The 13th Asian conference on remote sensing,Mongolia

Abstract

Three spatial resolutions of airborne remote sensing imagery (60 cm, 1 m, and 2 m) collected over multi‐layer aspen, pine, spruce, and mixedwood forest stands in Alberta on July 18^th, 1998 were tested for their ability to provide a statistical stand discrimination based on spatial co‐occurrence texture analysis. As spatial resolution increased, classification accuracies increased. The highest classification accuracy of 86.7% was obtained using the highest image spatial resolution data (60 cm), with spatial co‐occurrence texture and spectral signatures combined, and a thirteen‐class multi‐layer stand stratification. The texture of the highest spatial resolution imagery (60 cm pixel resolution) was interpreted to contain information on the crown architecture of individual trees. In larger windows, the texture was interpreted to contain information on stand structure. Texture of lower spatial resolution imagery (1 m and 2 m pixel resolution) could not detect individual tree crown architecture and was determined to be related primarily to stand structure characteristics. The use of texture channels improved the per‐plot classification accuracies by 15.7%, compared to the use of the spectral data alone.