A phenology-based vegetation index classification (PVC) algorithm for coastal salt marshes using Landsat 8 images

Coastal salt marshes, as a globally significant intertidal ecosystem, are highly productive but extremely fragile and unstable. Mapping coastal salt marshes accurately is the basis of assessing global climate change, biological invasion, and coastal erosion. Using Landsat 8 images, this paper integrated the advantages of pixel- and phenology-based algorithms and vegetation indices in vegetation classification. An enhanced phenology-based vegetation index classification (PVC) algorithm is proposed to obtain the spatial distribution and community composition of coastal salt marshes in Bohai Sea of China accurately and quickly. The results showed that (1) the coastal redness vegetation index (CRVI) can be used to extract Suaeda spp. effectively, and the phenology-based vegetation indices (PVIs) dataset can alleviate the spatial variability of phenology in coastal salt marshes; (2) the crucial phenological periods for identifying coastal salt marshes are May, October, and November, and the optimal PVIs are consistent with the phenological characteristics of salt marshes; (3) during the year 2018–2019, the overall accuracy (OA) of the PVC algorithm in Yancheng coast of Jiangsu Province and Bohai Sea coast reached 80.49 % and 90.8 % respectively. A total of 14,763.39 ha of salt marshes were found in the coastal area of Bohai Sea, and Shandong Province had the most abundant types of salt marshes and the largest area; (4) the classification model based on the PVC algorithm is stable and scalable in 2016–2017 and 2020–2021, with the OA of 89.19% and 86.67% respectively. These results demonstrate the value of the PVC algorithm in vegetation classification, and this study can provide a referable semi-automatic vegetation classification method for other coastal areas.