Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98

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Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rsase

Spatial resolution and landscape structure along an urban-rural gradient: Do T

they relate to remote sensing classification accuracy? – A case study in the
megacity of Bengaluru, India
Kwame T. Awuaha,1, Nils Nölkea, , Maximilian Freudenbergb, B.N. Diwakarac, V.P. Tewaric,d,
⁎

Christoph Kleinna
a
University of Goettingen, Forest Inventory and Remote Sensing, Faculty of Forest Sciences and Forest Ecology, Büsgenweg 5, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
b
University of Goettingen, Third Institute of Physics, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
c
Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Bengaluru, India
d
Himalaya Forest Research Institute HFRI, Shimla, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Along the urban-rural gradient in megacities, the extent and material composition of impervious surfaces are dif-
Map accuracy ferent. This leads to variations in the frequently mentioned heat-island property, but possibly also to different spectral
Land-cover signatures and, consequently, different accuracies in remote sensing image classification. This, in turn, creates a
Spatial metrics challenge when it comes to selecting suitable image processing techniques. In this study, we examine how the
Urban-rural gradient
accuracy of land-cover classification changes along an urban-rural gradient as a function of spatial resolution and the
Landscape structure
gradient in landscape structure. RapidEye, Sentinel-2A and Landsat 8 images were used. Land-cover classification
Megacities
was performed using a deep learning model and landscape metrics were used to assess landscape structure. A high
degree of landscape heterogeneity and lowest classification accuracy was observed in the transition zone between
urban and rural domains, within a stretch of 15–20 km from the urban center. As expected, spatial resolution was
found to be influential in classification accuracy. A comparison of classifications indicates that within rural land-
scapes finer resolution images retain more spatial and thematic details in land-cover, e.g., RapidEye and Sentinel-2A
imagery better distinguish built-up areas within the agricultural landscape and discriminate more of the mapped
land-cover/use classes than Landsat 8. Overall accuracy increased with increasing spatial resolution (30 m, 10 m,
5 m) within the urban and rural areas, however, the 10 m resolution image (Sentinel-2A) produced better results in
the transition zone. The findings from this study provide a basis for more focused, consistent and possibly more
accurate time-series analyses of land-use dynamics at the urban-rural interface.

1. Introduction
Assessment of accuracy of land-cover maps produced from remote
sensing imagery is an integral part of image classification processes. In the
recent past, information on map accuracy has received heightened atten-
tion, particularly in the context of the increasing consensus on under-
standing and monitoring global environmental changes and the co-
ordination of mitigation and adaptation actions against climate change
(Mora et al., 2014). Spatially explicit land cover information serves as
input into ecosystem, regional and global climate simulation, global cir-
culation, land surface (Mora et al., 2014; Fritz et al., 2011) and socio-
economic models (Nesbitt and Meitner, 2016; Schüle et al., 2017). Thus,
consistent and quality-checked land cover data are in high demand since
the quality of selected land cover datasets have considerable influence on
simulation and model predictions (Benitez et al., 2004; Sertel et al., 2010).
It is well known that classification accuracy, when looking at the same
set of classes, depends on various factors, including landscape hetero-
geneity and spatial resolution of sensors, which have been reported to be
particularly important (Smith et al., 2002, 2003; Wu et al., 2008; Lu et al.,
2010; Fritz et al., 2011). Land cover and its spectral and spatial hetero-
geneity are considerably different in rural and urban landscapes. For in-
stance, while rural landscapes are mainly characterized by larger areas of
agricultural fields, barren land, fallow land, scattered human settlements
and forest patches of varying sizes, urban landscapes are predominantly
composed of impervious surfaces such as roads, buildings, rooftops and
parking lots mixed with tree crowns and green areas. The high variation in

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nnoelke@gwdg.de (N. Nölke).
1
Current address: Department of Geography, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk L39 4QP, UK

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2018.10.003
Received 26 July 2018; Received in revised form 15 October 2018; Accepted 17 October 2018
Available online 23 October 2018
2352-9385/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
K.T. Awuah et al.
spectral signatures of built-up surfaces, coming from varying sizes, shapes
and compositions of the used surface materials renders urban landscapes
spectrally altogether more heterogeneous (Lu et al., 2010) which may lead
to more misclassifications and, ultimately, to a reduced classification ac-
curacy (Tran et al., 2014). Landsat images, which are probably the most
widely used data source for larger area land cover and land use classifi-
cation – in particular when it comes to time series -, often fall short of
accuracy requirements particularly in complex urban-rural landscapes,
owing to its relatively coarse spatial resolution (Lu and Weng, 2005). Al-
ternatively, high spatial resolution images like IKONOS, Quickbird and
WorldView have been promoted for land-cover classification (Sugumaran
et al., 2002; Van der Sande et al., 2003; Lu et al., 2010) and mapping of
impervious surfaces in urban environments (Goetz et al., 2003; Lu and
Weng, 2009). Although this has been advantageous in minimizing mixed
pixel problems (Lu and Weng, 2009) with more detailed information ex-
traction potential, such high resolution data are constrained by high
spectral variation within the same land cover class (Lu et al., 2010; Lu and
Weng, 2009) and high processing requirements (Lu and Weng, 2007).
In the surroundings of rapidly emerging megacities, rapid changes in
land-use and land-cover is being observed in both the urban and the
surrounding rural domain. There, up-to-date and quality-checked data-
sets are of high importance for analyses of land cover dynamics.
Producing these required high-quality information from free available
satellite images like Landsat and Sentinel-2 with 30 m and 10 m resolu-
tion respectively is challenging. Extents, materials and composition of
impervious surfaces change significantly in such diverse landscapes,
leading to different spectral responses. This creates challenges in
choosing suitable classification algorithms and image processing tech-
niques (Lu et al., 2010). The use of object-oriented approaches (MacLean
and Congalton, 2012) and the incorporation of texture and spectral
bands (Lu et al., 2010) have been explored to enhance image classifi-
cation accuracy in similar contexts. Those studies, however, are com-
monly restricted to urban areas only, and little is known about the per-
formance of classification processes when simultaneously considering
rural and urban landscapes together with the transition zone in between.
This study aims at enhancing the understanding of how classifica-
tion accuracy changes along the urban-rural gradient in one of the
world's most dynamic cities, Bengaluru, India. With this background,
we investigate how variations in accuracy are related to landscape
structure and which role spatial resolution plays in this context.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Study area
Bengaluru, the capital of the Indian State of Karnataka, is located
around 12°58'N, 77°35'E and lies on Southern India's Deccan plateau, at
about 920 m above MSL (Sudhira and Nagendra, 2013). The topography
is relatively flat at Bengaluru North, which is one of four urban districts
while Bengaluru South is slightly undulating, with a central ridge run-
ning in north-east and south-west direction. The city is nowadays very
well-known for Information Technology, Biotechnology, Aerospace and
other advanced knowledge-based industries and research centers
(Hiremath et al., 2013) while in earlier times it was known as the ‘garden
city’ of India owing to its widespread parks and green spaces.
Bengaluru is a rapidly growing megapolis with concomitant in-
creases in population (e.g. from 6537,124 in 2001 to 9621,551 in 2011)
(India, 2011), economic activity and urban sprawl. This extensive
growth has resulted in landscape fragmentation and drastic changes in
land use along the urban-rural interface (Sudhira and Nagendra, 2013).
A 50 × 5 km research transect, in the northern part of Bengaluru, was
defined in the framework of a larger Indian-German collaborative re-
search project. This transect contains different land-use categories and
extends over rural, transition and urban domains. To analyze relation-
ships between classification accuracy, land-cover spatial heterogeneity
and spatial resolution, the transect was divided into 5 × 5 km subsets
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Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98
(Fig. 1), which has been found to be an appropriate extent for landscape
assessment using landscape metrics in other contexts (Messerli et al.,
2009). The extents of urban, transition and rural domains were defined
along the proportion of built-up pixels, using a grid of 14 squares in a
north-south direction, each of size 3 km2, and a cross-classification ap-
proach. Areas with more than 50% built-up pixels were regarded as
urban whereas areas with 10–50% and 0–10% built-up pixels were de-
fined as transition and rural respectively (Angel et al., 2010).
2.2. Satellite imagery
Remote sensing data used in this study included Landsat 8, Sentinel-
2, RapidEye and WorldView-3 datasets, all cloud free and covering the
same extent. The Landsat 8, Sentinel-2A and RapidEye imagery served
as the input for the land cover classifications whereas the high-resolu-
tion WorldView-3 image was used as a reference to extract training as
well as validation data. All satellite images were processed to surface
reflectance; image-to-image co-registration was done by automated
designation of tie-points. Table 1 shows a summary of the sources and
properties of the image datasets.
2.3. Classification scheme
In the study area, a variation of different landuse is found, ranging
from agricultural to industrial uses. Consequently, the area is char-
acterized by a broad spectrum of anthropogenic (e.g. concrete, asphalt,
metals, roofing material, etc.), semi-natural (e.g. grass, fields, re-
servoirs) and natural (e.g. lakes, trees, bare soil) land-cover features. A
classification scheme for the existing land-cover categories was thus
developed. It included seven land use/cover classes and is detailed in
Table 2 together with some information about the quantitative basis for
classification (number and area of training polygons).
2.4. Training data
A systematic sampling approach was adopted for the collection of
training data. Circular response units of 500 m radius were installed at 78
sampling points (corresponding to a grid of 1.89 km by 1.89 km) in the
satellite imagery. In this radius observations were made for training of
the classifier. The number of 78 training plots was deemed sufficient to
cover as much spectral and spatial information as possible along the
gradient, given the apparent variety in land use/cover types. Due to the
systematic sample, the resulting numbers of training areas per class were
roughly proportional to their respective total area so that a post-stratified
sample resulted. Training data for the defined land use/cover classes
(Table 2) was collected by visually identifying, digitizing and labeling
809 polygons of pixels using the WorldView-3 image as reference such
that their spatial and spectral properties were comprehensively captured.
The same polygon extents and locations were then used to extract
training samples at the different spatial resolutions. To allow for a direct
comparability of the results, training samples for the 5 m RapidEye image
from November 2017 were adjusted to account for temporal differences
in land cover, particularly in agricultural landscapes and dried-out water
bodies relative to the other image sets which stem from November 2016.
All efforts were undertaken to ensure spectral separability of the
training classes. Specifically, spectral plots of training classes were re-
viewed and repeatedly modified until training sets for all classes had
attained adequate spectral separability. Further, the Jefferies-Matusita
(JM) distances for pairs of classes of training sets were computed to
provide a statistical measure of training class separability. The JM
distance is a commonly used measure for defining spectral (dis) simi-
larity of thematic classes (Van Niel et al., 2005; Dabboor et al., 2014;
Momeni et al., 2016). The JM distance asymptotically approaches 2
when pairs of class spectral signatures are completely different and falls
to 0 when spectral signatures are identical (Richards and Jia, 2006).
K.T. Awuah et al. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98

Fig. 1. Map of study area centered on Bengaluru District – India with the 250 km2 transect and five-kilometer vertical divisions. Urban center is assumed to be the
lower border of the transect.

Table 1
List of satellite image data used in this study.

Satellite data Acquisition date Resolution Source

Landsat 8 November 2016 30 m Visible, Near Infrared (NIR), Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR), 100 m Thermal Infrared (TIR), 15 m United States Geological Survey (USGS)
panchromatic
Sentinel-2A November 2016 10 m, 20 m and 60 m in Visible and Near Infrared (NIR) to Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) spectral range European Space Agency (ESA)
RapidEye November 2017 5 m Visible, Red Edge, Near Infrared (NIR) Planet Labs
Worldview-3 November 2016 31 cm panchromatic, 1.24 m multispectral, Digital Globe Inc.

2.5. Multilayer Perceptron classification
The pixel-wise image classification was performed for the whole
extent of the transect using a so-called Multilayer Perceptron (MLP)
network. It is a simple deep learning model which is trained via back-
propagation (Goodfellow et al., 2016). The huge variations in spectral
reflectance along the urban-rural interface and the fact that the
different classes are not linearly separable are the main reason for the
usage of a neural network whose advantage is, among others, that it can
handle such complexity (Bischof et al., 1992; Venkatesh and Raja,
2003). Fig. 2 shows the structure of our MLP network model.
For network training, the categorical cross-entropy loss function
was used in conjunction with the Adam optimizer (Kingma and Ba,
2014) and a constant learning rate of 0.001. Each layer is followed by a

Table 2
Land cover classification scheme.

Land cover class Training polygons

ID Name Description Number Area (km2 )

1 Built-up Building structures with walls and roof, including residential buildings, industrial buildings, long surfaced vehicle tracks, mostly 391 2.09
asphalt coated, also including narrow streets and all railroad systems
2 Trees Patches of leaf-on trees within the landscape 175 0.86
3 Grass/Shrub Areas such as urban parks and lawns but also grass-covered areas around agricultural fields 13 0.08
4 Water Bodies Water bodies, including natural lakes, man-made ponds and reservoirs 23 1.67
5 Fallow land Agricultural lands currently without crops 90 3.98
6 Crop field Agricultural lands currently covered with crops 87 1.72
7 Barren Open areas covered by bare soil outside agricultural land use contexts as well as rocky surfaces 30 0.53

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K.T. Awuah et al.
Fig. 2. Illustration of the MLP network.
dropout layer (Srivastava et al., 2014), randomly neglecting 20% of the
weights in order to minimize overfitting.
Neural networks usually learn fastest, when their input is normal-
ized and their training data are shuffled (LeCun et al., 1998). Therefore,
each image is normalized by subtracting the mean and dividing by its
standard deviation. As pixel-wise classification only takes spectral in-
formation into account, the network is fed with pixels in a random
order. To monitor accuracy and thereby to prevent overfitting, each
dataset was divided into a training and a test set with a ratio of 70–30.
When the network learns a meaningful representation of the data the
accuracies on both, training and test set, increase simultaneously.
2.6. Accuracy assessment
The accuracy assessment was done separately for each land cover map
(whole transect and in 5 km steps) at the different spatial resolutions of
30 m, 10 m and 5 m. An independent validation dataset was collected from
the very high resolution WorldView-3 image. A systematic sample of
26047 points was labeled with their land cover class in conformity with
the classification scheme. Each point was visually interpreted. Similar to
the training data, the validation dataset was adjusted to account for
temporal differences in land cover between 2016 and 2017. Error matrices
were constructed that showed the correspondence between reference data
and classification output per land cover class. Users' accuracy, producers'
accuracy and overall map accuracy was estimated from the error matrix.
Following Olofsson et al. (2014) accuracy-adjusted area estimates for each
class and confidence intervals were estimated both for the whole transect
and for each of the 5 km × 5 km subsets.
2.7. Assessment of landscape structure
Spatial metrics (landscape metrics) provide information about the
composition and configuration of land-cover data sets, describing
Table 3
Selected landscape metrics. N is the number of patches in the landscape, A is the total landscape area, E is the total edge length and minE is the edge length of the
square patch with equal area, P i is landscape proportion occupied by patch type i, m is number of patches in the landscape and g ik represents the number of
adjacencies (shared sides) between pixels of the patch types i and k.
Landscape Metric
PD =
N
(10000)·(100)
A refers to land cover/use pixel or pixel groups. Quantifies
LSI =
E Expresses the configuration of a landscape. Quantifies
minE
gik gik
m (P )
ik i m g · ln (Pi ) m g
k = 1 ik k = 1 ik
CONTAG = 1 + ·100
2 ln(m )
SHDI =
m
(Pi·lnPi)
i=1
Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98
landscape structure by number, size and shape of patches in the different
land cover classes. Taking into account the spatial-contextual information
through landscape metrics (configuration) allows a more thorough inter-
pretation of classification accuracy (Smith et al., 2003). As an example,
high fragmentation can result in an increase in the number of mixed pixels
and may affect the classification error. Including this information may
provide additional insights into potential causes of classification error.
Four landscape metrics were selected and calculated for each of the
5 km × 5 km subsets using Fragstats, a spatial analysis program for raster
maps (McGarigal and Marks, 1995). The selected landscape metrics were
Patch Density (PD), Landscape Shape Index (LSI), Contagion Index
(CONTAG) and Shannon's Diversity Index (SHDI) (Table 3). This combi-
nation of metrics has proven capable of providing robust quantitative
measures of spatial landscape structure (Herold, 2001).
3. Results
3.1. Land cover map
The satellite images were classified using the Multilayer Perceptron
Neural Network classifier to produce land-cover maps at the three
different spatial resolutions of 30 m for Landsat 8, 10 m for Sentinel-2
and 5 m for RapidEye. Fig. 3 shows land cover maps for sections of the
five-kilometer vertical divisions of the study strip, representing urban
(10–15 km), transition (15–20 km) and rural (45–50 km) landscapes,
and allowing for an visual examination of differences. Differences in
scale and date of image acquisition (in the case of RapidEye) may result
considerable in disparities in derived land cover at different spatial
resolutions particularly within the transition and rural domains. For
instance, additional locations of water bodies in RapidEye relative to
Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2A result from temporal differences in image
acquisition. Overall, the output maps from finer resolution, as expected,
gave a better representation of land cover. Eventually, this impression is
consistent with the pattern of differences in the measures of classifi-
cation accuracy given in Section 3.2.
The finer resolution images retain more spatial and thematic details
in land-cover, particularly in the rural end of the landscape. For ex-
ample, RapidEye and Sentinel-2A better distinguish built-up areas
within the agricultural landscape as shown in Fig. 3 and discriminate
more land cover/use classes (see appendices A.5, B.6 and C.7) than
Landsat 8. However, the level of thematic details is similar for all spatial
resolutions in the urban and transition zones (appendices A.5, B.6 and
C.7). Furthermore, area estimates for key land cover types were similar
at the different spatial resolutions (see Fig. 5).
3.2. Classification accuracy
Confusion matrices for the land-cover maps were computed.
Description Value range
Mean number of patches per 100 ha. In this context, patch PD > 1, increases without limit. The larger, the more
fragmented
configuration
LSI 1, increases without limit. The larger, the more
configuration fragmented
Indicates the overall clumpiness within a landscape. 0 < CONTAG 100, 0 maximally disaggregated and
Quantifies configuration 100 aggregated. The larger, the less fragmented
Quantifies the number of different patch types (i.e. patch SHDI 0, increases without limit. The larger, the
richness). Quantifies composition more diverse and likely to be more fragmented
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K.T. Awuah et al.
Fig. 3. Example land-cover maps for different spatial resolution images (at 10–15 km, 15–20 km and 45–50 km along the transects represent regions within the
urban, transition and rural areas respectively).
Fig. 4 shows the trend in land cover/use classification accuracy from
the urban towards the rural area which is similar for all three types of
imagery used. The overall classification accuracy decreased sharply
from the urban region, reaching its lowest in the transition zone
(15–20 km stretch away from the defined urban center). Thereafter,
accuracy estimates increased gradually in the rural stretch (see Ap-
pendix A.5, B.6 and C.7 for details). Table 4 shows a summary of overall
classification accuracies for the entire urban, transition and rural zones.
Overall accuracy generally increased with increasing spatial resolution
(30 m < 10 m < 5 m) within the urban and rural areas; however, the
10 m resolution image (Sentinel-2A) gave better results in the transition
zone (also see Fig. 4).
Detailed results for the whole transect are presented in appendix
A.5, B.6 and C.7 for the three spatial resolutions. As with overall ac-
curacy, also the class-wise accuracies increased in principle with finer
spatial resolution (5 m RapidEye and 10 m, Sentinel-2). Nonetheless,
the coarser resolution (30 m, Landsat 8) proved slightly superior (i.e.
8% over 5 m RapidEye and 3% over 10 m Sentinel-2A) with regards to
areas correctly classified as Grassland for user's accuracy (see Appendix
A.5, B.6 and C.7). Overall classification accuracy went down with
spatial resolution by approximately 2% from 5 m (RapidEye) to 10 m
(Sentinel-2A) and 6% from 10 m to 30 m (Landsat 8) spatial resolution.
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Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98
3.3. Spatial heterogeneity
Fig. 6 shows the results of spatial composition and configuration of
land cover types as a function of the distance from urban to rural en-
vironments. The computed landscape metrics point to a trend in spatial
heterogeneity with distance from urban to rural areas where this trend
is similar for the three spatial resolutions, for all four selected frag-
mentation indices.
Regarding spatial heterogeneity, the highest values were observed
in the transition zone within 15–20 km from the urban center for all
metrics. The results indicate that PD and LSI are significantly influenced
by spatial resolution, unlike CONTAG and SHDI.
4. Discussion and conclusions
4.1. Classification accuracy changes with landscape structure along the
urban-rural gradient
Landscapes with higher values of PD, LSI and SHDI, as well as lower
CONTAG can generally be considered as spatially more heterogeneous
(Smith et al., 2003; Lechner et al., 2009; Tran et al., 2014). Landscape
structure along the studied urban-rural gradient in Bengaluru follows a
‘U’ (for CONTAG) or reversed ‘U’ (for PD, LSI and SHDI) relationship
K.T. Awuah et al. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98

between spatial landscape heterogeneity and urbanization gradient

(Luck and Wu, 2002; Yu et al., 2016). It should be noted that, while
results of the selected spatial metrics are undeniably correlated. The
depiction of an increasing trend in spatial complexity from the urban
center through the transition zone and subsequently decreasing and
leveling-off within the rural zone, their magnitude may be affected by
the scale of analysis (Wu et al., 2000; Luck and Wu, 2002) particularly
for PD and LSI as shown in Fig. 6.
The image classification accuracy results exhibited a near sinusoidal
pattern of changes from urban to rural landscapes. This trend is similar for
the three spatial resolutions (5 m RapidEye, 10 m Sentinel-2A and 30 m
Landsat 8). Generally, the highest and lowest accuracies were recorded in
the dense urban region and the transition zone respectively. Results of the
assessment of spatial heterogeneity showed that the transition zone along
the gradient has a relatively high number of isolated land cover/use patches
and longer edge lengths, and is less clumpy and more diverse with regards
to the land cover/use types present. This peculiar feature of the transition
landscape relates with the findings of Solecka et al. (2017) that transition
regions exhibit rapid urban sprawl leading to conversion of farmlands and
other vegetated areas into discontinuous urban fabric. Therefore, the decline
in classification accuracy from the urban center through the transition zone
correlates with the concomitant increase in landscape spatial heterogeneity
within the same stretch of the transect. Similarly, Chen et al. (2016) studied
Fig. 4. Changes in overall accuracy along the urban-rural gradient for different the impact of spatial heterogeneity on crop area classification accuracy and
resolutions. Dashed horizontal lines give the whole transect overall accuracy reported a decreasing trend in overall accuracy with increase in composi-
values at each resolution. tional and configurational heterogeneity. On the other hand, the results of
PD, LSI and CONTAG metrics showed the rural and urban ends as having
Table 4 more contiguous and less fragmented patches with many linked cell ad-
Overall accuracies for different image resolutions within urban, transition and jacencies (McGarigal et al., 2002; Lechner et al., 2009) and lower compo-
rural areas along the gradient. Confidence interval estimates were derived sitional heterogeneity based on SHDI, which can be attributed to the pre-
following Olofsson et al. (2014). dominance of agricultural (crop fields and fallow land) and built-up pixels
respectively. Nevertheless overall accuracy was better within the urban
Image Region
region although slightly more spatially heterogeneous with expected higher
Urban Transition Rural spectral heterogeneity (Lu et al., 2010). In part, this may be explained by
spectral confusion between barren, fallow land, cropfields and grassland
RapidEye 0.77 ± 0.007 0.62 ± 0.015 0.78 ± 0.007 classes given that the rural end is primarily composed of agricultural land
Sentinel-2A 0.75 ± 0.007 0.67 ± 0.013 0.76 ± 0.006
uses which are further distinguished as crop fields and fallow land classes.
Landsat 8 0.64 ± 0.006 0.61 ± 0.014 0.70 ± 0.008
The observed trend demonstrates that the changes in classification accuracy
are sensitive to spatial composition and configuration, and point to the fact
that an spatial heterogeneity that is associated with different landscape
conditions exerts enormous influence on image classification accuracy
(Congalton, 1991; Smith et al., 2002, 2003; Congalton and Green, 2008).

4.2. Classification accuracy changes with spatial resolution along the urban-
rural gradient

Differences in accuracy along the urban-rural gradient were similar

Fig. 5. Area estimates of the classes Built-up and Tree cover along the urban-
rural gradient.
for the three spatial resolutions. Yet the results show decreasing dif-
ferences in overall accuracy from the urban end towards the rural end
of the transect, with better and comparable results recorded for the 5 m
RapidEye and 10 m Sentinel-2A image. This may be related to the fact
that there are less mixed pixels for higher spatial resolution, which is
particularly relevant with increasing compositional and configurational
heterogeneity (Lim et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2016). This finding cor-
responds to earlier observations that the use of fine spatial resolution
images in complex regions further enhances classification accuracy (Lu
et al., 2010). Additionally, fine spatial resolution images enabled better
discrimination of land cover/use classes. Accuracy estimates of built-up
surfaces decreased with decreasing spatial resolution (5 m > 10 m >
30 m) along the urban-rural gradient. This phenomenon may pose
considerable challenges when using Landsat images as data for time
series analyses and change detection of urban sprawl (however, the
long historical records of Landsat archive provide great options in
general for time series analysis and detection of changes in land cover).
Additionally, the observed differences in mapping built-up areas also
point to the critical role of spatial resolution in the calculation of

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K.T. Awuah et al.
Fig. 6. Metrics of spatial composition and configuration as a function of distance from urban center, at 5 m, 10 m and 30 m spatial resolutions (Shaded area represents
95% confidence interval (CI) from class-level metrics).
indexes that quantify urbanization (Wei et al., 2017).
Other than the observed changes in classification accuracy, similar
area estimates particularly for built-up and tree cover were recorded
from the different spatial resolution images along the urban-rural gra-
dient. Area coverage for built-up surfaces decreased rapidly in tandem
with tree cover along the urban-rural gradient for all spatial resolutions.
Sudhira and Nagendra (2013) reported the dominance of large canopy
shade trees along streets and in parks within the urban district of
Bengaluru which we observed in our ground surveys. The higher cov-
erage of trees in the urban zone is characteristic for Bengaluru and
deviates from popular assumptions about the urban-rural gradient
(URG) hypothesis of ecosystem processes, that the proportion of parks
and green spaces increases towards the outskirts of cities as evidence of
a decreasing degree of urbanization (Malkinson et al., 2018).
4.3. Spatial resolution and classification accuracy for the whole transect
Classification accuracy for the whole transect was generally en-
hanced at higher spatial resolutions, which highlights the role of fine
spatial image resolution in enhancing classification accuracy (Ponzoni
et al., 2002; Ming et al., 2011; Suwanprasit and Srichai, 2012; Huiping
et al., 2003). However, for areas identified as grassland, user's accuracy
showed an increasing trend as spatial resolution decreased (i.e. 30 m >
10 m > 5 m). Similarly, Huiping et al. (2003) found that unlike small
area classes like arbor which had a high accuracy when mapped from
fine resolution image, large area classes like grassland had higher ac-
curacy when extracted from coarser resolution images.
Other findings caution that finer resolution images may not ne-
cessarily result in higher classification accuracy and that land cover
classes exhibit different classification accuracies from various image
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Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98
resolutions even within the same landscape (Hsieh and Lee, 2000;
Huiping et al., 2003; Chen et al., 2004; Alsheri, 2010). Chen et al.
(2004) recommends finer resolution images for more fragmented
landscapes, while Huiping et al. (2003) iterates that different classes
require different image resolutions for mapping and that the choice of
the resolution should be guided by the most important class.
Ultimately, the results of this study demonstrate a considerable
variation in image classification accuracy from urban to rural areas
where accuracies are generally higher in the urban and rural zones than
in the transition zone, and this reflects the degree of landscape spatial
heterogeneity along the urban-rural gradient. Thus remote sensing
analyses of cities and surrounding areas should take into consideration
such possible differences and the role of compositional and configura-
tional landscape structure as well as the scale of analyses in outcomes of
investigated processes particularly along such complex urban-rural
gradient.
Declarations of interest
None.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided
by the German Research Foundation, Germany, DFG, through grant
number KL894/23-1 as part of the Research Unit FOR2432/1. We are
also thankful for the cooperation and infrastructural support provided
by our Indian partners at the Institute of Wood Science and Technology
(IWST), Bengaluru.
K.T. Awuah et al. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98

Appendix A. Landsat 8 accuracy measures

Table A.5
User(UA) and producer accuracy(PA) for each land cover class(ID) and each 5 × 5 km subset and for the whole transect.

ID Landsat 8

Urban Transition

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.77 ± 0.02 0.89 ± 0.02 0.80 ± 0.02 0.86 ± 0.02 0.72 ± 0.02 0.81 ± 0.02 0.71 ± 0.03 0.72 ± 0.02 0.61 ± 0.07 0.51 ± 0.06
2 0.70 ± 0.03 0.52 ± 0.04 0.77 ± 0.03 0.65 ± 0.04 0.50 ± 0.05 0.29 ± 0.05 0.54 ± 0.05 0.33 ± 0.05 0.30 ± 0.11 0.11 ± 0.06
3 0.62 ± 0.27 0.06 ± 0.24 0.25 ± 0.50 0.01 ± 0.14 0.20 ± 0.39 0.01 ± 0.05 1.00 ± 0.00 0.01 ± 0.00 0.00 ± 0.00 0.00 ± 0.00
4 0.42 ± 0.20 0.83 ± 0.16 0.17 ± 0.11 0.42 ± 0.12 0.62 ± 0.09 0.80 ± 0.08 0.74 ± 0.07 0.90 ± 0.06 0.60 ± 0.32 0.46 ± 0.28
5 0.04 ± 0.07 0.25 ± 0.24 0.17 ± 0.07 0.43 ± 0.09 0.64 ± 0.04 0.53 ± 0.04 0.67 ± 0.03 0.68 ± 0.03 0.82 ± 0.02 0.73 ± 0.02
6 0.02 ± 0.04 0.50 ± 0.15 0.05 ± 0.04 0.43 ± 0.09 0.16 ± 0.03 0.44 ± 0.04 0.22 ± 0.03 0.69 ± 0.03 0.61 ± 0.03 0.84 ± 0.02
7 0.40 ± 0.13 0.28 ± 0.13 0.45 ± 0.12 0.41 ± 0.10 0.15 ± 0.05 0.23 ± 0.05 0.29 ± 0.07 0.30 ± 0.07 0.15 ± 0.07 0.26 ± 0.07
OA 0.72 ± 0.01 0.71 ± 0.01 0.56 ± 0.02 0.54 ± 0.02 0.68 ± 0.01

ID Landsat 8

Rural Transect

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.48 ± 0.12 0.34 ± 0.09 0.58 ± 0.09 0.43 ± 0.09 0.84 ± 0.111 0.41 ± 0.12 0.74 ± 0.10 0.57 ± 0.11 0.75 ± 0.01 0.81 ± 0.01
2 0.13 ± 0.24 0.01 ± 0.10 0.00 ± 0.00 0.00 ± 0.00 0.42 ± 0.291 0.19 ± 0.20 0.75 ± 0.22 0.07 ± 0.22 0.67 ± 0.02 0.42 ± 0.02
3 0.00 ± 0.00 0.00 ± 0.00 – – – – – – 0.50 ± 0.188 0.02 ± 0.089
4 0.62 ± 0.21 0.57 ± 0.21 0.57 ± 0.27 0.62 ± 0.22 0.81 ± 0.154 0.55 ± 0.13 0.83 ± 0.33 0.50 ± 0.26 0.64 ± 0.05 0.74 ± 0.04
5 0.89 ± 0.02 0.68 ± 0.02 0.88 ± 0.02 0.70 ± 0.02 0.93 ± 0.012 0.72 ± 0.02 0.90 ± 0.01 0.73 ± 0.02 0.85 ± 0.01 0.70 ± 0.00
6 0.51 ± 0.03 0.85 ± 0.02 0.51 ± 0.03 0.84 ± 0.02 0.48 ± 0.028 0.89 ± 0.02 0.48 ± 0.03 0.88 ± 0.02 0.46 ± 0.01 0.84 ± 0.00
7 0.12 ± 0.08 0.25 ± 0.12 0.04 ± 0.05 0.11 ± 0.09 – – – – 0.21 ± 0.03 0.29 ± 0.03
OA 0.68 ± 0.01 0.69 ± 0.02 0.73 ± 0.01 0.71 ± 0.013 0.68 ± 0.005

Appendix B. Sentinel-2 accuracy measures

Table B.6
User(UA) and producer accuracy(PA) for each land cover class(ID) and each 5 × 5 km subset and for the whole transect.

ID Sentinel-2

Urban Suburban

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.83 ± 0.016 0.93 ± 0.033 0.86 ± 0.016 0.92 ± 0.017 0.81 ± 0.021 0.87 ± 0.015 0.80 ± 0.026 0.84 ± 0.020 0.66 ± 0.056 0.81 ± 0.045
2 0.82 ± 0.028 0.66 ± 0.027 0.87 ± 0.022 0.70 ± 0.046 0.73 ± 0.044 0.48 ± 0.048 0.68 ± 0.043 0.50 ± 0.049 0.36 ± 0.075 0.30 ± 0.059
3 0.67 ± 0.326 0.04 ± 0.287 0.67 ± 0.326 0.04 ± 0.190 0.44 ± 0.344 0.02 ± 0.164 0.76 ± 0.207 0.05 ± 0.150 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000
4 0.69 ± 0.234 0.92 ± 0.135 0.81 ± 0.172 0.89 ± 0.159 0.93 ± 0.056 0.96 ± 0.052 0.88 ± 0.055 0.93 ± 0.035 0.75 ± 0.255 0.69 ± 0.219
5 0.02 ± 0.046 0.25 ± 0.206 0.20 ± 0.071 0.53 ± 0.156 0.66 ± 0.040 0.58 ± 0.043 0.75 ± 0.032 0.71 ± 0.030 0.89 ± 0.017 0.78 ± 0.017
6 0.01 ± 0.024 0.50 ± 0.126 0.04 ± 0.028 0.43 ± 0.069 0.14 ± 0.032 0.44 ± 0.039 0.26 ± 0.034 0.73 ± 0.029 0.65 ± 0.029 0.78 ± 0.020
7 0.73 ± 0.121 0.48 ± 0.114 0.55 ± 0.107 0.62 ± 0.118 0.28 ± 0.077 0.33 ± 0.074 0.45 ± 0.083 0.41 ± 0.075 0.19 ± 0.080 0.28 ± 0.080
OA 0.79 ± 0.014 0.78 ± 0.012 0.64 ± 0.015 0.64 ± 0.015 0.72 ± 0.014

ID Sentinel-2

Rural Transect

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.50 ± 0.095 0.57 ± 0.075 0.70 ± 0.067 0.77 ± 0.059 0.73 ± 0.090 0.77 ± 0.075 0.64 ± 0.090 0.80 ± 0.069 0.81 ± 0.009 0.90 ± 0.006
2 0.29 ± 0.118 0.23 ± 0.089 0.25 ± 0.103 0.26 ± 0.084 0.15 ± 0.080 0.44 ± 0.091 0.34 ± 0.097 0.18 ± 0.056 0.73 ± 0.016 0.57 ± 0.017
3 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.33 ± 0.653 0.08 ± 0.854 – – 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.47 ± 0.114 0.04 ± 0.055
4 0.88 ± 0.157 0.65 ± 0.202 0.86 ± 0.190 0.86 ± 0.174 0.95 ± 0.066 0.89 ± 0.088 0.86 ± 0.280 0.60 ± 0.202 0.86 ± 0.036 0.86 ± 0.030
5 0.91 ± 0.013 0.78 ± 0.016 0.94 ± 0.011 0.76 ± 0.014 0.96 ± 0.009 0.72 ± 0.014 0.94 ± 0.012 0.73 ± 0.015 0.89 ± 0.006 0.74 ± 0.007
6 0.61 ± 0.029 0.82 ± 0.020 0.59 ± 0.029 0.87 ± 0.020 0.48 ± 0.029 0.85 ± 0.020 0.48 ± 0.029 0.85 ± 0.018 0.49 ± 0.012 0.80 ± 0.008
7 0.04 ± 0.060 0.07 ± 0.095 0.15 ± 0.112 0.33 ± 0.128 – – – – 0.35 ± 0.038 0.39 ± 0.035
OA 0.75 ± 0.013 0.77 ± 0.012 0.74 ± 0.011 0.72 ± 0.012 0.74 ± 0.005

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K.T. Awuah et al. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 12 (2018) 89–98

Appendix C. RapidEye accuracy measures

Table C.7
User(UA) and producer accuracy(PA) for each land cover class(ID) and each 5 × 5 km subset and for the whole transect.

ID RapidEye

Urban Suburban

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.90 ± 0.013 0.97 ± 0.000 0.90 ± 0.014 0.94 ± 0.013 0.82 ± 0.020 0.87 ± 0.016 0.86 ± 0.024 0.80 ± 0.020 0.75 ± 0.061 0.66 ± 0.059
2 0.95 ± 0.015 0.81 ± 0.000 0.94 ± 0.015 0.81 ± 0.024 0.76 ± 0.041 0.51 ± 0.039 0.74 ± 0.042 0.52 ± 0.044 0.57 ± 0.105 0.26 ± 0.093
3 0.91 ± 0.117 0.17 ± 0.185 0.58 ± 0.201 0.10 ± 0.108 0.25 ± 0.084 0.16 ± 0.063 0.57 ± 0.166 0.08 ± 0.114 – –
4 0.50 ± 0.204 0.92 ± 0.156 0.59 ± 0.188 0.89 ± 0.140 0.65 ± 0.087 0.93 ± 0.085 0.78 ± 0.067 0.91 ± 0.062 0.24 ± 0.117 0.92 ± 0.147
5 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.12 ± 0.048 0.81 ± 0.062 0.54 ± 0.037 0.64 ± 0.028 0.53 ± 0.030 0.74 ± 0.023 0.75 ± 0.020 0.85 ± 0.013
6 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.07 ± 0.073 0.23 ± 0.127 0.27 ± 0.073 0.25 ± 0.079 0.29 ± 0.045 0.51 ± 0.042 0.70 ± 0.032 0.61 ± 0.027
7 0.52 ± 0.129 0.41 ± 0.000 0.63 ± 0.099 0.65 ± 0.185 0.24 ± 0.065 0.37 ± 0.061 0.33 ± 0.081 0.28 ± 0.072 0.25 ± 0.106 0.27 ± 0.108
OA 0.87 ± 0.016 0.83 ± 0.015 0.66 ± 0.016 0.62 ± 0.016 0.69 ± 0.016

ID RapidEye

Rural Transect

UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA UA PA

1 0.49 ± 0.110 0.41 ± 0.095 0.74 ± 0.068 0.67 ± 0.077 0.74 ± 0.117 0.41 ± 0.112 0.82 ± 0.092 0.56 ± 0.092 0.86 ± 0.008 0.88 ± 0.006
2 0.46 ± 0.282 0.08 ± 0.278 0.32 ± 0.144 0.17 ± 0.110 0.53 ± 0.156 0.28 ± 0.145 0.55 ± 0.160 0.11 ± 0.118 0.85 ± 0.013 0.62 ± 0.013
3 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 0.00 ± 0.000 – – 0.42 ± 0.071 0.10 ± 0.050
4 0.23 ± 0.090 0.83 ± 0.099 0.37 ± 0.111 0.84 ± 0.101 0.88 ± 0.065 0.85 ± 0.064 0.95 ± 0.045 0.85 ± 0.061 0.63 ± 0.035 0.89 ± 0.033
5 0.83 ± 0.017 0.84 ± 0.012 0.86 ± 0.015 0.85 ± 0.014 0.88 ± 0.014 0.87 ± 0.013 0.91 ± 0.013 0.87 ± 0.014 0.78 ± 0.007 0.84 ± 0.006
6 0.69 ± 0.032 0.67 ± 0.027 0.69 ± 0.032 0.72 ± 0.023 0.64 ± 0.034 0.73 ± 0.025 0.54 ± 0.035 0.80 ± 0.023 0.60 ± 0.014 0.67 ± 0.011
7 0.06 ± 0.062 0.11 ± 0.078 0.12 ± 0.130 0.17 ± 0.229 – – 0.07 ± 0.097 1.00 0.174 0.32 ± 0.036 0.37 ± 0.034
OA 0.74 ± 0.013 0.78 ± 0.013 0.80 ± 0.012 0.79 ± 0.013 0.76 ± 0.005

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