Assessing MODIS Land Cover Products over China with Probability of Interannual Change  

作　　者：GAO Hao JIA Gen-Suo 

机构地区：[1]National Satellite Meteorological Center,China Meteorological Administration [2]Institute of Atmospheric Physics,Chinese Academy of Sciences

出　　处：《Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters》2014年第6期564-570,共7页大气和海洋科学快报（英文版）

基　　金：supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB956202);the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA05090201)

摘　　要：Accurate and up-to-date land cover data are important for climate-change modeling. Quality assessment is becoming critical, as many satellite-based land cover products of differing scales have been released to meet the needs of scientific studies. In this study, the authors assessed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) land cover products by analyzing the probability of interannual change from 2001 to 2012. The authors found that, cumulatively, 43.0% of MODIS land cover had changed over China from 2001 to 2012 at least once. Of this percentage, 12.1% was considered unreasonable change, 6.1% was considered reasonable change, and areas of confusion accounted for about 24.8%, giving rise to great uncertainty in the products. MODIS Collection 51 products clearly have less uncertainty than the Collection 5 products. Areas of reasonable change occurred in transition zones of ecological, biophysical, and climate gradients, while areas of unreasonable change appeared in heterogeneous landscapes. The misclassifications at three spatial scales of horizontal grids used in regional climate models occurred largely in the heterogeneous landscapes, and the areal percentage of misclassification decreased with larger horizontal grid spacing. In addition, the misclassifications in MODIS products often occurred among specific classes, which are geographically, ecologically, and spectrally similar, with low discriminative spectral-temporal signals. The effect of classification uncertainty should be made known, and further improvements are still needed for application in regional climate models. The authors' findings have important implications for better understanding the uncertainties of MODIS land cover products, and for improving the land surface parameterization for regional climate models.Accurate and up-to-date land cover data are important for climate-change modeling. Quality assessment is becoming critical, as many satellite-based land cover products of differing scales have been released to meet the needs of scientific studies. In this study, the authors assessed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer（MODIS） land cover products by analyzing the probability of interannual change from 2001 to 2012. The authors found that, cumulatively, 43.0% of MODIS land cover had changed over China from 2001 to 2012 at least once. Of this percentage, 12.1% was considered unreasonable change, 6.1% was considered reasonable change, and areas of confusion accounted for about 24.8%, giving rise to great uncertainty in the products. MODIS Collection 51 products clearly have less uncertainty than the Collection 5 products. Areas of reasonable change occurred in transition zones of ecological, biophysical, and climate gradients, while areas of unreasonable change appeared in heterogeneous landscapes. The misclassifications at three spatial scales of horizontal grids used in regional climate models occurred largely in the heterogeneous landscapes, and the areal percentage of misclassification decreased with larger horizontal grid spacing. In addition, the misclassifications in MODIS products often occurred among specific classes, which are geographically, ecologically, and spectrally similar, with low discriminative spectral-temporal signals. The effect of classification uncertainty should be made known, and further improvements are still needed for application in regional climate models. The authors＇ findings have important implications for better understanding the uncertainties of MODIS land cover products, and for improving the land surface parameterization for regional climate models.

关 键 词：land cover MODIS quality UNCERTAINTY interannual change 

分 类 号：P461[天文地球—大气科学及气象学]