Optical SAR Fusion of Sentinel-2 Images for Mapping High Resolution Land Cover

Abstract

Sentinel-2 is a very new programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) that is designed for fine spatial resolution global monitoring. Land cover-land use (LCLU) classification tasks can take advantage of the fusion of radar and optical remote sensing data, leading generally to increase mapping accuracy. Here we propose a methodological approach to fuse information from the new European Space Agency Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery for accurate land cover mapping of a portion of the South Solok region, West Sumatera. Data pre-processing was carried out using the European Space Agency's Sentinel Application Platform and the SEN2COR toolboxes. The two main objectives of this study are to evaluate the potential use and synergetic effects of ESA Sentinel-1A C-band SAR and Sentinel-2A Optical data for classification and mapping of LCLU. As a result of the research, two main advantages. First, the pre-processing chain supported by sensor-specific toolboxes developed by ESA represents a reliable and fast approach for the preparation of ready-to-process imagery. Second, investigation to derive a methodological framework to integrate Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery for land cover mapping by integrating of radar and optical imagery have been set up and tested.