Saltmarsh is one of the important communities of wetlands, however, due to a range of pressures, it has been declared as an EEC (Ecological Endangered Community) in Australia. In order to correctly identify different saltmarsh species, development of spectral libraries of saltmarsh species is essential to monitor this EEC. Hyperspectral remote sensing, can explore the area of wetland monitoring and mapping. The benefits of Hyperion data to wetland monitoring have been studied at Hunter Wetland Park, NSW, Australia. After exclusion of bad bands from the original data, an atmospheric correction model was applied to minimize atmospheric effect and to retrieve apparent surface reflectance for different land cover. Large data dimensionality was reduced by Forward Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) algorithm. It was found that first 32 MNF band contains more than 80% information of the image. Pixel Purity Index (PPI) algorithm worked properly to extract pure pixel for water, builtup area and three vegetation Casuarina sp., Phragmitis sp. and green grass. The result showed it was challenging to extract extreme pure pixel for Sporobolus and Sarcocornia from the data due to coarse resolution (30 m) and small patch size (<3 m) of those vegetation on the ground . Spectral Angle Mapper, classified the image into five classes: Casuarina, Saltmarsh (Phragmitis), Green grass, Water and Builtup area with 43.55 % accuracy. This classification also failed to classify Sporobolus as a distinct group due to the same reason. A high spatial resolution airborne hyperspectral data and a new study site with a bigger patch of Sporobolus and Sarcocornia is proposed to overcome the issue.

Date Published: 14 October 2015
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9637, Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Hydrology XVII, 96371O (14 October 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2195444

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9637:
Remote Sensing for Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Hydrology XVII
Christopher M. U. Neale; Antonino Maltese, Editor(s)