Comparison of surface water extraction performances of different classic water indices using OLI and TM imageries in different situations

Recently, water extraction based on the indices method has been documented in many studies using various remote sensing data sources. Among them, Landsat satellites data have certain advantages in spatial resolution and cost. After the successful launch of Landsat 8, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) data from the satellite are getting more and more attention because of its new improvements. In this study, we used the OLI imagery data source to study the water extraction performance based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Water Index, Modified Normalized Water Index (MNDWI), and Automated Water Extraction Index (AWEI) and compared the results with the Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery data. Two test sites in Tianjin City of north China were selected as the study area to verify the applicability of OLI data and demonstrate its advantages over TM data. We found that the results of surface water extraction based on OLI data are slightly better than that based on TM in the two test sites, especially in the city site. The AWEI and MNDWI indices performs better than the other two indices, and the thresholds of water indices show more stability when using the OLI data. So, it is suitable to combine OLI imagery with other Landsat sensor data to study water changes for long periods of time