The damage of urban vegetation from super typhoon is associated with landscape factors: Evidence from Sentinel-2 imagery

• Published in: International journal of applied earth observation and geoinformation 2021-12, Vol.104, p.102536, Article 102536
• Main Authors: Xu, Shuai, Zhu, Xiaolin, Helmer, Eileen H., Tan, Xiaoyue, Tian, Jiaqi, Chen, Xuehong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Hurricane; Land cover; Spatial pattern; Typhoon Mangkhut; Vegetation damage; Vegetation index
• ISSN: 1569-8432; 1872-826X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2021.102536

•Sentinel-2 accurately mapped typhoon-induced vegetation damage in complex urban areas.•Urban landscape weakens the relationship between wind speed and vegetation damage.•Vegetation close to roads and buildings is more vulnerable to typhoons.•Isolated vegetation is more susceptible to typhoon attacks than clustered vegetation.•High-rise buildings may protect surrounding vegetation from typhoon attacks. Many studies have investigated the impacts of typhoons on natural vegetation, but the influencing factor of urban vegetation damage from super typhoon is not clear. Therefore, this study investigated the vegetation damage patterns in eight cities affected by Typhoon Mangkhut (the 2nd strongest tropical storm worldwide in 2018) using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from Sentinel-2 images. The vegetation damage maps have an overall accuracy of 97% using the very high-resolution WorldView-3 images as reference data. The results show that (1) The typhoon-induced vegetation damage show high spatial heterogeneity in urban areas and varies with land cover types. Residential greenspace and street trees are more susceptible to typhoon disturbance than natural vegetation. (2) Wind intensity is still an important factor in urban vegetation damage (r2 = 0.43, P value