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ASSESSING THE ACCURACY OF SATELLITE-DERIVED LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION USING HISTORICAL AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY DIGITAL ORTHOPHOTO QUADRANGLES, AND AIRBORNE VIDEO DATA
Citation:
Skirvin, S. M., W G. Kepner, S. E. Marsh, S. E. Drake, J. K. Maingi, C M. Edmonds, C. J. Watts, AND D. R. Williams. ASSESSING THE ACCURACY OF SATELLITE-DERIVED LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION USING HISTORICAL AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY DIGITAL ORTHOPHOTO QUADRANGLES, AND AIRBORNE VIDEO DATA. Chapter 9, Ross Lunetta & John G. Lyon (ed.), Remote Sensing and GIS Accuracy Assessment. CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton, FL, , 137-154, (2003).
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
Develop methodologies so that landscape indicator values generated from different sensors on different dates (but in the same areas) are comparable; differences in metric values result from landscape changes and not differences in the sensors;
Quantify relationships between landscape metrics generated from wall-to-wall spatial data and (1) specific parameters related to water resource conditions in different environmental settings across the US, including but not limited to nutrients, sediment, and benthic communities, and (2) multi-species habitat suitability;
Develop and validate multivariate models based on quantification studies;
Develop GIS/model assessment protocols and tools to characterize risk of nutrient and sediment TMDL exceedence;
Complete an initial draft (potentially web based) of a national landscape condition assessment.
This research directly supports long-term goals established in ORDs multiyear plans related to GPRA Goal 2 (Water) and GPRA Goal 4 (Healthy Communities and Ecosystems), although funding for this task comes from Goal 4. Relative to the GRPA Goal 2 multiyear plan, this research is intended to "provide tools to assess and diagnose impairment in aquatic systems and the sources of associated stressors." Relative to the Goal 4 Multiyear Plan this research is intended to (1) provide states and tribes with an ability to assess the condition of waterbodies in a scientifically defensible and representative way, while allowing for aggregation and assessment of trends at multiple scales, (2) assist Federal, State and Local managers in diagnosing the probable cause and forecasting future conditions in a scientifically defensible manner to protect and restore ecosystems, and (3) provide Federal, State and Local managers with a scientifically defensible way to assess current and future ecological conditions, and probable causes of impairments, and a way to evaluate alternative future management scenarios.
Description:
As the rapidly growing archives of satellite remote sensing imagery now span decades'worth of data, there is increasing interest in the study of long-term regional land cover change across multiple image dates. In most cases, however, temporally coincident ground sampled data are not available for accuracy assessment of the image-derived land cover classes, and other data and methods must be employed. The feasibility of utilizing historical aerial photography, digital orthophoto quadrangle (DOQ) images, and high-resolution airborne color video data to
determine the accuracy of satellite derived land cover maps was investigated for a southwestern U.S. watershed. Satellite imagery included Landsat Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data acquired over an approximately 25-year period.
This paper summarizes the results of three methods used to assess overall and individual
accuracy for ten land cover classes for the upper San Pedro River watershed, in southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora, Mexico. Land cover maps were produced from classifications of MSS imagery (5 June 1973, 10 June 1986, and 2 June 1992) and TM imagery (8 June 1997). The MSS imagery was projected to Universal Transverse Mercator ground coordinates with a pixel size of 60 meters; the 30 meter TM imagery was re-sampled and mapped with a pixel size of 60 meters to facilitate comparison.