Application on Lidar and Time Series Landsat Data for Mapping and Monitoring Wetlands

To successfully protect and manage wetlands, efficient and accurate tools are needed to identify where wetlands are located, the wetland type, what condition they are in, what are the stressors present, and the trend in their condition. Wetland mapping and monitoring are useful to accomplish these tasks. Wetland mapping and monitoring with optical remote sensing data has mainly focused on using a single image or using image acquired over two seasons within the same year. Now that Landsat data are available freely, a multi-temporal approach utilizing images that span multiple seasons and multiple years can potentially be used to characterize wetland dynamics in more detail. In addition, newer remote sensing techniques such as Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) can provide highly detailed and accurate topographic information, which can improve our ability to discriminate wetlands. Thus, the overall objective of this study was to investigate the utility of lidar and multi-temporal Landsat data for mapping and monitoring of wetlands. My research is presented as three independent studies related to wetland mapping and monitoring. In the first study, inter-annual time series of Landsat data from 1985 to 2009 was used to map changes in wetland ecosystems in northern Virginia. Z-scores calculated on tasseled cap images were used to develop temporal profile for wetlands delineated by the National Wetland Inventory. A change threshold was derived based on the Chi-square distribution of the Z-scores. The accuracy of a change/no change map produced was 89% with a kappa value of 0.79. Assessment of the change map showed that the method used was able to detect complete wetland loss together with other subtle changes resulting from development, harvesting, thinning and farming practices. The objective of the second study was to characterize differences in spectro-temporal profile of forested upland and wetland using intra and inter annual time series of Landsat data (1999-2012). The results show that the spector-temporal metrics derived from Landsat can accurately discriminate between forested upland and wetland (accuracy of 88.5%). The objective of the third study was to investigate the ability of topographic variables derived from lidar to map wetlands. Different topographic variables were derived from a high resolution lidar digital elevation model. Random forest model was used to assess the ability of these variables in mapping wetlands and uplands area. The result shows that lidar data can discriminate between wetlands and uplands with an accuracy of 72%. In summary, because of its spatial, spectral, temporal resolution, availability and cost Landsat data will be a primary data source for mapping and monitoring wetlands. The multi-temporal approach presented in this study has great potential for significantly improving our ability to detect and monitor wetlands. In addition, synergistic use of multi-temporal analysis of Landsat data combined with lidar data may be superior to using either data alone for future wetland mapping and monitoring approaches.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geospatial and Environmental Analysis

Department dc:contributor.department

Geography

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Kayastha, Nilam

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Galbraith, John M.
• Thomas, Valerie A.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Wynne, Randolph H.
• Lang, Megan Weiner

• wetland
• landsat time series
• lidar
• mapping
• change detection

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:2149

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/54011