Object based classification of a riparian environment using ultra-high resolution imagery, hierarchical landcover structures, and image texture

Land cover mapping is an important part of resource management, planning, and economic predictions. Improvements in remote sensing, machine learning, image processing, and object based image analysis (OBIA) has made the process of identifying land cover types increasingly faster and reliable but these advances have not been able to utilize all of the information encompassed within ultra-high (sub-meter) resolution imagery. There have been few known attempts to try and maximize this detailed information in high resolution imagery using advanced textural components. Hierarchical land classes are also rarely used as an attribute within the machine learning step of object-based image analysis. In this study we try to circumnavigate the inherent problems associated with high resolution imagery by combining well researched data transformations that aid the OBIA process with a seldom used texture transformation in Geographic Object Based Image Analyses (GEOBIA/OBIA) known as the Gabor Transform and the hierarchal organization of landscapes. We will observe the difference made in segmentation and classification accuracy of a random forest classifier when we fuse a Gabor transformed image to a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), high resolution multi-spectral imagery (RGB and NIR) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) derived canopy height model (CHM) within a riparian area in Southeast Iowa, United States. Additionally, we will observe the effects on classification accuracy when adding multi-scale land cover data to objects. Both, the addition of hierarchical information and Gabor textural information, could aid the GEOBIA process in delineating and classifying the same objects that human experts would delineate within this riparian landscape.