Estimating regional forest cover in East Texas using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data
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This study tested the degree to which single date, near-nadir AVHRR image could provide forest cover estimates comparable to the phase I estimates obtained from the traditional photo-based techniques of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. FIA program is part of the United States Department of Agriculture-Forest Service (USFS). A six-county region in east Texas was selected for this study. Manual identification of ground control points (GCPs) was necessary for geo-referencing this image with higher precision. Through digital image classification techniques forest classes were separated from other non-forest classes in the study area. Classified AVHRR imagery was compared to two verification datasets: photo-center points and the USFS FIA plots. The overall accuracy values obtained were 67 and 71%, respectively. Analyses of the error matrices indicated that the AVHRR image correctly classified more forested areas than non-forested areas; however, most of the errors could be attributed to certain land cover and land use classes. Several pastures with tree cover, which were field-identified as non-forest, were misclassified as forest in the AVHRR image using the image classification system developed in this study. Recently harvested and young pine forests were misclassified as non-forest in the imagery. County-level forest cover estimates obtained from the AVHRR imagery were within the 95% confidence interval of the corresponding estimates from traditional photo-based methods. These results indicate that AVHRR imagery could be used to estimate county-level forest cover; however, the precision associated with these estimates was lower than that obtained through traditional photo-based techniques. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
published proceedings
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International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
author list (cited authors)
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Sivanpillai, R., Srinivasan, R., Smith, C. T., Messina, M. G., & Wu, X. B
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Sivanpillai, Ramesh||Srinivasan, R||Smith, Charles T||Messina, Michael G||Wu, X Ben
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Avhrr
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Fia
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Forest Cover
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Remote Sensing
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Texas
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Usda-forest Service
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