Remote Sensing Monitoring of Changes in Lake Aquatic Vegetation before and after the Removal of the Fence Based on Sentinel-2: A Case Study in Lake Futou, Hubei Province

Abstract

Aquatic vegetation is an important component and main primary producer of lake ecosystems and plays an important role in improving water quality and maintaining biodiversity, which is critical to diagnosing the health of aquatic ecosystems in shallow lakes. It is therefore important to accurately obtain information on dynamic changes and spatial-temporal distribution of aquatic vegetation. Based on the Sentinel-2 satellite remote sensing images from 2016–2022, we studied the feasibility of using remote sensing technology to monitor the spatial-temporal changes of aquatic vegetation before and after the removal of the fence, taking Futou Lake in Hubei Province as a case study. Two vegetation indices, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Index (SAVI) were applied to identify the open water and the aquatic vegetation through two threshold determination methods, Otsu algorithm and manual division threshold method. The results show that: (1) the classification based on the NDVI and manual division threshold method performs the best, with the overall classification accuracy of 94.44% and the Kappa coefficient of 85.23%. (2) The growth of aquatic vegetation is divided into stages, the first stage is enclosing culture, and the distribution of aquatic vegetation is less in 2016–2017, all around 10 km2. The second stage is after the removal of the fence, the distribution area of aquatic vegetation in 2018 is on an upward trend, and in 2019–2022 it is growing rapidly. (3) Spatially, the aquatic vegetation was mainly distributed at the former fence, specifically in the northeastern and southwestern waters of the Futou Lake and it spread to the core area of the lake, probably due to the elevation of the siltation of the lake bottom. (4) Potamogeton crispus and Trapa are the dominant species, the peak of the distribution range in Futou Lake occurs in 2021 with an area of about 50.89 km2, which needs to be controlled moderately. (5) The area covered by Potamogeton crispus in the Futou Lake has increased significantly, probably due to the siltation and accumulation of nutrients in the Futou Lake caused by the history of purse seine farming.