ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Multi-Source Remote Sensing Feature Fusion
for Extracting Impervious Urban Surfaces
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School of Geomatics, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, China
Submission date: 2024-11-05
Final revision date: 2025-02-21
Acceptance date: 2025-03-17
Online publication date: 2025-04-18
Corresponding author
Zhen Zhang
School of Geomatics, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, China
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ABSTRACT
Impervious urban surfaces critically impact ecological environments, necessitating precise
and efficient mapping for sustainable urban planning. While hyperspectral remote sensing is widely
used for feature extraction, single-source data often face challenges like homospectral heterogeneity
and heterospectral homogeneity in complex urban areas. This study addresses these limitations by
integrating Zhuhai-1 hyperspectral imagery with Sentinel-1 radar data, proposing an innovative
method to enhance impervious surface mapping accuracy through multi-source remote sensing
synergy. Further, we compared four tree-based ensemble-learning algorithms for use with multi-source
remote sensing data. The results of the pilot study using this approach can be summarized as follows:
(1) The four tree-based ensemble learning methods using multi-source remote sensing features perform
better than single-source spectral data extraction. Specifically, the Kappa coefficient for the lightweight
gradient boosting tree algorithm (LightGBM) in the impervious surface mapping of built-up areas and
urban fringes increased by 0.014 and 0.017, respectively. (2) The LightGBM algorithm using multisource
remote sensing features exhibited the best mapping accuracy for extracting impervious surfaces
compared to other algorithms, with an accuracy of 93.2% in built-up areas and 92.1% at urban edges.
Further, it is also shown to be the most efficient model, with 19.7- and 20.3-second running times
in built-up areas and urban edges, respectively. The findings in this study provide a new approach
for high-efficiency and high-precision impervious urban surface mapping.