Land cover classification of the North China Plain using MODIS_EVI time series

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data have played an important role in global environmental and resource research. However, its low spatial resolution has been an impediment to researchers pursuing more accurate classification results. In this research, the high temporal resolution of MODIS was employed to improve the accuracy of land cover classification of the North China Plain using MODIS_EVI time series from 2003. Harmonic Analysis of Time Series (HANTS) was performed on the MODIS_EVI image time series to reduce cloud and other noise effects. The improved MODIS_EVI time series was then classified into 100 clusters by the Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique (ISODATA). To distinguish ambiguous land cover classes, a decision tree was built on five phenological features derived from EVI profiles, Land Surface Temperature (LST) and topographic slope. The overall accuracy of the final land cover map was 75.5%, indicating the promise of using MODIS EVI time series and decision trees for broad area land cover classification.