A spatiotemporal ensemble machine learning framework for generating land use / land cover time-series maps for Europe (2000 – 2019) based on LUCAS, CORINE and GLAD Landsat

Abstract

A seamless spatiotemporal machine learning framework for automated prediction, uncertainty assessment, and analysis of long-term LULC dynamics is presented. The framework includes: (1) harmonization and preprocessing of high-resolution spatial and spatiotemporal input datasets (GLAD Landsat, NPP/VIIRS) including 5~million harmonized LUCAS and CORINE Land Cover-derived training samples, (2) model building based on spatial k-fold cross-validation and hyper-parameter optimization, (3) prediction of the most probable class, class probabilities and uncertainty per pixel, (4) LULC change analysis on time-series of produced maps. The spatiotemporal ensemble model consists of a random forest, gradient boosted tree classifier, and a artificial neural network, with a logistic regressor as meta-learner. The results show that the most important variables for mapping LULC in Europe are: seasonal aggregates of Landsat green and near-infrared bands, multiple Landsat-derived spectral indices, long-term surface water probability, and elevation. Spatial cross-validation of the model indicates consistent performance across multiple years with overall accuracy (weighted F1-score) of 0.49, 0.63, and 0.83 when predicting 44 (level-3), 14 (level-2), and 5 classes (level-1). The spatiotemporal model outperforms spatial models on known-year classification by 2.7% and unknown-year classification by 3.5%. Results of the accuracy assessment using 48,365 independent test samples shows 87% match with the validation points. Results of time-series analysis (time-series of LULC probabilities and NDVI images) suggest forest loss in large parts of Sweden, the Alps, and Scotland. An advantage of using spatiotemporal ML is that the fitted model can be used to predict LULC in years that were not included in its training dataset, allowing generalization to past and future periods, e.g. to predict land cover for years prior to 2000 and beyond 2020. The generated land cover time-series data stack (ODSE-LULC), including the training points, is publicly available via the Open Data Science (ODS)-Europe Viewer. Functions used to prepare data and run modeling are available via the eumap library for python.