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Remote SensingChange DetectionNDVI

Wetland Change Detection — Coastal South Carolina

Role
Sole analyst
Affiliation
GEOG 4xx — Remote Sensing
Date
2024
Tools
ArcGIS ProPythonQGIS
Research question

How much coastal wetland vegetation has been lost along the SC coast over the last decade?

Objective

Use a normalized vegetation index across two cloud-free dates to map and quantify wetland change.

Data
Landsat 8/9 surface reflectancesource ↗NWI wetland inventorysource ↗
Methodology / Workflow
  1. 1

    Selected cloud-free scenes from 2014 and 2024 and applied atmospheric correction.

  2. 2

    Computed NDVI for each date and differenced the two surfaces.

  3. 3

    Thresholded the difference image and validated against the wetland inventory.

Maps & results

Click any map to enlarge

Fig. 1 — NDVI, 2014 baseline.
Fig. 2 — NDVI difference, loss in warm tones.
Findings