remote sensing Article Spatiotemporal Mapping and Monitoring of Whiting in the Semi-Enclosed Gulf Using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Time Series Images and a Generic Ensemble Tree-Based Model Abdallah Shanableh 1,2, Rami Al-Ruzouq 1,2,* , Mohamed Barakat A. Gibril 2 , Cristina Flesia 3 and Saeed AL-Mansoori 4 1 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, UAE;
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[email protected] 3 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano Bicocca, Piazza Della Scienza 4, 20126 Milano, Italy; cristina.fl
[email protected] 4 Applications Development and Analysis Section (ADAS), Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), Dubai 211833, UAE;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +971-6-505-0953 Received: 31 March 2019; Accepted: 13 May 2019; Published: 20 May 2019 Abstract: Whiting events in seas and lakes are a natural phenomenon caused by suspended calcium carbonate (CaCO3) particles. The Arabian Gulf, which is a semi-enclosed sea, is prone to extensive whiting that covers tens of thousands of square kilometres. Despite the extent and frequency of whiting events in the Gulf, studies documenting the whiting phenomenon are lacking. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to detect, map and document the spatial and temporal distributions of whiting events in the Gulf using daily images acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites from 2002 to 2018. A method integrating a geographic object-based image analysis, the correlation-based feature selection technique (CFS), the adaptive boosting decision tree (AdaBoost DT) and the rule-based classification were used in the study to detect, quantify and assess whiting events in the Gulf from the MODIS data.