Remote Sensing (Jul 2022)
An Approach for Retrieving Consistent Time Series “Urban Core–Suburban-Rural” (USR) Structure Using Nighttime Light Data from DMSP/OLS and NPP/VIIRS
Abstract
The long time series and consistent “urban core-suburban-rural” (USR) structure in a city region is essential to understanding urban–suburban–rural interaction and urbanization pathways. It is always considered to be a single land use type (e.g., impervious area) in remote sensing research. The long-term (1992–present) nighttime light (NTL) data of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) provide the potential for retrieving time series of USR structure. In this study, we propose an improved approach to mapping the USR structure of the three subcategories based on a heuristic algorithm of Mann–Kendall mutation detection on the NTL quantile curve. First, a minor adjustment of VIIRS NTL is applied for matching the value ranges of DMSP NTL data and keeping the advantage of VIIRS to generate a long-term NTL dataset. Second, the heuristic algorithm of Mann–Kendall mutation detection is processed to find two optimal thresholds in the NTL quantile curve, which is used for USR extraction. Finally, a temporal consistency check is used to post-process the initial USR area for obtaining a more consistent and reliable USR sequence. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we retrieved the USR structures of 19 typical cities in China from 1992 to 2020 based on NTL datasets. The evaluations of spatiotemporal consistency compared with the validation data indicate that the USR retrieval results show good agreement with the land use map derived from Landsat images and the time series product from MODIS. The average overall accuracy (OA) of overall urban extent is higher than 0.95 and the average kappa coefficient (KC) reaches 0.6. Moreover, we investigated the urban dynamics and USR interactions of 19 cities from 1992 to 2020. Overall, this study proposes an improved approach for long-term USR mapping from NTL images at a regional scale and it will provide a valuable method for urbanization dynamics analysis.
Keywords