This invention discloses an AI-based early warning method for estuarine
wetland degradation risk, belonging to the field of ecological
remote sensing monitoring technology. Addressing the shortcomings of existing
wetland degradation
prediction methods, such as reliance on multi-
source data, lack of bidirectional temporal modeling and key-step focusing capabilities, and absence of critical warning mechanisms, this invention uses only MODIS NDVI
time series data as the sole
data source. It simultaneously captures the forward and backward temporal dependencies of the NDVI sequence through a bidirectional long short-
term memory network (BiLSTM) and introduces an attention mechanism to adaptively focus on the key time steps that contribute most to the degradation trend. After model training, multi-step predictions are made for
wetland vegetation cover dynamics over the next 6–24 months. Based on this, the degradation rate and acceleration of the predicted sequence are calculated and compared with historical thresholds. When the predicted NDVI consistently falls below the critical degradation threshold and the degradation rate accelerates significantly, a graded early warning
signal is automatically issued, particularly identifying critical degradation states about to cross the irreversible inflection point. Using Chongming East Beach in the Yangtze River
Estuary as an example, this method achieves a prediction error (MAE) as low as 0.028 when using only the NDVI
single indicator and can issue effective critical warnings 6–12 months in advance. This invention has the advantages of simple
data acquisition, high prediction accuracy, interpretable attention weights, and strong transferability, providing a new technical means for the protection and management of estuarine wetlands.