Combining Decision Trees with Angle Indices to Identify Mangrove Forest at Shenzhen Bay,China

Mangroves are woody plant communities in the intertidal zone of tropical and subtropical coasts that play an important role in these zones. The infrared wave band is one of the key bands in the remote sensing identification of mangrove forest, and ALI (advanced land imagery) has a large number of infrared bands. Two angle indices were proposed based on liquid water absorption at band 5p and band 5 of EO-1 ALI, denoted as β_1.25 and β_1.65 respectively. A decision tree method was adopted to identify mangrove forest using remote sensing techniques for β_1.25-β_1.65 and NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) for EO-1 ALI imagery acquired at Shenzhen Bay. The results showed that the reflectance of mangrove forests at band 5p and band 5 was significantly lower than that of terrestrial vegetation due to the characteristics of coastal wetlands of mangrove forests. This resulted in a greater β_1.25-β_1.65 value for mangrove forest than terrestrial vegetation. The decision tree method using β_1.25-β_1.65 and NDVI effectively identifies mangrove forest from other land cover categories. The misclassification and leakage rates were 4.29% and 5.11% respectively. ALI sensors with many infrared bands could play an important role in discriminating mangrove forest.