A technique to model the spatial distribution of the 'reliability' of satellite-derived land cover maps based on the spectral distance information derived during the classification process has been described. The utility of the resulting 'reliability map' for highlighting incorrectly classified areas on land cover maps has been demonstrated by field verification. A spectral separability analysis showed that Lansat TM data did not allow for the spectral separation of all vegetation types. However, the vegetation types of each of the three geo-ecological formations 'terra firme', 'whitewater floodplains', and 'blackwater floodplains' could be separated spectrally. Therefore, the boundary between these formations was visually interpreted from ERS-1 SAR and Landsat TM data. Each of the resulting image regions was subsequently classified with the corresponding subset of classes. This enabled the mapping of the project region at a high level of thematic resolution while avoiding the misclassification of pixels between spectrally similar vegetation types. In agreement with the results reported by other researchers, the utility of ERS-1 SAR data for general vegetation mapping was found to be rather limited. However, ERS-1 SAR data appeared to be suitable for the updating of existing vegetation maps for further forest clearing. The data were also found useful for the visual interpretation of the floodplain boundary from geomorphological features.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:645010 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Corves, Christoph |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/20916 |
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