Instability of remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI) and its improvement for time series analysis

With the rapid development of remote sensing technology, the monitoring of land surface ecological status (LSES) based on remote sensing has made remarkable progress, which has a positive contribution on improving the regional ecological environment and promoting the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among them, the proposed Remote Sensing-based Ecological Index (RSEI) becomes the most widely used model in the current application of remote sensing-based LSES monitoring due to its complete derived from remote sensing images and no subjective intervention. RSEI is not flawless either, and it still suffers from some uncertainties in its application in multiple scenarios. However, compared to the extensive applied research, work on the instability assessment and improvement of RSEI is particularly scarce and urgently needed. Therefore, in this paper, we analyzed the possible instabilities in the RSEI calculation process and proposed various inversion models to evaluate their accuracy and stability in time-series LSES monitoring. The results indicated that the existing normalized RSEI is relatively stable for the characterization of single-phase LSES, however, there is a high risk in the time-series analysis or cross-regional comparison due to the interference of component extremes. The standard deviation discretized DRSEIs proposed in this paper perform better in both single-phase and long-term dynamics LSES assessments and are more consistent with the real land cover changes. Also, compared with the approach that measures LSES dynamics using time-series regional RSEI mean values, the DRSEIs change detection results can reveal the spatial heterogeneity of regional LSES dynamics more effectively and provide a finer reference for the formulation and implementation of ecological protection policies.