An Evaluation of MODIS Daily and 8-day Composite Products for Floodplain and Wetland Inundation Mapping

Wetland and floodplain inundation is well-known for its hydrological, ecological and environmental importance. Satellite remote sensing provides an effective and efficient tool for detecting inundation extent. This study compares and validates inundation maps derived from NASA’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery. The comparison was performed between MODIS daily and 8-day composite products; and the validation was conducted using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images. Two floodplain wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia were selected as case studies, and inundation extents corresponding to the peak flows of significant flood events were extracted using the Open Water Likelihood (OWL) algorithm and the modified Normalised Difference Water Index (mNDWI) for MODIS and TM images, respectively. The accuracy of the inundation maps derived from different images were assessed spatially and statistically. The evaluation results show that both MODIS products may provide a reasonable estimate of the dynamic extent of floodplain inundation at the regional scale. The accuracy of inundation mapping is mainly due to the spatial and spectral characteristics of MODIS imagery and has nothing to do with the type of products chosen, thus the 8-day composite images can be used as a surrogate for daily images for the purpose of inundation delineation.

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