A Comparison of Landsat, Ikonos and Radarsat Satellite Imagery for Suburban Land Cover Mapping in the Township of Langley, British Columbia

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A Comparison of Landsat, Ikonos and Radarsat Satellite Imagery for Suburban Land Cover Mapping in the Township of Langley, British Columbia A COMPARISON OF LANDSAT, IKONOS AND RADARSAT SATELLITE IMAGERY FOR SUBURBAN LAND COVER MAPPING IN THE TOWNSHIP OF LANGLEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA Sarbjeet Kaur Mann B.Sc., University of Victoria 1999 RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTEROFRESOURCEMANAGEMENT in the School of Resource and Environmental Management Report No. 356 O Sarbjeet Kaur Mann 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY April 2004 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author Approval Name: Sarbjeet Kaur Mann Degree: Master of Resource Management Title of Research Project: A comparison of Landsat, IKONOS and RADARSAT satellite imagery for suburban land cover mapping in the Township of Langley, British Columbia Report No. Examining Committee: Chair: Marcela Olguin-Alvarez Dr. Kristina D. Rothley, Assistant Professor School of Resource and Environmental Management Simon Fraser University Senior Supervisor Dr. Suzana Dragicevic, Assistant Professor Department of Geography Simon Fraser University Committee Member Pamela Zevit, Co-ordinator Greater Vancouver Region Biodiversity Strategy BC Ministry of Water, Land & Air Protection Committee Member Date Approved: Partial Copyright Licence The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author's written permission. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. Bennett Library Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC, Canada Increasing pressure from urban growth is placing heavy demands on local planners to ensure that biodiversity is maintained in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Tools and approaches for identifying and mapping the remaining natural areas are necessary. Traditionally, planners have identified land cover by aerial surveys, which are costly, time consuming and conducted on an as-needed basis. The current study tests and compares the feasibility of medium resolution Landsat (ETM+) and high- resolution IKONOS and RADARSAT satellite imagery for identification of land cover (coniferous, deciduous, disturbed, water and wetland) at a study site in the Township of Langley, British Columbia. Preliminary analysis showed that overall accuracy results for the classified RADARSAT image were marginal (64%). RADARSAT is therefore excluded from the main analysis. Maximum likelihood classification of principal components is used to classify the Landsat and IKONOS images. Air-photo interpreted polygons are used as reference data. Kappa analyses show that because of its additional mid-IR bands, the classified Landsat image has a significantly higher overall classification accuracy (79.8%) than IKONOS (70.7%). Overall accuracy increased with increasing minimum polygon size of the reference data. The highest classification accuracy (87.6%) was attained for the classified Landsat image when it was evaluated against test points from reference data polygons larger than 0.216ha. iii Dedication To my mother, for being everything a mother is supposed to be. Acknowledgements Kristina Rothley has been a great mentor and I thank her for her generous guidance. I also thank Suzana Dragicevic and Pamela Zevit for their excellent advice and suggestions, and Dan Buffet, Arthur Roberts, Rob Knight, Marcela Olguin-Alvarez, Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, Billie Gowans and the REM Departmental Staff for their assistance. The RADARSAT images were obtained through the Canadian Space Agency and RADARSAT International administered RADARSAT-1 Data for Research Use program. Air-photo interpreted reference polygons were supplied by the Langley Environmental Partners Society. Funding for this project was provided by Simon Fraser University Graduate Fellowships and Applied Sciences Graduate Fellowships, and the BC Ministry of Water, Land & Air Protection. Finally, I thank my family and friends for their encouragement and support. Table of Contents .. Approval ........................................................................................................................11 ... Abstract ........................................................................................................................III Dedication .....................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................v Table of Contents .........................................................................................................vi .. List of Tables ...............................................................................................................VII ... List of Figures ............................................................................................................VIII List of Acronyms ..........................................................................................................ix Chapter One: Introduction ...........................................................................................I 1. 1 Context of Research .............................................................................................1 1.2 Research Objectives ..............................................................................................3 Chapter Two: Methods ..................................................................................................5 2.1 Study Site Selection ...............................................................................................5 2.2 Image Acquisition ................................................................................................... 6 2.3 Image Pre-processing ............................................................................................7 2.4 Classification Scheme Development ......................................................................8 2.5 Creation of Training Data .......................................................................................8 2.6 Image Classification ............................................................................................... 8 2.7 Accuracy Assessment ............................................................................................9 Chapter Three: Results ...........................................................................................15 Chapter Four: Discussion........................................................................................... 18 4.1 Radarsat .............................................................................................................. 18 4.2 Misclassification and Individual Class Performance ............................................. 19 4.3 Other Sources of Error .........................................................................................21 4.3.1 Co-registration Errors ....................................................................................22 4.3.2 Change in Land Cover ................................................................................... 22 4.3.3 Errors in Reference Data ...............................................................................23 4.3.4 Boundary Error .............................................................................................. 25 4.4 Landsat vs . IKONOS............................................................................................ 26 4.5 Future Analyses ................................................................................................... 27 4.6 Conclusions and Recommendations ....................................................................31 References ...................................................................................................................36 Tables ...........................................................................................................................41 Figures .........................................................................................................................75 List of Tables Table 1. Characteristics of the satellite imagery. .........................................................42 Table 2. Land cover classification scheme. .................................................................43 Table 3. Area (ha) of the training regions for each land cover class. ........................... 44 Table 4. Percentage (%) of the study site identified as each land cover class for each air-photo interpreted reference data set. ...............................................45 Table 5. Error matrices for the classified Landsat image (7 original classes; all test points used regardless of the size of the reference data polygons; test point sampling interval = 100m). .............................................................46
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