Improving lake chlorophyll-a interpreting accuracy by combining spectral and texture features of remote sensing

Cyanobacterial blooms in lakes fueled by increasing eutrophication have garnered global attention, and high-precision remote sensing retrieval of chlorophyll-a (Chla) is essential for monitoring eutrophication. Previous studies have focused on the spectral features extracted from remote sensing images and their relationship with chlorophyll-a concentrations in water bodies, ignoring the texture features in remote sensing images which is beneficial to improve interpreting accuracy. This study explores the texture features in remote-sensing images. It proposes a retrieval method for estimating lake Chla concentration by combining spectral and texture features of remote sensing images. Remote sensing images from Landsat 5 TM and 8 OLI were used to extract spectral bands combination. The gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) of remote sensing images was used to obtain a total of 8 texture features; then, three texture indices were calculated using texture features. Finally, a random forest regression was used to establish a retrieval model of in situ Chla concentration from texture and spectral index. Results showed that texture features are significantly correlated with lake Chla concentration, and they can reflect the temporal and spatial distribution change of Chla. The retrieval model combining spectral and texture indices performs better (MAE = 15.22 μg·L−1, bias = 9.69%, MAPE = 47.09%) than the model without texture features (MAE = 15.76 μg·L−1, bias = 13.58%, MAPE = 49.44%). The proposed model performance varies in different Chla concentration ranges and is excellent in predicting higher concentrations. This study evaluates the potential of incorporating texture features of remote sensing images in lake water quality estimation and provides a novel remote sensing method to better estimate lake Chla concentration.