Evaluating Sentinel-2 Red-Edge Bands for Wetland Classification？

Due to the high spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability, wetlands are one of the most difficult ecosystems to observe using remote sensing data. With the additional Sentinel-2 vegetation red-edge bands, an improvement of the vegetated classes classification is expected. In order to investigate the influence of the Sentinel-2 red-edge bands, in this paper we evaluate two classification scenarios over wetland classes. The first scenario excludes the red-edge bands, while in the second scenario all red-edge bands are included in the classification dataset where two different wetland classes—intensive vegetated wetland classes such as swamps and partially decayed vegetated wetland areas such as bogs—are classified using a support vector machine (SVM) learning classifier. The classes are defined using high-resolution images from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) obtained on the same date with the passing of the Sentinel-2 satellite over the study area. As expected, the results show a significant improvement of the intensive vegetated wetlands, with more than 30% in both user and producer accuracy, while no significant changes are noted in the partially decayed vegetated wetlands. For future studies, we recommend evaluating the influence of the Sentinel radar data over wetland areas