Digital land-use classification using space-shuttle-acquired orbital photographs: a quantitative comparison with landsat TM imagery of a coastal environment, chanthaburi, Thailand

摘要

The capability of Space-Shuttle-acquired orbital photography to provide accurate land-use classification using popular commercial software and accepted analytical procedures was investigated. The study area was the coastal region of the Chanthaburi Province, eastern Thailand, which exhibits a land-use pattern consisting of rice fields, shrimp farms, plantations/orchards, and patches of healthy and degraded mangrove habitat. We used a typical image analysis protocol using ERDAS ImagineTM v8.2 combined with ground referencing, and compared the classification results using orbital photographs to results of the same study area using Landsat TM 5 imagery. The orbital photographs exhibited high spatial resolution, and performed similarly to Landsat for classification purposes. Accuracy assessments showed 81.3 percent accuracy of the ground referenced orbital photograph classification, and 83.3 percent for the Landsat image. Using a GIS overlay, we calculated 71 percent agreement between the two ground referenced image types. We conclude that, under the appropriate conditions, digitized orbital photographs can be an excellent source of spatial information for studies combining images of high spatial and spectral resolution. In addition to our results, we discuss the benefits and limitations to using orbital photographs for land-use classification. Orbital photographs can serve as a low-cost, complementary form of data to automated satellite images for assessments of basic habitat parameters.