Rapid Identification of Main Vegetation Types in the Lingkong Mountain Nature Reserve Based on Multi-Temporal Modified Vegetation Indices

Nature reserves are among the most bio-diverse regions worldwide, and rapid and accurate identification is a requisite for their management. Based on the multi-temporal Sentinel-2 dataset, this study presents three multi-temporal modified vegetation indices (the multi-temporal modified normalized difference Quercus wutaishanica index (MTM-NDQI), the multi-temporal modified difference scrub grass index (MTM-DSI), and the multi-temporal modified ratio shaw index (MTM-RSI)) to improve the classification accuracy of the remote sensing of vegetation in the Lingkong Mountain Nature Reserve of China (LMNR). These three indices integrate the advantages of both the typical vegetation indices and the multi-temporal remote sensing data. By using the proposed indices with a uni-temporal modified vegetation index (the uni-temporal modified difference pine-oak mixed forest index (UTM-DMI)) and typical vegetation indices (e.g., the ratio vegetation index (RVI), the difference vegetation index (DVI), and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)), an optimal feature set is obtained that includes the NDVI of December, the NDVI of April, and the UTM-DMI, MTM-NDQI, MTM-DSI, and MTM-RSI. The overall accuracy (OA) of the random forest classification (98.41%) and Kappa coefficient of the optimal feature set (0.98) were higher than those of the time series NDVI (OA = 96.03%, Kappa = 0.95), the time series RVI (OA = 95.56%, Kappa = 0.95), and the time series DVI (OA = 91.27%, Kappa = 0.90). The OAs of the rapid classification and the Kappa coefficient of the knowledge decision tree based on the optimal feature set were 95.56% and 0.95, respectively. Meanwhile, only three of the seven vegetation types were omitted or misclassified slightly. Overall, the proposed vegetation indices have advantages in identifying the vegetation types in protected areas.