Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Land-Cover Change Monitoring With Classification Trees Using Landsat Tm And Ancillary Data, John Rogan, Jennifer Miller, Doug Stow, Janet Franklin, Lisa Levien, Chris Fischer

Geography

We monitored land-cover change in San Diego County (1990-1996) using multitemporal Landsat TM data. Change vectors of Kauth Thomas features were combined with stable multitemporal Kauth Thomas features and a suite of ancillary variables within a classification tree classifier. A combination of aerial photointerpretation and field measurements yielded training and validation data. Maps of land-cover change were generated for three hierarchical levels of change classification of increasing detail: change vs. no-change; four classes representing broad increase and decrease classes; and nine classes distinguishing increases or decreases in tree canopy cover, shrub cover, and urban change. The multitemporal Kauth Thomas (both …