Mapping Phragmites in St. Jones River Watershed, DE Using AISA images

Delaware's coastal wetlands have been invaded with tall, dense stands of Phragmites australis. It is estimated that about 10-15 percent of Delaware's coastal wetlands are now invaded with tall, dense stands of Phragmites australis. There is a great need to investigate status and distribution of Phragmites australis in state of Delaware. The advantages of hyperspectral data become obvious in the analysis of complex wetland plant species and hyperspectral remote sensing has been demonstrated a powerful tool in mapping Phragmites australis. The objective of this study was to investigate the distribution of Phragmites australis in coastal St. Jones River watershed, DE using Airborne Imaging Spectroradiometer for Applications (AISA) hyperspectral images and to develop a protocol to map Phragmites australis in eastern coastal states. Geo-referenced AISA images collected during NOAA Environmental Cooperative Service Center (ECSC) flyover in 2004 were used for processing and analysis. Ground-truthing was conducted concurrently during the flyover in St. Jones River watershed, DE using a GPS unit. ENVI software was used to classify preprocessed AISA images. Endmember spectra for pure Phragmites patches were collected based on ground-truthing points. Various supervised classification techniques including parallelepiped, minimum distance, maximum likelihood, Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), Spectral Information Divergence (SID), and Decision Tree were employed to classify AISA images to examine their performance. Accuracy Assessment of classification was performed using the validation dataset derived from a map of Phragmites spray sites. Initial results showed that the accuracy of the classification by SAM was greater than 66% for the study area. This suggested that hyperspectral remote sensing provides wetland scientists and resource managers with an effective monitoring and management tool for Phragmites australis.

ADDRESS, E-MAIL AND TELEPHONE NUMBER OF CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:

Zhiming Yang

Delaware State University

Department of Agricultural and Natural Resources

1200 N. Dupont Hwy.

Dover, DE 19901

302-857-6475

zyang@desu.edu

PRESENTATION TYPE: Poster

TECHNICAL AREA: Remote Sensing and Satellites

AFFILIATION: Post-Doc

CENTER AFFILIATION: ECSC

ARE YOU APPLYING FOR A STUDENT TRAVEL AWARD: NO