{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,27]],"date-time":"2026-03-27T14:16:10Z","timestamp":1774620970333,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,22]],"date-time":"2015-09-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1442880000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Mapping urban areas at global and regional scales is an urgent and crucial task for detecting urbanization and human activities throughout the world and is useful for discerning the influence of urban expansion upon the ecosystem and the surrounding environment. DMSP-OLS stable nighttime lights have provided an effective way to monitor human activities on a global scale. Threshold-based algorithms have been widely used for extracting urban areas and estimating urban expansion, but the accuracy can decrease because of the empirical and subjective selection of threshold values. This paper proposes an approach for extracting urban areas with the integration of DMSP-OLS stable nighttime lights and MODIS data utilizing training sample datasets selected from DMSP-OLS and MODIS NDVI based on several simple strategies. Four classification algorithms were implemented for comparison: the classification and regression tree (CART), k-nearest-neighbors (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM), and random forests (RF). A case study was carried out on the eastern part of China, covering 99 cities and 1,027,700 km2. The classification results were validated using an independent land cover dataset, and then compared with an existing contextual classification method. The results showed that the new method can achieve results with comparable accuracies, and is easier to implement and less sensitive to the initial thresholds than the contextual method. Among the four classifiers implemented, RF achieved the most stable results and the highest average Kappa. Meanwhile CART produced highly overestimated results compared to the other three classifiers. Although k-NN and SVM tended to produce similar accuracy, less-bright areas around the urban cores seemed to be ignored when using SVM, which led to the underestimation of urban areas. Furthermore, quantity assessment showed that the results produced by k-NN, SVM, and RFs exhibited better agreement in larger cities and low consistency in small cities.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs70912419","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,22]],"date-time":"2015-09-22T15:36:54Z","timestamp":1442936214000},"page":"12419-12439","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":61,"title":["Mapping Urban Areas with Integration of DMSP\/OLS Nighttime Light and MODIS Data Using Machine  Learning Techniques"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"7","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8021-3943","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wenlong","family":"Jing","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China"}]},{"given":"Yaping","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China"}]},{"given":"Xiafang","family":"Yue","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China"}]},{"given":"Xiaodan","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"},{"name":"Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e23777","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0023777","article-title":"A meta-analysis of global urban land expansion","volume":"6","author":"Seto","year":"2011","journal-title":"PloS ONE"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"756","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1150195","article-title":"Global change and the ecology of cities","volume":"319","author":"Grimm","year":"2008","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"570","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1111772","article-title":"Global consequences of land use","volume":"309","author":"Foley","year":"2005","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1165","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1461-0248.2009.01372.x","article-title":"A global synthesis of plant extinction rates in urban areas","volume":"12","author":"Hahs","year":"2009","journal-title":"Ecol. 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