Improvement of tropical vegetation mapping using a remote sensing technique: A case of Khao Yai National Park,Thailand

The forest ecosystems of Thailand are characterized by a diverse and complex vegetation structure. Classification of vegetation types of such forest ecosystems has been experienced as a difficult task, even with large-scale aerial photography. Satellite remote sensing, the digital technique in particular, has not been widely used for vegetation mapping in Thailand until now. The objective of this study was to explore the potential of digital image processing over the existing technique of visual interpretation of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) false colour composite (BGR-2, 3, 4) to produce forest cover maps in Thailand. Supervised and unsupervised classification methods were employed with different band combinations to discriminate vegetation types in the Khao Yai National Park using Landsat TM data. The results indicated that thematic classes derived from supervised classification produced higher overall accuracy than unsupervised classification. In addition, the combination of ratio bands R4/3, R5/2, R5/4 and R5/7 ranked the highest in terms of accuracy (65% for unsupervised and 79% for supervised) and the combination of bands 2, 3 and 4 gave the lowest (56% for both methods). Finally, it was concluded that, even within the limit of spectral information available in the image, the digital classification can improve the result of visual interpretation.     

A hybrid approach to urban land use/cover mapping using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images

A hybrid method that incorporates the advantages of supervised and unsupervised approaches as well as hard and soft classifications was proposed for mapping the land use/cover of the Atlanta metropolitan area using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data. The unsupervised ISODATA clustering method was initially used to segment the image into a large number of clusters of pixels. With reference to ground data based on 1?:?40?000 colour infrared aerial photographs in the form of Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangle (DOQQ), homogeneous clusters were labelled. Clusters that could not be labelled because of mixed pixels were clipped out and subjected to a supervised fuzzy classification. A final land use/cover map was obtained by a union overlay of the two partial land use/cover maps. This map was evaluated by comparing with maps produced using unsupervised ISODATA clustering, supervised fuzzy and supervised maximum likelihood classification methods. It was found that the hybrid approach was slightly better than the unsupervised ISODATA clustering in land use/cover classification accuracy, most probably because of the supervised fuzzy classification, which effectively dealt with the mixed pixel problem in the low-density urban use category of land use/cover. It was suggested that this hybrid approach can be economically implemented in a standard image processing software package to produce land use/cover maps with higher accuracy from satellite images of moderate spatial resolution in a complex urban environment, where both discrete and continuous land cover elements occur side by side.     

Spectral analysis and classification accuracy of coffee crops using Landsat and a topographic‐environmental model

Coffee is an extremely important cash crop, yet previous work indicates that satellite mapping of coffee has produced low classification accuracy. This research examines spectral band combinations and ancillary data for evaluating the classification accuracy and the nature of spectral confusion between coffee and other cover types in a Costa Rican study area. Supervised classification using Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) with only red, near‐infrared, and mid‐infrared bands had significantly lower classification accuracy compared to datasets that included more spectral bands and ancillary data. The highest overall accuracy achieved was 65%, including a coffee environmental stratification model (CESM). Producer's and user's accuracy was highest for shade coffee plantations (91.8 and 61.1%) and sun coffee (86.2 and 68.4%) with band combination ETM+ 34567, NDVI, cos (i), and including the use of the CESM. Post‐classification stratification of the optimal coffee growing zone based on elevation and precipitation data did not show significant improvement in land cover classification accuracy when band combinations included both the thermal band and NDVI. A forward stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that ETM+ 5 (mid‐infrared band) had the highest discriminatory power. The best discriminatory subset for all woody cover types including coffee excluded ETM+ 3 and 7; however, the land cover accuracy assessment indicated that overall accuracy, as well as producer's and user's accuracy of shade and sun coffee, were slightly improved with the inclusion of these bands. Although spectral separation between coffee crops and woodland areas was only moderately successful in the Costa Rica study, the overall accuracy, as well as the sun and shade coffee producer's and user's accuracy, were higher than reported in previous research.     

A comparison of local variance,fractal dimension,and Moran's I as aids to multispectral image classification

The accuracy of traditional multispectral maximum‐likelihood image classification is limited by the multi‐modal statistical distributions of digital numbers from the complex, heterogenous mixture of land cover types in urban areas. This work examines the utility of local variance, fractal dimension and Moran's I index of spatial autocorrelation in segmenting multispectral satellite imagery with the goal of improving urban land cover classification accuracy. Tools available in the ERDAS Imagine^TM software package and the Image Characterization and Modeling System (ICAMS) were used to analyse Landsat ETM?+ imagery of Atlanta, Georgia. Images were created from the ETM?+ panchromatic band using the three texture indices. These texture images were added to the stack of multispectral bands and classified using a supervised, maximum likelihood technique. Although each texture band improved the classification accuracy over a multispectral only effort, the addition of fractal dimension measures is particularly effective at resolving land cover classes within urbanized areas, as compared to per‐pixel spectral classification techniques.     

Mapping of boreal vegetation of a temperate mountain in China by multitemporal Landsat TM imagery

The Changbai Mountain Natural Reserve (2000 km 2 ), north-east China, is a very important ecosystem representing the temperate biosphere. The cover types were derived by using multitemporal Landsat TM imagery, which was modified with DEM data on the relationship between vegetation distribution and elevation. It was classified into 20 groups by supervised classification. By comparing the results of the classification of different band combinations, bands 4 and 5 of an image from 18 July 1997 and band 3 of an image from 22 October 1997 were used to make a false colour image for the final output, a vegetation map, which showed the best in terms of classification accuracy. The overall accuracy by individual images was less than 70%, while that of the multitemporal classification was higher than 80%. Further, on the basis of the relationship of vegetation distribution and elevation, the accuracy of multitemporal classification was raised from 85.8 to 89.5% by using DEM. Bands 4 and 5 showed a high ability for discriminating cover types. Images acquired in late spring and mid-summer were recognized better than other seasons for cover type identification. NDVI and band ratio of B4/B3 proved useful for cover type discrimination, but were not superior to the original spectral bands. Other band ratios like B5/B4 and B7/B5 were less important for improving classification accuracy. The changes of spectral reflectance and NDVI with season were also analysed with 10 images ranging from 1984 to 1997. Seperability of images in terms of classification accuracy was high in late spring and summer, and decreased towards winter. There were five vegetation zones on the mountain, from the base to the peak: deciduous forest zone, mixed forest zone, conifer forest zone, birch forest zone and tundra zone. Spruce-fir conifer dominated forest was the most dominant vegetation (33%), followed by mixed forest (26%), Korean pine forest (8%) and mountain birch forest (5%).     

基于神经网络和数据融合的红树林群落分类研究

及时准确地掌握红树林群落现状信息可为保护和修复红树林生态系统提供重要的决策依据。对红树林群落进行遥感分类在实际应用中具有较大的意义。但红树林各群落间的光谱差异很微弱,有必要采用多源遥感数据融合的方法来提高分类的精度。本文以珠海淇澳岛红树林区为例,使用SAR图像与TM图像,探讨了监督分类、非监督分类以及神经网络分类3种分类方法和IHS融合、小波融合以及主成分融合3种融合方法对红树林群落进行分类的效果。结果表明,对SAR与TM主成分融合图像应用神经网络分类方法能够取得最好的分类效果。     

CBERS与TM遥感影像湿地覆被分类对比分析

为了对比CBERS与TM两种遥感影像在地表覆被信息提取中的具体性能,验证基于CBERS遥感影像进行湿地覆被分类的可行性,以典型内陆淡水湿地区为对象,基于CBERS与TM遥感影像,针对各波段进行信息量统计及光谱特性分析,获取了各波段覆被探测性能的初步认识;运用非监督、监督与面向对象三种代表性分类方法进行分类实验,通过精度误差矩阵对比分类结果,分析了两种遥感影像在湿地覆被分类中的准确程度差异;基于分类结果,通过景观格局指数计算,对比分析了两种影像在湿地覆被信息提取结果上的空间差异和特性。     

Evaluation of gap-filling methods for Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off image for LULC classification in a heterogeneous landscape of West Africa

ABSTRACT

The Landsat mission which has existed over five decades has remained at the forefront of providing consistent moderate spatial and temporal resolution optical images of the earth. The failure of the scan line corrector (SLC) on board the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) in May 2003 has permanently resulted in data gaps on each Landsat 7 scene. Due to the obvious negative impacts on the image usability, a number of methods have been developed to fill the no-data areas in the image. This study assessed the performance of four Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off gap-filling methods in a highly heterogeneous landscape of West Africa for two different seasons (dry and rainy). The methods considered are: (1) Weighted Linear Regression (WLR) integrated with Laplacian Prior Regularization Method (LPRM), (2) Localised Linear Histogram Matching (LLHM), (3) Neighbourhood Similar Pixel Interpolator (NSPI) and (4) Geostatistical Neighbourhood Similar Pixel Interpolator (GNSPI). All the images used were Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off images, temporally close and from the same season for each set of time step. Visual comparison, mean, and standard deviations of the histograms of all bands of only the filled areas were used to assess the results. Additionally, overall accuracy (OA), kappa coefficient (κ), and balanced accuracy (BA) per class were used to evaluate a land use/cover (LULC) classification based on the gap-filled images. Visually, all the four methods were able to completely fill the gaps in the Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off image. They all look similar and spatially continuous with no anomalies or artefacts on them. The histograms from each band for only the filled areas for all the four methods also gave similar means and standard deviations in most cases. All the four gap-filling methods provided satisfactory results (OA >96% and κ> 0.937 in all methods for images in the dry season and OA >93% and κ> 0.877 for the image in the rainy season) in the land cover classification considering the complexity of the study area. But the GNSPI was superiority in all cases with the highest OA of 97.1% and κ of 0.947 in the dry season and OA of 94.6% and κ of 0.899 in the rainy season. This implies that the GNSPI is more robust in gap filling of Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off images than the other three methods in a heterogeneous landscape of West Africa regardless of the season. This study suggests that gap filling of Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off images will help to increase the number of Landsat images needed to build time-series data for a data-scarce region such as West Africa.     

Calculating environmental moisture for per-field discrimination of rice crops

The accuracies of rice classifications determined from density slices of broadband moisture indices were compared to results from a standard supervised technique using six reflective Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) bands. Index-based methods resulted in higher accuracies early in the growing season when background moisture differences were at a maximum. Analysis of depth of ETM+ band 5 resulted in the highest accuracy over the growing season (97.74%). This was more accurate than the highest supervised classification accuracy (95.81%), demonstrating the usefulness of spectral feature selection of moisture for classifying rice.     

Optimizing unsupervised classifications of remotely sensed imagery with a data-assisted labeling approach

The quality of remotely sensed land use and land cover (LULC) maps is affected by the accuracy of image data classifications. Various efforts have been made in advancing supervised or unsupervised classification methods to increase the repeatability and accuracy of LULC mapping. This study incorporates a data-assisted labeling approach (DALA) into the unsupervised classification of remotely sensed imagery. The DALA-unsupervised classification algorithm consists of three steps: (1) creation of N spectral-class maps using Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique Algorithm (ISODATA); (2) development of LULC maps with assistance of reference data; and (3) accuracy assessments of all the LULC maps using independent reference data and selection of one LULC map with the highest accuracy. Classification experiments with a composite image of a Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image and an Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) image suggest that DALA was effective in making unsupervised classification process more objective, automatic, and accurate. A comparison between the DALA-unsupervised classifications and some conventional classifications suggests that the DALA-unsupervised classification algorithm yielded better classification accuracies compared to these conventional approaches. Such a simple, effective approach has not been systematically examined before but has great potential for many applications in the geosciences.     

Improvements in land use mapping for irrigated agriculture from satellite sensor data using a multi-stage maximum likelihood classification

The accuracy of conventional land use classification of irrigated agriculture from optical satellite images using maximum likelihood supervised classification was compared with a classification based on multistage maximum likelihood supervised classification. In the multistage maximum likelihood classification series of sub-classifications were carried out which included masking and/or omitting certain crops from the classifications. These series of classifications improved the identification of individual crops/land use types. The output from the optimum sub-classifications were stacked to give an overall crop types/land use map. When the multistage classification was tested against a single stage classification on a large irrigation scheme in Central Asia the final accuracy of crop/land use classification increased from 85% to 94%. Field verification confirmed the accuracy at 93.5%. These results were achieved with a single Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) sensor dataset as of 2 August 1999 over an area of 38.5?km².     

Thematic Mapper analysis to identify geomorphologic and sediment texture of El Tineh plain,north-western coast of Sinai,Egypt

Thematic Mapper data combined with field inspection are successfully applied to detect a wide variety of texture analysis of sediments and geomorphologic variability along the coastal plain of El Tineh bay at the north-western part of Sinai. Processing techniques used in this study include: image enhancement, principal component analysis (PCA), TM band ratios and supervised classification. The analysis of colour composites of PC1, PC2 and PC3, always encoded red, green and blue, respectively, combined with a colour composite of 3/1, 4/3 and 7/3 ratio images and supervised classification serve to identify six main geomorphologic features and also discriminate among 14 sediment textural classes along El Tineh coastal plain.     

QuickBird卫星图像信息识别

信息识别是目前高分辨率遥感应用中的最大障碍。以株洲市Qu ickB ird图像为研究对象,将研究区分为道路、水、林地、农用地、裸露地和居民点6种地类,分别进行目视判读、计算机监督分类和非监督分类,其精度分别为98.2%、72.64%和60.71%。同时,还对研究区内的Qu ickB ird、ETM+和TM图像进行计算机监督和非监督分类对比,结果表明无论是监督分类还是非监督分类,Qu ickB ird图像的分类精度均低于ETM+和TM图像,这说明空间分辨率的提高对传统的计算机分类结果没有改善,传统的基于像元的分类技术在应用于Qu ickB ird图像时表现出严重的缺陷。因此,本文回避了像元灰度统计法,采用先将图像分割,将以像元为基础的Qu ickB ird图像转化为以对象为基础的图像,这样将研究区共分割出10 000多个对象,建立对象的面积、周长、长度、宽度、长/宽、矩形度和圆形度计算模型;根据研究区各地类特征确定特征因子阈值,模拟目视判读过程,重新对研究区进行分类,结果6种地类的综合分类精度达到91.6%,这说明基于对象的多特征分类对于Qu ickB ird图像识别有明显的改善作用。     

An automatic method for mapping inland surface waterbodies with Radarsat-2 imagery

The use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is generally considered to be an effective method for detecting surface water. Among various supervised/unsupervised classification methods, a SAR-intensity-based histogram thresholding method is widely used to distinguish waterbodies from land. A SAR texture-based automatic thresholding method is presented in this article. The use of texture images substantially enhances the contrast between water and land in intensity images. It also makes the method less sensitive to incidence angles than intensity-based methods. A modified Otsu thresholding algorithm is applied to selected sub-images to determine the optimal threshold value. The sub-images were selected using k-means results to ensure a sufficient number of pixels for both water and land classes. This is critical for the Otsu algorithm being able to detect an optimal threshold for a SAR image. The method is completely unsupervised and is suitable for large SAR image scenes. Tests of this method on a Radasat-2 image mosaicked from 8 QuadPol scenes covering the Spritiwood valley in Manitoba, Canada, show a substantial increase in land–water classification accuracy over the commonly used SAR intensity thresholding method (kappa indices are 0.89 vs. 0.79). The method is less computationally intensive and requires less user interaction. It is therefore well suited for detecting waterbodies and monitoring their dynamic changes from a large SAR image scene in a near-real time environment).     

Estimating tropical forest biomass more accurately by integrating ALOS PALSAR and Landsat-7 ETM+ data

Integration of multisensor data provides the opportunity to explore benefits emanating from different data sources. A fusion between fraction images derived from spectral mixture analysis of Landsat-7 ETM+ and phased array L-band synthetic aperture radar (PALSAR) is introduced. The aim of this fusion is to improve the estimation accuracy of above-ground biomass (AGB) in lowland mixed dipterocarp forest. Spectral mixture analysis was applied to decompose a mixture of spectral components of Landsat-7 ETM+ into vegetation, soil, and shade fractions. These fraction images were integrated with PALSAR data using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and Brovey transform. As a comparison, spectral reflectance of Landsat-7 ETM+ was fused directly with PALSAR data. Backscatter of horizontal–horizontal and horizontal–vertical polarizations was also used to estimate AGB. Forest inventory was carried out in 77 randomly distributed plots, the data being used for either model development or validation. A local allometric equation was applied to calculate AGB per plot. Regression models were developed by integrating field measurements of 50 sample plots with remotely sensed data, e.g. fraction images, reflectance of Landsat-7 ETM+, and PALSAR data. The models developed were validated using 27 independent sample plots. The results showed that not all fused images significantly improved the accuracy of AGB estimation. The model based on Brovey transform using the reflectance of Landsat-7ETM+ and PALSAR produced an R² of only 0.03–0.10. By contrast, fusion between PALSAR data and fraction images using Brovey transform improved the accuracy of R² to 0.33–0.46. Further improvement in the accuracy of estimating AGB was observed when DWT was applied to integrate PALSAR with the reflectance of Landsat-7ETM+ (R² = 0.69–0.72) and PALSAR with fraction images (R² = 0.70–0.75).     

Classification of shoreline vegetation in the Western Basin of Lake Erie using airborne hyperspectral imager HSI2, Pleiades and UAV data

Mapping land and aquatic vegetation of coastal areas using remote sensing for better management and conservation has been a long-standing interest in many parts of the world. Due to natural complexity and heterogeneity of vegetation cover, various remote sensing sensors and techniques are utilized for monitoring coastal ecosystems. In this study, two unsupervised and two supervised standard pixel-based classifiers were tested to evaluate the mapping performance of the second-generation airborne NASA Glenn Hyperspectral Imager (HSI2) over the narrow coastal area along the Western Lake Erie’s shoreline. Furthermore, the classification results of HSI2 (using the whole Visible-Near Infrared (VIS+ NIR) hyperspectral dataset, and also the spectral subset of Visible (VIS) spectral bands) were compared to multispectral Pleiades (VIS+ NIR) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) VIS classified images. The goal was to explore how different spectral ranges, and spatial and spectral resolutions impact the unsupervised and supervised classifiers. While the unsupervised classifiers depended more on the spectral range, spectral or spatial resolutions were important for the supervised classifiers. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) was found to perform better than other classification methods for the HSI2 images over all twenty-two study sites with the overall accuracy (OA) ranging from 82.6%–97.5% for VIS, and 81.5%–95.6 % for VIS + NIR. Considerably better performance of the supervised classifiers for the HSI2 VIS data over the Pleiades data (OA = 74.8–83.4%) suggested the importance of spectral resolution over spectral range (VIS vs. VIS+ NIR) for the supervised methods. The unsupervised classifiers exhibited low accuracy for both HSI2 VIS and UAV VIS imagery (OA< 30.0%) while the overall accuracy for the HSI2 VIS+ NIR and Pleiades data ranged from 60.4%–78.4 % and 42.1%–66.4%, respectively, suggesting the importance of spectral range for the unsupervised classifiers.     

Combining GF-2 and RapidEye satellite data for mapping mangrove species using ensemble machine-learning methods

ABSTRACT

Mangrove forests are important constitutions for sustainable development of coastal ecosystems, and they are often mapped and monitored with remote sensing approaches. Satellite images allow detailed studies of the distribution and composition of mangrove forests, and therefore facilitate the management and conservation of the ecosystems. The combination of multiple types of satellite images with different spatial and spectral resolutions is helpful in mangrove forests extraction and mangrove species discrimination as it reduces sampling workload and increases classification accuracies. In this study, the 1.0-m-resolution Gaofen-2 (GF-2) and the 5.0-m-resolution RapidEye-4 (RE-4) satellite images, acquired in February 2017 and November 2016 respectively, were used with ensemble machine-learning and object-oriented methods for mangroves mapping at both the community and species levels of the Qi’ao Island, Zhuhai, China. First, the mangroves on the island were segmented from the GF-2 image on a large scale, and then they were extracted combining with their digital elevation model (DEM) data. Second, the GF-2 image was further processed on a fine scale, in which object-oriented features from both the GF-2 and RE-4 images were extracted for each mangrove species. Third, it is followed by the mangrove species classification process which involves three ensemble machine-learning methods: the adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), the random forest (RF) and the rotation forest (RoF). These three methods employed a classification and regression tree (CART) as the base classifier. The results show that the overall accuracy (OA) of mangrove area extraction on the Qi’ao Island with the auxiliary data, DEM, achieves 98.76% (Kappa coefficient (κ) = 0.9289). The features extracted by the GF-2 and RE-4 images were shown to be beneficial for mangrove species discrimination. A maximum improvement in the OA of approximately 8% and a κκ of approximately 0.10 were achieved when employing RoF (OA = 92.01%, κ = 0.9016). Ensemble-learning methods can significantly improve the classification accuracy of CART, and the use of a bagging scheme (RF and RoF) is shown as a better way to map mangrove species than adaptive boosting (AdaBoost). In addition, RoF performed well in mangrove species classification but it was not as robust as the RF, whose average OA and κκ were 80.59% and 0.7608, respectively, while the RoF’s were 77.45% and 0.7214, respectively, in the 10-fold cross-validation.     

基于Landsat 8卫星影像的北京地区土地覆盖分类

目的 土地覆盖分类能为生态系统模型、水资源模型和气候模型等提供重要信息,遥感技术运用于土地覆盖分类具有诸多优势。作为区域性土地覆盖分类应用的重要数据源,Landsat 5/7的TM和ETM+等数据已逐渐失效,Landsat 8陆地成像仪(OLI)较TM和ETM+增加了新的特性,利用Landsat 8数据进行北京地区土地覆盖分类研究,探讨处理方法的适用性。方法 首先,确定研究区域内土地覆盖分类系统,并对Landsat 8多光谱数据进行预处理,包括大气校正、地形校正、影像拼接及裁剪;然后,利用灰度共生矩阵提取全色波段纹理信息,与多光谱数据进行融合;最后,使用支持向量机(SVM)进行分类,获得土地覆盖分类结果。结果 经过精度评价和分析发现,6S模型大气校正和C模型地形校正预处理提高了不同类别之间的可分性,多光谱数据结合全色波段纹理特征能有效提高部分地物的土地覆盖分类精度,总体精度提高2.8%。结论 相对于Landsat TM/ETM+数据,Landsat 8 OLI数据新增特性有利于土地覆盖分类精度的提高。本文方法适用于Landsat 8 OLI数据土地覆盖分类研究与应用,能够满足大区域土地覆盖分类应用需求。     

High-resolution multispectral techniques for mapping former Little Ice Age terrestrial ice cover in the Canadian High Arctic

Multispectral classification approaches were applied to high-resolution ASTER (15 m) and ETM+ (30 m) imagery for the purpose of developing new techniques for mapping recently deglaciated LIA perennial ice cover in the Canadian Arctic. Four areas in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, with dissimilar surficial geology and diverse topographic complexity, were selected to test the efficacy of both sensors for mapping these subtle landscape features. Automated classification (band calculation) methods were found to be most effective on quartzitic sandstone and siliceous crystalline bedrock, whereas, semi-automated (supervised classification) techniques were most successful on substrates comprised primarily of carbonate lithologies. ASTER's superior spatial resolution yielded higher accuracies in topographically complex areas; however, ETM+ was more effective over a wider variety of substrate lithologies and topographic settings, with a mean overall accuracy of 91% (mean κ statistic = 0.71), compared to 87% (mean κ statistic = 0.60) for ASTER.