Developing Spatial and Temporal Continuous Fractional Vegetation Cover Based on Landsat and Sentinel-2 Data with a Deep Learning Approach

Fractional vegetation cover (FVC) has a significant role in indicating changes in ecosystems and is useful for simulating growth processes and modeling land surfaces. The fine-resolution FVC products represent detailed vegetation cover information within fine grids. However, the long revisit cycle of satellites with fine-resolution sensors and cloud contamination has resulted in poor spatial and temporal continuity. In this study, we propose to derive a spatially and temporally continuous FVC dataset by comparing multiple methods, including the data-fusion method (STARFM), curve-fitting reconstruction (S-G filtering), and deep learning prediction (Bi-LSTM). By combining Landsat and Sentinel-2 data, the integrated FVC was used to construct the initial input of fine-resolution FVC with gaps. The results showed that the FVC of gaps were estimated and time-series FVC was reconstructed. The Bi-LSTM method was the most effective and achieved the highest accuracy (R2 = 0.857), followed by the data-fusion method (R2 = 0.709) and curve-fitting method (R2 = 0.705), and the optimal time step was 3. The inclusion of relevant variables in the Bi-LSTM model, including LAI, albedo, and FAPAR derived from coarse-resolution products, further reduced the RMSE from 5.022 to 2.797. By applying the optimized Bi-LSTM model to Hubei Province, a time series 30 m FVC dataset was generated, characterized by a spatial and temporal continuity. In terms of the major vegetation types in Hubei (e.g., evergreen and deciduous forests, grass, and cropland), the seasonal trends as well as the spatial details were captured by the reconstructed 30 m FVC. It was concluded that the proposed method was applicable to reconstruct the time-series FVC over a large spatial scale, and the produced fine-resolution dataset can support the data needed by many Earth system science studies.