An Alternate Approach to Ecosystem Mapping: Fusing Orthophotography with LANDSAT ETM+ Data for a Object-Based Classification, South Eastern Arkansas.

<p>Maintaining representative sampling of biologically rich and rare ecosystems has become an important means to preventing biodiversity loss. A limitation in indentifying and quantifying ecosystems is the cost of obtaining high resolution imagery necessary for a high resolution land cover assessment. This research shows how free, different resolution imagery (orthoimages and LANDSAT ETM+) could be combined to produce a hybrid dataset with enhanced spectral, spectral and temporal properties, and processed to obtain a object-based classification of land cover of bottomland and pine hardwood forest in south eastern Arkansas. Three classification techniques were evaluated: 1) a human derived, rule based method, 2) A nearest neighbor classification using only the infrared orthoimage (SRGB), and 3) A nearest neighbor classification using the infrared orthoimage and LANDSAT ETM+ derived multitemporal NDVI values (SNDVI). Overall accuracy of the rule based method and SNDVI were comparable, and significantly higher (~10-20%) than the SRGB. Further, when compared to existing land cover maps, both the rule based method and SNDVI had far greater visual appeal and accuracy.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in Geography (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• McFee, David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dixon, John C.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Tullis, Jason A.
• Huxel, Gary R.

• Earth sciences
• Biological sciences
• Classification
• Gis
• Land cover
• Mapping
• Geographic Information Sciences
• Remote Sensing

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/266

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uark.edu:etd-1265