Spatiotemporal patterns of water and vegetation in Poyang Lake from 2013 to 2021 using remote sensing data

Continuous monitoring and research on Poyang Lake is essential to understand its ecological dynamics and promote sustainable development. Spatial and temporal dynamic monitoring and analyses of vegetation changes in the water body of Poyang Lake are still limited. This study fills this gap by using remote sensing and GIS techniques for dynamic monitoring and analysing the changes of water bodies and vegetation in Poyang Lake from 2013 to 2021. We used a combination of Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) to preprocess and classify 42 Landsat 8 OLI images. The results showed that the stability of the water body and vegetation varied greatly, with the water body showing the obvious change pattern of water rises, vegetation recedes and water recedes, vegetation grows, and the high-frequency inundation area was concentrated in the northeastern part of the lake (accounting for 60% of the total inundation area). Vegetation frequency distribution showed a pattern of sparse in the north and dense in the south, with the middle frequency area being the most, accounting for 19.88%, and the low frequency area being the least, accounting for 16.09%. The results show that the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of water body and vegetation in Poyang Lake show low stability, which is a highly dynamic ecosystem. This study relatively makes up for the missing analysis of the stability change of water body and vegetation in the cycle of Poyang Lake, and provides a solid scientific basis for the protection and sustainable management work.