Water Conservation Estimation Based on Time Series NDVI in the Yellow River Basin

• Main Authors: Yangchengsi Zhang, Jiaqiang Du, Long Guo, Zhilu Sheng, Jinhua Wu, Jing Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Remote Sensing
• Subjects: water conservation; NDVI time series; spatial stratified heterogeneity; digital mapping; machine learning method
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/6/1105

Accurate estimation of the water conservation is of great significance for ecological red line planning. The water conservation of the Yellow River Basin has a vital influence on the development of the environment and the supply of ecological services in China. However, the existing methods used to estimate water conservation have many disadvantages, such as requiring numerous parameters, a complex calculation model, and using data that is often difficult acquire. It is often hard to provide sufficiently precise parameters and data, resulting in a large amount of calculation time and the difficulties in the study of large scale and long time series. In this study, a time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was applied to estimate water conservation in two aspects using the idea of wholeness and stratification, respectively. The overall fitting results can explain nearly 30% of the water conservation by partial least squares regression and nearly 50% of it by a support vector machine. However, the results of a stratified simulation showed that water conservation and the NDVI have a certain stratified heterogeneity among different ecosystem types. The optimal fitting result was achieved in a water/wetland ecosystem with the highest coefficient of determination (R²_P) of 0.768 by the stratified support vector machine (SVM) model, followed by the forest and grassland ecosystem (both R²_P of 0.698). The spatial mapping results showed that this method was most suitable for grassland ecosystem, followed by forest ecosystem. According to the results generated using the NDVI time series data, it is feasible to complete a spatial simulation of water conservation. This research can provide a reference for calculating regional or large-scale water conservation and in ecological red line planning.