A Comparison of Random Forest Algorithm-Based Forest Extraction with GF-1 WFV, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 Images

Forests are an essential part of the ecosystem and play an irreplaceable role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem and protecting biodiversity. The monitoring of forest distribution plays an important role in the conservation and management of forests. This paper analyzes and compares the performance of imagery from GF-1 WFV, Landsat 8, and Sentinel-2 satellites with respect to forest/non-forest classification tasks using the random forest algorithm (RF). The results show that in the classification task of this paper, although the differences in classification accuracy among the three satellite datasets are not remarkable, the Sentinel-2 data have the highest accuracy, GF-1 WFV the second highest, and Landsat 8 the lowest. In addition, it was found that remotely sensed data of different processing levels show little influence on the classification accuracy with respect to the forest/non-forest classification task. However, the classification accuracy of the top of the atmosphere reflectance product was the most stable, and the vegetation index has a marginal effect on the distinction between forest and non-forest areas.