GeoAI-Driven Wetland Change Analysis in the Sangamon River Watershed (2000–2025): A Comparative Assessment of Machine Learning and Deep Learning Approaches

Abstract

Wetlands monitoring is essential for sustainable watershed biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience. This study performs a spatiotemporal wetland change analysis for the Sangamon River Watershed, Illinois between 2000 and 2025, using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM), Sentinel–2 Surface Reflectance (SR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Gray–Level Co–occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and terrain data through cloud–based processing in Google Earth Engine (GEE), Google Colab and ArcGIS Pro 3.6.0. We conducted a comparative assessment of deep learning (Deep Neural Network [DNN], U-Net, Attention U-Net, and SegFormer), and machine learning models (Random Forest [RF], Gradient Tree Boosting [GTB], and Support Vector Machines [SVM]) through pixel–based and object–based methods. National Land Cover Database (NLCD) was used for training and validation using stratified random sampling for five categories namely wetlands, forest, agriculture/grassland/barren land, urban/developed and water. A proportion of 54.85% (860.68 km2) of wetlands extent was lost to other land uses, particularly agriculture, urban and forest, along with 46.51% (694.88 km2) forest and 36.80% (66.13 km2) water bodies loss. Agriculture/grassland/barren and urban/developed witnessed increases of 8.56% (820.62 km2) and 72.92% (799.52 km2), respectively. For Landsat–based and Sentinel–based classifications, SegFormer outperformed all ML and DL classifiers with (OA = 94%, Kappa = 0.89, mean F1 = 0.80, mean IoU = 0.70 and OA = 96%, Kappa = 0.92, mean F1 = 0.95, mean IoU = 0.73, respectively) with excellent wetland delineation (PA = 0.99, UA = 0.97, F1 = 0.98, IoU = 0.97 and PA = 0.99, UA = 0.99, F1 = 0.98, IoU = 0.99, respectively). Sentinel–based classifications had improved performance than Landsat, while object–based models consistently outperformed pixel–based methods. The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and slope were the most influential predictors for RF models, while GLCM and SAR produced negligible influence. The integrated and comparative GeoAI framework provides a robust methodology for watershed–scale wetland monitoring and supports evidence–based conservation, restoration prioritization, climate resilience, and sustainable land–use planning, while offering strong potential for application in other agricultural watersheds following regional validation.