Modeling Invasive Prosopis juliflora Distribution Using the Newly Launched Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite-1 (ETRSS-1) in the Lower Awash River Basin, Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia successfully launched its first earth-observing satellite sensor in December 2019 for the purpose to manage natural resources and enhance agriculture. This study aimed at evaluating the potential of Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite 1 (ETRSS-1), for the first time, for detecting and mapping Prosopis juliflora distribution. To better test its potential, a comparison was made against the novel Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument and Landsat-8 Operational Land Manager datasets. Radiometric indices (Scenario-1) and spectral bands (Scenario-2) derived from these sensors were used to model the distribution of Prosopis juliflora using the random forest modeling approach. A total of 241 georeferenced field data on species presence and absence data were used to train and validate datasets in both scenarios. True skill statistics (TSS), area under the curve (AUC), correlation, sensitivity, and specificity were used to evaluate their performance. Our results described that the ETRSS-1-derived variables can be sufficient for modeling and mapping of P. juliflora distribution in such settings. However, higher performance was found from Sentinel-2 with AUC > 0.97 and TSS > 0.89, and followed by Landsat-8 with AUC > 0.93 and TSS > 0.77 and ETRSS-1 with AUC > 0.81 and TSS > 0.57. The lower performance of ETRSS-1 compared to Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 datasets, however, is partly due to its coarse spectral resolution. Hence, improving the spectral resolution of ETRSS-1 might increase its accuracy.