A Deep Learning Architecture for Land Cover Mapping Using Spatio-Temporal Sentinel-1 Features

Land cover (LC) mapping using satellite imagery is critical for environmental monitoring and management. Deep learning (DL), particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and vision transformers (ViTs), have revolutionized this field by enhancing the accuracy of classification tasks. In this work, a novel approach combining a transformer-based Swin-Unet architecture with seasonal synthesized spatio-temporal images has been employed to classify LC types using spatio-temporal features extracted from Sentinel-1 (S1) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, organized into seasonal clusters. The study focuses on three distinct regions—Amazonia, Africa, and Siberia—and evaluates the model performance across diverse ecoregions within these areas. By utilizing seasonal feature sequences instead of dense temporal sequences, notable performance improvements have been achieved, especially in regions with temporal data gaps such as Siberia, where S1 data distribution is uneven and nonuniform. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and the generalization capabilities of the proposed methodology in achieving high overall accuracy (OA) values, even in regions with limited training data.