Petter Pilesjö
Professor
Comparison of algorithms for classifying Swedish landcover using Landsat TM and ERS-1 SAR data
Author
Summary, in English
Sixteen landcover classes in a representative Swedish environment were analyzed and classified using one Landsat TM scene and seven ERS-1 SAR.PRI images acquired during 1993. Spectral and backscattering signature separabilities are analyzed using the Jeffries-Matusita distance measure to determine which combinations of channels/images contained the most information. Maximum likelihood, sequential maximum a posteriori (SMAP, a Bayesian image segmentation algorithm), and back propagation neural network classification algorithms were applied and their performances evaluated. Results of the separability analyses indicated that the multitemporal SAR data contained more separable landcover information than did the multispectral TM data; the highest separabilities were achieved when the TM and SAR data were combined. Classification accuracy evaluation results indicate that the SMAP algorithm outperformed the maximum likelihood algorithm which, in turn, outperformed the neural network algorithm. The best KAPPA values, using combined data, were 0.495 for SMAP, 0.445 for maximum likelihood, and 0.432 for neural network. Corresponding overall accuracy values were 57.1%, 52.4%, and 51.2%, respectively. A comparison between lumped crop area statistics with areal sums calculated from the classified satellite data gave the highest correspondence where the SMAP algorithm was used, followed by the maximum likelihood and neural network algorithms. Based on our application, we can therefore confirm the value of a multisource optical/SAR approach for analyzing landcover and the improvements to classification achieved using the SMAP algorithm.
Department/s
- Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
Publishing year
2000-01
Language
English
Pages
1-15
Publication/Series
Remote Sensing of Environment
Volume
71
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Remote Sensing
- Physical Geography
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0034-4257