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Title: MAPPING NATURAL VEGETATION ON THE WELDER WILDLIFE REFUGE WITH QUICKBIRD SATELLITE IMAGERY

Author
item Everitt, James
item Yang, Chenghai
item Fletcher, Reginald
item DRAWE, D.L. - WELDER WILDLIFE REFUGE, S

Submitted to: Biannual Workshop in Color Photography and Videography in Resource
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/15/2006
Publication Date: 3/15/2006
Citation: Everitt, J.H., Yang, C., Fletcher, R.S., Drawe, D. 2006. Mapping natural vegetation on the Welder Wildlife Refuge with QuickBird satellite imagery. In: Proceedings of the 20th Biennial Workshop on Aerial Photography, Videography, and High Resolution Digital Imagery for Resource Assessment, Bethesda, Maryland. 2006 CDROM.

Interpretive Summary: Recently, high resolution (2.4 to 4 m) satellite imagery from commercial satellite systems has become available for remote sensing applications. A study was conducted in south Texas evaluating high resolution (2.8 m) QuickBird false color satellite imagery for distinguishing among rangeland cover types. Unsupervised and supervised computer classification techniques were used to distinguish among cover types with overall accuracies of 80% and 78%, respectively. These results should be of interest to rangeland resource managers and plant ecologists interested in using remote sensing techniques for mapping rangeland vegetation.

Technical Abstract: QuickBird satellite imagery acquired in June 2003 was evaluated for distinguishing among rangeland cover types on the Welder Wildlife Refuge in south Texas. A subset of the satellite image representing a diversity of cover types on the refuge was extracted and used as a study site. Unsupervised and supervised classification techniques were used to classify a false color composite (green, red, and near-infrared bands) image of the study site. Accuracy assessments performed on unsupervised and supervised classification maps had overall accuracies of 80% and 78%, respectively. These results indicate that QuickBird imagery can be a useful tool for identifying rangeland cover types at a regional level.