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.