Analysis of Land Cover Changes Based on Classification Result Using PlanetScope Satellite Imagery

Compared to the imagery produced by traditional satellites, PlanetScope satellite imagery has made it possible to easily capture remotely-sensed imagery every day through dozens or even hundreds of satellites on a relatively small budget. This study aimed to detect changed areas and update a land cover map using a PlanetScope image. To generate a classification map, pixel-based Random Forest (RF) classification was performed by using additional features, such as the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The classification result was converted to vector data and compared with the existing land cover map to estimate the changed area. To estimate the accuracy and trends of the changed area, the quantitative quality of the supervised classification result using the PlanetScope image was evaluated first. In addition, the patterns of the changed area that corresponded to the classification result were analyzed using the PlanetScope satellite image. Experimental results found that the PlanetScope image can be used to effectively to detect changed areas on large-scale land cover maps, and supervised classification results can update the changed areas.