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Satellite remote sensing of isolated wetlands using object-oriented classification of LANDSAT-7 data
Citation:
Frohn, R. C., M. Reif, C. R. LANE, AND B. C. AUTREY. Satellite remote sensing of isolated wetlands using object-oriented classification of LANDSAT-7 data. WETLANDS. The Society of Wetland Scientists, McLean, VA, 29(3):931-941, (2009).
Impact/Purpose:
There are three main objectives of the proposed research in isolated wetlands: 1) isolated wetland characterization and conditional assessment; 2) isolated wetlands and landscape nutrient dynamics, including annual and seasonal variation in soil and water parameters; and 3) accuracy assessment and extent determination of isolated wetlands.
Description:
There has been an increasing interest in characterizing and mapping isolated depressional wetlands due to a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively removed their protected status. Our objective was to determine the utility of satellite remote sensing to accurately map isolated wetlands. Image segmentation and object-oriented processing were applied to Landsat-7 imagery from January and October 2000 to successfully map isolated wetlands in the St. Johns River Water Management District of Alachua County, Florida. The January data yielded producer and user accuracies of 88% and 89%, respectively, for isolated wetlands larger than 0.5 acres (0.20 ha). Producer and user accuracies increased to 97% and 95%, respectively, for analyses identifying isolated wetlands larger than 2 acres (0.81 ha). The results are encouraging in light of a recent Federal Geographic Data recommendation that all wetlands 0.5 acres or larger in the lower 48 states should be mapped using 1-meter aerial photography with an accuracy of 98%. That accuracy was nearly achieved in this study using a spatial resoltuion that is 900 times coarser than recommended. Satellite remote sensing can provide an accurate, relatively inexpensive, and timely means for classifying isolated depressional wetlands on a regional or national basis.