A new approach for estimating mangrove canopy cover using Landsat 8 imagery

- Sparse canopy vegetation is hardly mapped using moderate spatial resolution images.
- To avoid the soil effect on vegetation mapping seven vegetation indices were used.
- The new approach showing remarkable increase in sparse canopy vegetation mapping.

Due to background reflectance, it is difficult to accurately map sparse canopy vegetation using moderate-resolution satellite imagery. Information contained in virtually all the pixels is a mix of leaf vegetation, soil, branches and shadow. Presented in this paper is a novel approach to improving the accuracy of mapping mangrove canopy using Landsat 8 imagery by incorporating seven indices: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Infrared Index, Leaf Area Index, Green Atmospherically Resistant Index, Optimized Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Built-up Index and Normalized Difference Water Index. Results demonstrated that the accuracy of mapping mangrove can be significantly improved using this approach.