plant species, of
which most are mangroves, covering an area of 130 km2 (Pattanaik
et al., 2008). BWS experiences a typical warm and humid tropical
climate with maximum temperature in May and minimum temperature
in January. It receives an average annual rainfall of about 1642 mm,
most of which are received in the monsoon season from June to October.
BWS is surrounded by 81 villages, triggering anthropogenic pressure on
the mangrove forests (Pattanaik et al., 2008). Bhitarkanika Wildlife
Sanctuary accommodates furious crocodiles and poisonous snakes such
as King Cobra and Python, making field measurements extremely risky.
The diurnal tidal effect leads to periodic flooding and devoid of
ground vegetation. A reconnaissance survey, done prior to the field
campaign, was used to stratify the study areas to cover the heterogeneity
in terms of dominant compositions with varied density and girth classes.
A field survey was conducted from November to December 2018, and
measurements from 304 stratified random quadrats (each of 20 × 20 m2,
0.04 ha) were collected on the circumference at breast height (CBH) of
each plant. CBH was converted to the diameter at breast height (D), and
wood density was used from the global wood density database (Chave
et al., 2009) to estimate AGB as per Equation (1) (Komiyama et al.,
2005). Komiyama et al. (2005) used field data for ten mangrove species
with a total of 104 stems from five study sites to establish the relation­
ships, which is commonly used for mangrove AGB estimation (Pham
et al., 2018; Kamruzzaman et al., 2017; Pham and Brabyn, 2017; Donato
et al., 2011).
AGB = 0.251∗ρ∗D2.46 (1)
where ρ = wood density (in gm/cm3) obtained from the specific gravity
information as per Chave et al. (2009); and D = Diameter at breast
height (in cm).
S.M. Ghosh et al. Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

Fig. 1. Location of Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary (BWS) in Eastern India with field quadrate locations shown as yellow coloured dots, overlaid on a natural color
composite of Sentinel 2A images; A network of creeks connect the mangrove forests. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the Web version of this article.)

2.2. Uncertainty in field estimated data

2.3. Satellite data and pre-processing
Field estimated AGB are susceptible to multiple sources of errors
The Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data were procured from Copernicus
(Chave et al., 2004). It was not feasible to directly follow the methods of
scientific data hub (Table 1) for post monsoon dry winter season as it
Chave et al. (2004) in the current study as they had a plethora of
matches with the field data collection period. It is also the time when
multi-temporal field measured data and harvested tree data, which are
Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 variables were found to be mostly correlated
not available for this study. However, two sources of errors were
with the AGB (Forkuor et al., 2020). Six sets of dual-polarized (VV and
addressed, such as (i) error due to measurement of individual trees, (ii)
VH) ground range detected Sentinel-1 data were procured from
error due to the use of a specific allometric equation. Chave et al. (2004,
November 5, 2018 to January 4, 2019, with 12 days temporal resolu­
2014) showed that measurement errors for trees with >10 cm diameter
tion. All tiles of Sentinel-1 data were calibrated, terrain corrected, and
generally stand around 50% in the tropics. Chave et al. (2014) proposed
resampled to a pixel size of 20 × 20 m2 using SNAP (Sentinel Application
a method to calculate the quadrat level uncertainty based on the indi­
Platform) software. Multi-temporal speckle filtering was applied to the
vidual tree measurement error (equation (2)).
stacked data as it has the advantage of obtaining a better result than
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
∑ 2 single date filtering while preserving the edge information and essential
i [AGBest (i)]
CVplot = CV × ∑ (2) details. Gamma MAP filtering was chosen due to its suitability for
i AGBest (i)
vegetated areas (Lopes et al., 1990; Huang and Genderen van, 1996).
The intensity values were converted into decibel for further utilisation.
where AGBest (i) is the AGB of the i-th tree in the quadrat, CV is the
The Level-1C orthorectified Sentinel-2 cloud-free images acquired on
average uncertainty of each tree, i.e., 50% and CVplot is the quadrat-
16th, 21st, 26th November, 11th, 26th, December 31, 2018, and
based uncertainty. The uncertainty also depends on the allometric
January 5, 2019 were subjected to atmospheric correction using the
equation. In this study, the Komiyama et al. (2005) model was chosen as
SEN2COR processor (Louis et al., 2016). As Sentinel-2 data has 13 bands
it has been successfully implemented in several mangrove studies. Two
at different spatial resolutions, they were resampled to 20 × 20 m2. This
global models (Equations (3) and (4)) by Chave et al. (2005) and another
datasets were used for further processing and eventually AGB modeling
model (Equation (5)) developed by Ray et al. (2011) for the Sunderbans
(see Figure 2).
mangrove were selected to estimate the AGB. Only the tallest canopy
height was measured in the field, and that was used in the equations as
2.4. Generation of vegetation indices (VIs)
the H. The standard deviation from these AGB measurements was ob­
tained to get the uncertainty in the allometry. The total uncertainty
Eight VIs including normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI),
combined from two sources was estimated as per the method followed
soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), green NDVI (GNDVI), normalized
by Saatchi et al. (2011), assuming that all the errors are independent and
random (Equation (6)).
Table 1
AGB = 0.0509∗ρ∗D2 ∗H (3) Details of the Sentinel 1 and 2 dataset used is AGB estimates.
( ) Data Satellite Processing Acquisition date
AGB = ρ∗exp − 1.349 + 1.980 ∗ ln D + 0.207 ∗ (ln D)2 − 0.0281 ∗ (ln D)3 type level
(4) SAR Sentinel- GRD 5th, 17th, 29th November; 11th,
1A December 23, 2018; January 4, 2019
AGB = 1.0471∗ρ− 1.37
∗D0.864 ∗H 0.635 (5) Optical Sentinel- L1C 16th, 26th November; December 26,
2A 2018; January 5, 2019
( )1/2 Sentinel- L1C 21st November; 11th, December 31,
Uncertaintytotal = Umeasure 2 + Uallometry 2 (6) 2B 2018

3
S.M. Ghosh et al. Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

Fig. 2. Methodological flow diagram for AGB estimation of BWS showing the steps of data pre-processing, data processing and AGB modeling using multiple machine
learning models.

difference index produced using band 4 and 5 of Sentinel-2 data
(NDI45), inverted red-edge chlorophyll index (IRCEI), transformed
normalized difference vegetation index (TNDVI), enhanced vegetation
index (EVI), and two bands enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) were
generated using the surface reflectance data for individual date images
(Table 2). The backscatter value ratio, average, and the square root of
the product were generated using Sentinel-1 VV and VH polarised data.
Temporal coverage of both Sentinel-1 and 2 data, including VIs and
SAR backscatter images, were matched with the period of field mea­
surements. VIs and SAR backscatter values for all the quadrat locations
were incurred by averaging all pixels extracted with a 30 m radius center
of quadrat locations to accommodate any positional error of GPS. The
variable values from single date images were extracted at first. The mean
and the median values represented by the 50th percentile were extracted
further using the multi-temporal image stacks for the VIs and the
backscatters. The 10th and 90th percentile metrics of the multi-temporal
image stack were also extracted to accommodate extreme values of
either end.
2.5. AGB estimation using ensemble modeling
The modeling was done twice with two different sets of input vari­
ables. At first, all single date values for VIs and SAR backscatter were
Table 2
List of vegetation indices selected for AGB estimation. The number followed ’B’
is the actual location of the band in Sentinel-2 data. The numbers in subscripts
represent the central wavelength value of the spectral band.
Index Formulation (R = reflectance) Reference
used together to establish the models (VSall). Next, the mean, median,
and percentile metrics of the multitemporal image stack were used
together as predictor variables (VSmeanp). Apart from the remote sensing
variables, two other variables were included in the analysis. First, the
distance from the boundary, which can account for the external influ­
ence on AGB content. Second, the impact of salinity by including the
distance from the nearest creek. The root mean square error (RMSE) and
the coefficient of determination between field-measured and model-
estimated AGB values were obtained to evaluate the model accuracy.
The normalized RMSEs were also derived for comparison with the re­
sults from other studies. F-test was conducted by comparing the sum of
squared errors of the model predicted values based on both VSmeanp and
VSall variables to check if the results from models with VSmeanp and VSall
variables have a statistically significant difference. The RF, GBM, and
XGB were implemented individually using the CARET package in R
statistical software (Kuhn, 2008). Then, based on the accuracy, the
prediction of each model was given a weight. The final predictions were
made using the individual model prediction and associated weight. An
uncertainty of prediction was also prepared using the coefficient of
variation between predictions. AGB maps were generated using indi­
vidual models. The final map was prepared by using the weights
calculated as:
∑ Ri Pi
B= ∑N
i=1 Ri
where B is the final prediction; Pi is the prediction of model i; Ri is the
coefficient of determination of the model i; and N is the total number of
models in the ensemble analysis, i.e., 3 in this case.

NDVI [(B8)0.842 – (B4)0.665)/((B8)0.842 + (B4)0.665] (Rouse et al., 1973) 3. Results

GNDVI [(B8)0.842 – (B3)0.560)/((B8)0.842 + (B3)0.560)] (Gitelson and
Merzlyak, 1996) 3.1. Field data
IRCEI [(B7)0.783 – (B4)0.665)/((B5)0.705/(B6)0.740] (Frampton et al.,
2013)
NDI45 [(B5)0.705 – (B4)0.665)/((B5)0.705 + (B4)0.665] (Delegido et al., 2011)
Five species dominate the BWS mangrove forest, such as Heritiera
TNDVI [((B8)0.842 – (B4)0.665)/((B8)0.842 + (B4)0.665) (Tucker, 1979) fomes, Excoecaria agallocha, Avicennia officinalis, Ceriops decandra
+ 0.5]1/2 Cynometra irripa, of which the first three forms the top canopy. In
SAVI (1+L)*[(B8)0.842 – (B4)0.665)/((B8)0.842 + (Huete, 1988) contrast, Ceriops decandra and Cynometra irripa generally remain
(B4)0.665 + L]; L = 0.5
understorey. Heritiera fomes occur as the most dominant species, fol­
EVI 2.5*[(B8)0.842 – (B4)0.665)/((B8)0.842 + 6* (Huete et al., 1999)
(B4)0.665–7.5*(B2)0.490 + 1] lowed by Excoecaria agallocha, which comprises nearly 90 percent of
EVI2 2.5*[(B8)0.842 – (B4)0.665)/((B8)0.842 + 2.4* (Jiang et al., 2008) the species distribution (Figure 3a). Avicennia officinalis have massive
(B4)0.665 + 1] growth with high AGB and sparse distribution in the top canopy.

4
S.M. Ghosh et al.
Fig. 3. Charts showing basic statistics of field data - (a) Dominant species and their frequency (b) DBH statistics, maximum (left), mean (middle), and minimum
(right), of different species (c) AGB range and the related number of plots.
Sonneratia apetala are found abundantly along river banks. Avicennia
officinalis has the highest average diameter (8–87 cm), followed by
Heritiera fomes (3–50 cm), Excoecaria agallocha (3–50 cm), Cynometra
irripa (3–32 cm), and Ceriops decandra (Figure 3b). Tree density per
quadrat varied from 26 to 140, with seventy-seven quadrats accom­
modated 60–100 trees per 0.04ha quadrat (Figure 3c). The AGB density
of quadrats was generally low (Figure 3d). The majority of the quadrats
have an AGB up to 400 t/ha, with fewer quadrats accounting for very
low (<100 t/ha) or high (>500 t/ha) AGB values. Interestingly, it was
noticed that few individual trees of Avicennia officinalis species in a
quadrat contribute to very high AGB. In contrast, several individuals of
Excoecaria agallocha contribute to low biomass in a quadrat. As ex­
pected, the tree density and AGB values per quadrat followed an inverse
relation owing to tree age and maturity.
Fig. 4. Importance of top 20 variables while using individual date image values (VSall) as predictor in (a) GBM (b) RF and (c) XGB model. TNDVI, GNDVI and NDVI
shows more importance than other VIs and backscatter values.
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Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816
3.2. Uncertainty in the field measured data
The uncertainty in the field measured AGB data were estimated using
two primary sources of possible errors – (i) individual tree measurement
error (ii) allometric equation error. The uncertainty at the quadrat level
varied with an average of 15% (5%–37%), which could be due to the
erroneous CBH measurement of trees in the field. The highest average
AGB of 253.08 t/ha was found using Equation (4) (Chave et al., 2005),
the lowest average AGB of 117.5 t/ha was estimated using Equation (5)
(Ray et al., 2011), resulting in an allometric equation uncertainty of
30%. Thus, the overall uncertainty of field estimated AGB was up to 33%
as per Equation (6) (Saatchi et al., 2010). The field estimated AGB un­
certainty was combined with the ensemble model predicted AGB as per
the Vorster et al. (2020) methodology to get the final propagated
S.M. Ghosh et al.
uncertainty.
3.3. Ensemble modeling of AGB
The variable importance plots for VSall variables showed VIs gener­
ally worked as crucial variables for all three models. The influence of
NDVI, GNDVI, and TNDVI was more prominent among the VI variables
(Figure 4). In the models with VSmeanp variables, the average values of
NDVI and TNDVI multi-temporal stack come across as the most useful
variables. Their influence was greater than the rest of the variables. The
percentile metrics of multi-temporal image stacks also showed some
importance. However, SAR variables were primarily absent from the top
20 essential variables list for all models (Figure 5). The non-remotely
sensed variables, i.e., distance from boundary and distance from the
creek, also did not appear in the list of essential variables, signifying
their lack of importance.
The modeling with the VSall variables showed poor results for AGB
prediction (Table 3). The model training RMSE remained considerably
high, ranging from 158.04 t/ha for the RF model to 160.57 t/ha for the
XGB model. The model validation RMSE was also similar, ranging from
149.242 t/ha for the XGB model to 151.149 t/ha for the RF model. The
coefficient of determination between field estimated and model pre­
dicted AGB also remained low for model training and validation. GBM
model showed the best coefficient of determination during model
training with a value of 0.18. The coefficient of determination value for
validation remained at 0.14 for all the models.
The model training results were also similar for all models estab­
lished using VSmeanp variables (Table 4). RF showed the highest coeffi­
cient of determination and RMSE with values of 0.75 and 75.584 t/ha,
respectively. The model training results of RF and XGB were similar. In
model validation results, RF showed the least RMSE of 74.493 t/ha and
the highest coefficient of determination of 0.74. Between the other two
algorithms, GBM showed results similar to RF, but XGB showed
considerably poor results. The coefficient of determination values for the
model validation was taken into consideration for the calculation of the
weights for the final prediction. The RMSE and coefficient of determi­
nation improved to 72.864 t/ha and 0.76, respectively, when weighted
average predicted values were plotted against the field estimated AGB
values. The result of the F-test shows that the difference in predicted
values for VSmeanp and VSall variables based models are statistically
significant with a p-value less than 0.01 (Table 5).
As multiple predictions were considered to get the final estimated
AGB, the prediction uncertainty was calculated as the standard devia­
tion of all the measurements. The uncertainties in the field estimated
and model predicted AGB were shown in the correlation plot through
Fig. 5. Importance of top 20 variables while using average and percentile values (VSmeanp) as predictor in the (a) GBM (b) RF and (c) XGB model.
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Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816
error bars (Figure 6). The prediction error varied widely between plots
from 1.261 t/ha to 107.411 t/ha.
3.4. Generation of AGB maps for BWS
The AGB maps were prepared only for models with VSmeanp variables
as they showed better performance in AGB prediction. Most of the
Bhitarkanika Wildlife Sanctuary (BWS) demonstrated high AGB density
by all models, and they showed a similar trend (Figure 7). The majority
of the BWS showed AGB density between 200 and 600 t/ha, while low
AGB areas could be found across edges between forest and non-forest,
and forest and water. The areas with very high AGB were at the core
of the forest with the highest distance from the boundary. The variation
in model prediction was the measure of prediction uncertainty. It was
measured as the coefficient of variation in percentage. The final un­
certainty was calculated as per the Vorster et al. (2020) to include the
error propagated from field estimation of AGB (Figure 8). The total
uncertainty in AGB predictions was found to be within 30–50%. Most
parts of the study area showed uncertainty in the lower range. Only a
small portion of the area exhibited a higher uncertainty, mainly near the
forest boundary or the creeks.
4. Discussion
4.1. High AGB in BWS mangrove forest and uncertainty estimation
BWS accommodates high average AGB as observed from both field
data analysis and remote sensing-based estimation, wherein AGB den­
sity varied from 53 t/ha to 741 t/ha for field-collected data. Pandey et al.
(2019) reported that the Sonneratia apetala and Cynometra iripa species
have the highest AGB of 643.12 t/ha and 652.14 t/ha, respectively,
while Bal and Banerjee (2020) reported total biomass of 866.67 ±
166.10 t/ha in BWS. These numbers contrast to a very low AGB of
3–50.9 t/ha (Joshi and Ghose, 2014; Manna et al., 2014), up to 113.67
t/ha (Banerjee et al., 2013) reported from proximal Sundarbans
mangrove forest in India. The high AGB density of BWS can be attributed
to its species composition, as indicated by Pandey et al. (2019). The low
AGB reported by Manna et al. (2014) for Sundarbans attributed to a
young Avicennia marina plantation, while Joshi and Ghose (2014)
conducted the study on smaller trees. BWS is dominated by mature
Heritiera fomes (DBH up to 87 cm) and large Avicennia officinalis (DBH
up to 50 cm) trees, accounting for a higher AGB in contrast to the
Sunderbans mangroves. However, AGB density close to or higher than
500 t/ha is quite common in the mangroves of the Indo-Pacific region
(Kauffman and Donato, 2012). The AGB density of mangroves reported
S.M. Ghosh et al. Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

Table 3
Performance of the models with the training data and the validation data while using individual date image values as predictor.
Method Model R2 Model RMSE (t/ha) Model nRMSE (%) Validation R2 Validation RMSE (t/ha) Validation nRMSE (%)

XGB 0.13 160.57 22.26 0.14 149.242 22.07

GBM 0.18 158.42 21.96 0.14 150.427 22.25
RF 0.16 158.04 21.91 0.14 151.149 22.35

Table 4
Performance of the models with the training data and the validation data while using mean, median and percentile values as predictor.
Method Model R2 Model RMSE (t/ha) Model nRMSE (%) Validation R2 Validation RMSE (t/ha) Validation nRMSE (%)

XGB 0.73 79.853 11.07 0.69 81.882 12.11

GBM 0.74 76.495 10.6 0.74 75.102 11.11
RF 0.75 75.584 10.48 0.74 74.493 11.02

AGB. It may happen due to the high temporal variation of remote

Table 5 sensing variables which was observed in the study area. Even for the
F-score of the models for the predicted AGB values with validation data to test
cloud-free, atmospherically corrected data from the same sensor, there
the statistical significance of the AGB prediction by different models.
are considerable variations in VIs and backscatter values within 50 days
Method F-score p-value (from F-table) (Figures 9 and 10). The vegetation reflectance varies depending on
XGB 2.612 <0.01 multiple factors such as moisture content, plant type, and orientation of
GBM 3.388 <0.01 vegetation canopy (Roy, 1989). As a result, the remote sensing param­
RF 3.506 <0.01
eters captured by sensors would also differ from time to time. In this
study, Sentinel-1 backscatter and Sentinel-2 derived VIs showed
from other regions in Southeast Asia includes Vietnam from 30 to 596 considerable variation, even though the observation period was only
t/ha (Pham and Brabyn, 2017), Philipines from 1.1 to 346 t/ha (Castillo around two months. In the winter season, VIs generally had a negative
et al., 2017), Indonesia and Malayasia around 400 t/ha (Hamdan et al., trend due to mangrove phenology (Pastor-Guzman et al., 2018; Songsom
2014; Wicaksono et al., 2016). Thus, the AGB density of BWS mangroves et al., 2019). However, the change was considerably less. Roy et al.
is on par with other studies conducted in other parts of the Indo-Pacific (2017) showed that for Sentinel-2 MSI, changes in sensor viewing and
region. sun angle affect the surface reflectance. However, the sensor viewing
The accuracy of remote sensing-based AGB estimates was evaluated angle and sun angle for the study area remains almost the same
by the field-based AGB estimates considering they are the true values. throughout the study period (Table 6). As the time interval is too small
However, the field-based methods are prone to several errors, which for any significant shift in species composition and its orientation, much
introduces uncertainty in the field estimated AGB (Chave et al., 2004). of the change in indices values can be traced to the rainfall events in
Therefore, these errors propagate to the remote sensing-based AGB es­ BWS. Pastor-Guzman et al. (2018) analyzed the variation of EVI, NDVI,
timate when using a model (Chen et al., 2015; Vorster et al., 2020). GNDVI for the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, over three years and found
Thus, estimation of uncertainty of field measurements offers an insight that mangrove greenness reacts to rainfall with a lag. The VI curves
into the accuracy assessment of the AGB prediction using remote sensing showed alternate high and low values from November to early January.
data. The high uncertainty (up to 33%) with the field-based AGB esti­ Guan et al. (2015) and Suepa et al. (2016) have shown that the variation
mate was attributed to two sources of errors that are either avoidable or
should be taken care of in future studies. Measurements of accurate AGB
density of the forest with low uncertainty depend on the quadrat size.
Larger the quadrat size lesser the error (Chave et al., 2004). Hetzer et al.
(2020) showed that smaller quadrats could be efficient if their numbers
are large enough. Chave et al. (2004) used the standard deviation of AGB
for 1 ha quadrats and their smaller subquadrats to examine the effect of
quadrat size on AGB estimation uncertainty. In the absence of
bigger-size quadrats or subquadrats, this uncertainty cannot be quanti­
fied. Smaller quadrats (0.04 ha) ought to be replaced with either larger
ones (≥1ha) or more representative field quadrats to minimize errors in
the AGB estimate (Chave et al., 2004; Hetzer et al., 2020). However,
risky ground conditions with crocodiles and poisonous snakes often
hinder field measurement in these protected areas where many other
conservation impositions prevail. As the primary source of allometric
uncertainty was the sample of harvested trees used to build the equation,
Chave et al. (2004) concluded that these uncertainties could not be
investigated further without detailed information on harvested trees. It
is difficult to build new allometric equations for a protected site like
BWS, as the harvest of trees is strictly prohibited. Therefore, the un­
certainty due to the use of allometric equations will remain.

4.2. Temporal variation of remote sensing variables

Fig. 6. Correlation plot of ensemble model predicted AGB and field estimated
The individual single date images do not work as a good predictor of AGB with uncertainties showed as error bars.

7
S.M. Ghosh et al. Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

Fig. 7. Maps showing the AGB values (in t/ha) estimated using (a) GBM model (b) RF model (c) XGB model and (d) Ensemble model. Most of the area show a AGB
between 200 and 600 t/ha.

of VIs is closely related to the seasonal rainfall in tropical regions, of­

fering a distinct intra-seasonal variation of VIs.
Similarly, it was observed here that the amount of precipitation and
soil moisture affected the Sentinel-2 based VI values. The Global Pre­
cipitation Measurement (GPM) mission (Skofronick-Jackson et al.,
2017) data revealed that the study area received very little rainfall in
November 2018 (Figure 11a). As a result, VIs values were also reduced
to the lowest level in the early days of December 2018. Further, a sig­
nificant amount of rainfall in mid-December 2018 resulted in an in­
crease in greenness for the subsequent days. Yet, due to no rain in late
December 2018 and early January 2019, indices values decreased
further. The soil moisture values obtained from Soil Moisture Active
Passive (SMAP) mission (Entekhabi et al., 2010) data showed a declining
trend for November 2018 (Figure 11b). However, in December 2018, the
pattern stabilized for a period coinciding with precipitation, reflecting
an increase in the VIs values. Again in early January 2019, soil moisture
value decreased along with the VIs values. The fluctuations in soil
moisture values could vary as per the diurnal fluctuation in creek areas
in BWS. The effect of spatial heterogeneity on the soil moisture retrieval
from SMAP data was pointed out by Abbaszadeh et al. (2019). As the
BWS has a complex surrounding, which includes mangrove forest,
agricultural land, human settlements, and a considerable portion of
water bodies, it affects the soil moisture retrieval and results in high
variability.

4.3. Efficiency of sentinel data in AGB estimation

Fig. 8. AGB prediction uncertainty map combining the field measurement and
model predicted uncertainty. Most of the area show an uncertainty between 30
and 40%. In this study, VI-based model estimates showed a lower RMSE value
and a better coefficient of determination between observed and pre­
dicted AGB than SAR data. Previous works have demonstrated that VIs
generally saturate at higher AGB (Reddersen et al., 2014; Tilly et al.,
2015). However, Sentinel-2 data combines better spatial, temporal, and

8
S.M. Ghosh et al. Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816

Fig. 9. Variation pattern of (a) EVI, (b) EVI2, (c) SAVI, (d) NDI45, (e) GNDVI, (f) NDVI, (g) IRECI, and (h) TNDVI over field measured AGB location plots during Nov
17, 2018 to January 05, 2019. The solid line represents the average value of all the location. Error bars shows the range as twice standard deviation.

Fig. 10. Variation pattern of SAR backscatter values (sigma nought) for (a) VH and (b) VV polarization over field measured AGB location plots during Nov 05, 2018
to January 04, 2019 period of field visit. The solid line represents the average value of all the location. Error bars shows the range as twice standard deviation.

Table 6
Average viewing angle and sun angle obtained from the Sentinel-2 data for the study area.
November 16, 2018 November 21, 2018 November 26, 2018 December 11, 2018 December 26, 2018 December 31, 2018 January 05, 2019

View Zenith 5.912264 5.818648 5.964154 5.853759 5.9123 5.876508 5.906553

View Azimuth 97.75385 98.76692 97.92948 98.80016 97.76328 98.80896 97.74898
Sun Zenith 42.50941 43.69067 44.77271 47.20753 48.24582 48.24353 48.08
Sun Azimuth 157.1123 157.4463 157.5494 156.9239 155.0666 154.2573 153.3256

spectral resolution than other available optical datasets. It also has the
advantage of three well-placed red-edge bands that make it more suit­
able for monitoring vegetation health information AGB estimation (Han
et al., 2017). Sentinel-based VIs have already demonstrated their po­
tential in estimating AGB in recent studies (Chen et al, 2018, 2019;
Quirós Vargas et al., 2019). However, it was not possible to analyze the
influence of individual bands of Sentinel-2, as they were not used indi­
vidually in this work.
Sentinel-1 C-band SAR data have only two polarization, such as VH
and VV. In forests, the incoming vertical polarized radiation would
mostly get depolarized and backscattered in horizontal polarization,
allowing VH polarization to have a better correlation with AGB, as

9
S.M. Ghosh et al.
Fig. 11. (a) Daily Rainfall and (b) Soil Moisture variation plotted against average values of vegetation indices during November 01, 2018–January 05, 2019.
observed here as the best predictor. Since both Sentinel C-band SAR and
optical data mainly deal with leaf properties due to low penetrating
power, their combined use demonstrated little scope for improvement in
AGB estimation accuracy. However, as VIs are a better predictor of fo­
liage properties and a strong relationship between foliage biomass and
trunk biomass, the VIs emerged as better predictors of AGB.
4.4. AGB estimation accuracy compared to previous works
The correlation between observed and predicted AGB obtained in
this study is higher than most other mangroves AGB estimation studies
which did not use Sentinel-1 and 2 data. The normalized RMSE of
13.82% reported by Pham and Brabyn (2017) was higher than this
study. Hamdan et al. (2014) obtained a normalized RMSE of 10.23%,
but they used PALSAR L-band data, which is more suitable for AGB
estimation but not freely available. Castillo et al. (2017) study used
Sentinel 1 and 2 data for AGB mapping of a mangrove area with
field-estimated AGB up to 346 t/ha. The normalized RMSE (13.09%)
observed by Castillo et al. (2017) was marginally higher than this study.
Navarro et al. (2019) got the lowest RMSE and best coefficient of
determination between observed and predicted. However, the field AGB
range for Navarro et al. (2019) was only up to 36.93 t/ha. This study
showed that even for very high AGB density mangrove forests, AGB
could be estimated with high accuracy using only Sentinel-1 and 2 data.
4.5. Suitability of the AGB estimation models
All the models used in this study had a different set of essential
variables, and their magnitudes were also different. As a result, the
predicted maps show minor differences in AGB values. However, all
decision tree-based models suffer from the extrapolation problem
(Hengl et al., 2018; Malistov and Trushin, 2019). These regression
models cannot predict values outside the range of the training data as
they are based on averaging the values of multiple outputs. Further,
averaging the results of many trees, final predictions were made,
10
Journal of Environmental Management 292 (2021) 112816
wherein each tree output is the mean of the values in each terminal node
of the tree. Thus, the average for a set of values must be within the value
range. Accordingly, in the RF predicted map, the maximum predicted
AGB value was 644 t/ha, and areas with AGB more than 600 t/ha were
very few (Fig. 7). In contrast, field-collected data showed places where
the AGB value goes beyond 700 t/ha (Fig. 3d). Therefore, in the absence
of a significantly higher and lower AGB values per the field estimate, the
training sample could have underestimated the higher AGB values and
overestimated the lower range values in the RF model.
5. Conclusions
This study showed that Sentinel-2 data suffers from high temporal
variation within a short period, mainly due to a change in precipitation.
The temporal variations in remote sensing variables have not been
addressed in earlier AGB estimation studies. The fluctuation of satellite-
derived parameters indicates that estimating AGB without addressing
this issue can result in erroneous estimation. In this study, it was shown
that the best way to counter this problem and use them for AGB esti­
mation is to use the average values of the multi-temporal dataset. The
ensemble prediction of machine learning algorithms measures the AGB
with greater accuracy than previous studies.
Accurate remote estimation of mangrove AGB has become feasible
with the free availability of high-resolution Sentinel data and advance­
ment of machine learning algorithms. Though biomass studies generally
prefer expensive longer wavelength SAR data, the combined use of open-
sourced Sentinel data can be a suitable alternative. In the near future,
ESA’s P-band BIOMASS mission (Ho Tong Minh et al., 2015), the NASA
and ISRO joint L and S-band SAR mission, NISAR (Rosen et al., 2015),
Argentina’s L-band SAOCOM mission (D’Aria et al., 2008), and the
German Aerospace Center (DLR)’s L-band SAR instrument (Moreira
et al., 2011), are expected to be operational. However, due to a lack of
open-source data availability, dependence on Sentinel data will remain
for AGB estimation, especially from underdeveloped and developing
countries.
S.M. Ghosh et al.
Credit author
SM Ghosh: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Writing – original draft, MD Behera: Methodology, Writing – review &
editing, Funding acquisition, Supervision, B Jagadish: Investigation,
Data curation, AK Das: Writing – review & editing, DR Mishra: Meth­
odology, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
SMG acknowledges the Fellowship received from MOE for Ph.D.
research. MDB acknowledges the financial support received from SAC,
ISRO, through the NISAR grant that helped in field-sampling. The sup­
port provided by Mr. Somnath and Mr. Jayaprakash during field mea­
surements is thankfully acknowledged. MDB and SMG thank Prof. J
Dash of the University of Southampton, UK, for his valuable suggestions
to improve the study. Thanks to the Odisha state Forest Wildlife division
for granting permission to conduct fieldwork in Bhitarkanika Wildlife
Sanctuary, India.
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