Improving Wetland Mapping by Using Multi-Source Data Sets

To conserve and manage wetland resources, it is important to map wetlands and monitor their changes. However, wetland mapping is difficult because of spectral confusion with other landcover classes and spectral variability among different types of wetlands. This paper demonstrated a multi-source based approach for improving the accuracy of wetland mapping. According to the formation of wetland, variables derived from multi-source image date, and other ancillary GIS layers were first integrated to create the possible region for wetland (PRW). And then classification was conducted within the PRW to map wetlands. PRW could greatly reduce the amount of other land cover classes that participated in the classification, therefore reducing both the difficulty of wetland mapping and the commission error rate. In this study, we chose the test area in Dongzhai Harbor, Hainan Island, China, where the main wetland type is mangrove. The mapping was based on LANDSAT TM/ETM+ imagery combined with DEM data, and the ancillary GIS data included available water, soil and vegetation layers. The thematic accuracy of the mapping was assessed using high-resolution images from Google Earth and local wetlands databases. Classification of the 2001 Landsat ETM+ scene alone resulted in consumer's accuracy of 65% and Kappa coefficients of 0.69, whereas the multi-source based approach with the same training samples resulted in an accuracy of 86% and 0.80. The developed method is portable, relatively easy to implement, and should be applicable in other landcover classes and over larger extents.