Using Eco-Geographical Zoning Data and Crowdsourcing to Improve the Detection of Spurious Land Cover Changes

Abstract

To address problems in remote sensing image change detection, this study proposes a method for identifying spurious changes based on an eco-geographical zoning knowledge base and crowdsourced data mining. After preliminary change detection using the super pixel cosegmentation method, eco-geographical zoning is introduced, and the rules of spurious change are collected based on the knowledge of expert interpreters, and from statistics on existing land cover products according to each eco-geographical zone. Uncertain changed patches with a high possibility of spurious change according to the eco-geographical zoning rule were published in the form of a map service on an online platform, and then crowd tagging information on spurious changed patches was collected. The Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS) algorithm was used to calculate the spurious change degree of changed patches. We selected the northern part of Laos as the experimental area and the Chinese GF-1 Wide Field View (WFV) images for change detection to verify the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the accuracy of change detection improves by 23% after removing the spurious changes. Spurious changes caused by clouds, river water turbidity, spectral differences in cultivated land before and after harvest, and changes in shrubs, grassland, and forest density, can be removed using an eco-geographical zoning knowledge base and crowdsourced data mining methods.