A new computationally efficient algorithm to generate global fractional vegetation cover from Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 m resolution

ABSTRACTThe multi-angle method in the pixel dichotomy model (PDM) is used to produce fine spatial resolution (FSR) products of fractional vegetation cover (FVC), which involves numerous iterative computations. This phenomenon causes a low computational efficiency for global FVC. Here, we established the multi-angle equations, and simplified the two-stream approximation method to obtain multi-angle reflectance, which calculated the KDM parameters possible. Moreover, to accelerate the calculation of parameters in the multi-angle equations, land cover data were utilized as priority knowledge, which aims to decrease iterative computations to speed up the computational speed. Finally, we proposed an accelerated pixel dichotomy coupled linear kernel-driven model (PDKDM-A). By validating PDKDM-A using field measurements and FVC products, we found that the global FVC computed for various land covers exhibited strong agreement with the field measurements. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) were consistently below 0.150, except for grasslands, croplands, and cropland/natural vegetation mosaics. When comparing FVC products on the same scale, we discovered that the RMSE was less than 0.103, except for deciduous broadleaf forests. Our study demonstrates that PDKDM-A is an efficient algorithm, with the potential to quickly generate accurate global FVC products with fine spatial resolution.