Assessing MODIS Land Cover Products over China with Probability of Interannual Change

Accurate and up-to-date land cover data are important for climate-change modeling. Quality assessment is becoming critical, as many satellite-based land cover products of differing scales have been released to meet the needs of scientific studies. In this study, the authors assessed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) land cover products by analyzing the probability of interannual change from 2001 to 2012. The authors found that, cumulatively, 43.0% of MODIS land cover had changed over China from 2001 to 2012 at least once. Of this percentage, 12.1% was considered unreasonable change, 6.1% was considered reasonable change, and areas of confusion accounted for about 24.8%, giving rise to great uncertainty in the products. MODIS Collection 51 products clearly have less uncertainty than the Collection 5 products. Areas of reasonable change occurred in transition zones of ecological, biophysical, and climate gradients, while areas of unreasonable change appeared in heterogeneous landscapes. The misclassifications at three spatial scales of horizontal grids used in regional climate models occurred largely in the heterogeneous landscapes, and the areal percentage of misclassification decreased with larger horizontal grid spacing. In addition, the misclassifications in MODIS products often occurred among specific classes, which are geographically, ecologically, and spectrally similar, with low discriminative spectral-temporal signals. The effect of classification uncertainty should be made known, and further improvements are still needed for application in regional climate models. The authors' findings have important implications for better understanding the uncertainties of MODIS land cover products, and for improving the land surface parameterization for regional climate models.

洞里萨湖流域土地利用变化与其水质的关联性

为探究洞里萨湖流域土地利用变化对湖泊水质的影响,以MODIS土地覆盖产品(MCD12Q1)、湖泊浊度和营养状态指数为数据源,结合地理信息系统(geographic information system,GIS)空间分析、Theil-Sen Median趋势分析、Mann-Kendall检验和相关性分析等方法,系统研究该流域近20年土地利用与湖泊水质的时空变化特征及两者间的关联性。结果表明:洞里萨湖流域土地利用以林地显著减少(P<0.01)和草地、耕地显著增加(P<0.01)为主要特征,年均变化率分别达到了流域总面积的-1.13%、0.8%和0.35%;相应地,湖泊浊度和营养状态指数亦为上升趋势,但未通过显著性检验。研究时段内,湖泊浊度与林地强负相关(r=-0.65),与草地、耕地和建设用地强正相关,相关系数分别为0.61、0.74、0.72,与湿地弱正相关(r=0.35);然而,湖泊营养状态指数仅与湿地弱负相关(r=-0.31)。研究结论为认识洞里萨湖水质变化的驱动因子与流域管理提供科学参考。