MNDWI-derived Water Image
McFeeters (1996) proposed the Normalized Difference Water
Index (NDWI) to delineate open water features, which is
expressed as follows:
(2)
where GREEN is a green band such as TM2, and NIR is a
near infrared band such as TM4.
This index maximizes reflectance of water by using green
light wavelengths and minimizes low reflectance of NIR by
water features while taking advantage of the high reflectance of
NIR by vegetation and soil features. As a result, water features
are enhanced owing to having positive values and vegetation
and soil are suppressed due to having zero or negative values.
However, the applications of the NDWI in the water
regions with built-up land background like the cases of
Quanzhou and Fuzhou cities were not as successful as
expectation. The extracted water information in these regions
was often mixed up with built-up land noise because many
built-up lands also have positive values in the NDWI-derived
image. The signature features of built-up land in green band
(TM2) and NIR band (TM4) shown in Figure 3 are similar with
those of water, i.e., they both reflect green light more than
reflect near infrared light. Consequently, the computation of