Detection of mangrove palm coverage at Cu Lao Cham-Hoi An Biospherer reserve using Sentinel-2A data

The mangrove palm grows at the Thu Bon river’s mouth. Mangrove palm has contributed to the conservation of natural ecosystems, and the biological diversity of Cu Lao Cham – Hoi An Biosphere Reserve, as well as the socio-economic development of Hoi An city. However, in recent year, its coverage has been gradually reduced due to human socio-economic activities. This study has used not only the raw bands of the Sentinel-2A image but also some spectral indices have been calculated via the band ratio for classifying land covers. The principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to these all bands to eliminate redundant and noise contributions in data. Mangrove palm was separated from other land cover categories with an object-based image classification approach using Support Vector Machines (SVMs) algorithm because of its high efficiency, performance, and flexibility. The obtained map indicates that mangrove palm principally distributes on the left bank of Thu Bon River with a total area of 147 ha by 2019. The validation, was realized by comparing the classification results with random samples through the visual interpretation of Google Earth high resolution image. The error assessment shows that the overall accuracy is about 88.67% and the Kappa coefficient reaches 0.84. Although there are some differences related to the spatial resolution of Sentinel-2 images, such obtained results may support authorities in decision-making by providing maps able to suggest necessary responses for the conservation of mangrove palms this coastal area.