Comparing The Efficiency Of Multispectral Instruments In Land Use Classification Using Accuracy Assessment And Area Estimation Techniques Over Mardan District,Pakistan

Land use land cover(LULC)mapping is important for various activities ranging from proper resource allocation to policy planning.Freely available satellite data from multispectral instruments has opened wide doors for their applications in urban planning,natural resource monitoring,and change analysis using moderate to high resolution satellite data.Previously many researchers have individually used multispectral instruments i.e.,Sentinel-2(10m),Gaofen-6(16m),and Landsat-8(30m)for land-use classification but till now no study has evaluated the efficiency of these three instruments in land-use classification.So this study evaluated the comparison of these instrument using accuracy assessment and area estimation techniques.The study revealed that Sentinel-2 secured highest accuracy but at the same time showed confusion between buildup and barren classes.Landsat-8 with least accuracy performed exceptionally well for mapping agricultural area,rangeland,and forest land.Lastly,Gaofen-6 was considered far better in terms of reliable outcomes for mapping city urban area where it showed good outcomes.In terms of accuracy assessment Sentinel-2 stood first with Overall Accuracy(OA)0.89 and Kappa(K)0.85,then Gaofen-6 with OA equals to 0.80 and K equals to 0.79 while Landsat-8 stood last with OA equals to 0.76 and K equals to 0.70.Area estimation results showed that for buildup class accurate area was estimated by Gaofen-6(～12856 ha),then Landsat-8(～11169 ha)while Sentinel-2 stood last(～8307 ha).It was observed that in Sentinel-2based classification,urban area was misclassified as barren in nearby city parts.In the last the study concludes that the efficiency of land-use primarily depends on the purpose of research.For forestland,agriculture,rangeland,and barren land LULC classes both Sentinel-2 and Gaofen-6 showed promising results whereas water class only Geofen-6 results seem quite accurate.In the last,for buildup area this study revealed that Gaofen-6 showed promising results compared to Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8.