Fuzzy Classification for Mapping Invasive Species from Multispectral Imagery

Vegetation maps are essential tools for planning and evaluation in nature conservation. To a large extend, management objectives can be defined in terms of vegetation attributes. Vegetation maps are frequently used in conservation planning and evaluation. Nowadays, remote sensing is one of the most important sources of vegetation cover classifications at different scales. In this paper, the usefulness of moderate resolution images for invasive species Cirsium arvense and Stachys byzanthina mapping at local scale is evaluated. A fuzzy classification approach is tested for improved discrimination of invasive species. The study was carried out in Vazroud rangelands located in the Mazandaran province of Iran. In this study among the analysed Z-score for uncertainty map creation is found that 0.9, 1.0 for TM image and 1.1 for IRS image in normalized are the best based on known attributes of the study area.