Detection of Decreasing Vegetation Cover Based on Empirical Orthogonal Function and Temporal Unmixing Analysis

Vegetation plays an important role in the energy exchange of the land surface, biogeochemical cycles, and hydrological cycles. MODIS (MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index) is considered as a quantitative indicator for examining dynamic vegetation changes. This paper applied a new method of integrated empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and temporal unmixing analysis (TUA) to detect the vegetation decreasing cover in Jiangsu Province of China. The empirical orthogonal function (EOF) statistical results provide vegetation decreasing/increasing trend as prior information for temporal unmixing analysis. Temporal unmixing analysis (TUA) results could reveal the dominant spatial distribution of decreasing vegetation. The results showed that decreasing vegetation areas in Jiangsu are distributed in the suburbs and newly constructed areas. For validation, the vegetation’s decreasing cover is revealed by linear spectral mixture from Landsat data in three selected cities. Vegetation decreasing areas pixels are also calculated from land use maps in 2000 and 2010. The accuracy of integrated empirical orthogonal function and temporal unmixing analysis method is about 83.14%. This method can be applied to detect vegetation change in large rapidly urbanizing areas.