In supervised classification, prior knowledge of the identity and location of different land cover types is required.

Supervised Classification

We get this information from:

fieldwork aerial photography analysis maps personal experience

Knowledge and definition of the required classes is necessary before supervised classification.

Knowledge and definition of the required classes is necessary before supervised classification. Areas of known cover type are selected by the analyst and are used to train the classification algorithm to classify the rest of the image.

Knowledge and definition of the required classes is necessary before supervised classification. Areas of known cover type are selected by the analyst and are used to train the classification algorithm to classify the rest of the image. The training areas should be homogeneous and representative of the cover type.

Knowledge and definition of the required classes is necessary before supervised classification. Areas of known cover type are selected by the analyst and are used to train the classification algorithm to classify the rest of the image. The training areas should be homogeneous and representative of the cover type. The rest of the image pixels are classified based on the relationship between the pixel values and the statistical parameters of the training sites.

 Training sites It is important for the training sites to be homogeneous and representative of the cover type.

Training sites It is important for the training sites to be homogeneous and representative of the cover type. However, this is not always possible, for example due to:
spatial differences in soil moisture content in the same type of soil and same agricultural crop and turbid and clear water.

This is due to environmental reasons, such as:

precipitation in a small part of the scene or water availability at different times for irrigation and differences in soil type and fertility.

This is due to environmental reasons, such as:

precipitation in a small part of the scene or water availability at different times for irrigation and differences in soil type and fertility.

In such cases, training sites will not be representative of

the cover type. The same agricultural crop growing in soil with different moisture will have different spectral response.

This is due to environmental reasons, such as:

precipitation in a small part of the scene or water availability at different times for irrigation and differences in soil type and fertility.

This is due to environmental reasons, such as:

precipitation in a small part of the scene or water availability at different times for irrigation and differences in soil type and fertility.

In such cases, training sites will not be representative of In such cases, training sites will not be representative of
the cover type. The same agricultural crop growing in soil with different moisture will have different spectral response. the cover type. The same agricultural crop growing in soil with different moisture will have different spectral response.

Even the same cover types may need to be classified

Even the same cover types may need to be classified

separately if are affected differently due to environmental (e.g. precipitation) or other (e.g. irrigation where crops are concerned) factors.

separately if are affected differently due to environmental (e.g. precipitation) or other (e.g. irrigation where crops are concerned) factors. the area and the site conditions prior to supervised classification.

It is therefore important to have a detailed knowledge of

 Theoretically, when using a statistically based classifier, each training area should consist of n + 1 pixels, to avoid the covariance matrix being singular where n is the number of spectral bands to be used for image classification. In practice, each training area should have a minimum of 10n to 100n pixels. More training areas with less pixels representing one class is more preferable than one training area with more pixels.

When training sites for agricultural crops are selected, care must be taken not to include boundaries of agricultural fields or edges between different cover types.

When training sites for agricultural crops are selected, care must be taken not to include boundaries of agricultural fields or edges between different cover types. The homogeneity of the training sites can be assessed by inspecting the histograms for each band.

When training sites for agricultural crops are selected, care must be taken not to include boundaries of agricultural fields or edges between different cover types. The homogeneity of the training sites can be assessed by inspecting the histograms for each band. Bimodal histograms suggest that more than one class is included in the selected training site.

Bi-modal histogram of a training site of winter wheat followed by alfalfa

Unimodal histogram of a training site of flowing water

Should we use all bands available for image classification?

The use of all available bands in a supervised classification: introduces redundancy of the data information and makes the classification a time consuming process.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used in order to help us decide which bands to use for image classification. In our example where identification of crop types is important, the visible bands contained most of the information with redundancy of information between these bands. Unique information is included in the near infrared and thermal bands.

It is therefore suggested that the use of

one of the visible bands, the near infrared and the thermal band will reduce redundancy without compromising the accuracy

Graphical (feature space images) and statistical methods (divergence, separability using Euclidean distance) can be applied to show the optimum bands for discrimination between the classes.

Band 2 (y-axis) against band 1 (x-axis) feature space image of 4th of July 2001 showing high correlation between these two bands

Band 2 (y-axis) against band 1 (x-axis) feature space image of 4th July 2001 showing mixing of the vegetation classes in the highly correlated bands

rice

summer wheat alfalfa winter wheat alfalfa early-cultivated rice

summer wheatalfalfa

bare soil

early cultivated rice winter wheatalfalfa

reed

flowing water

wild vegetation

open water early cultivated rice

rice

Band 4 (y-axis) against band 2 (x-axis) feature space image of 4th July 2001 showing clear separation of all signatures

winter wheat alfalfa early cultivated rice

winter wheat alfalfa

early cultivated rice

Band 4 (y-axis) against band 2 (x-axis) feature space image of 21st August 2001 showing mixing between the early-cultivated rice and the winter wheat alfalfa.

Band 6 (y-axis) against band 4 (x-axis) feature space image of 21st August 2001 showing separation of early-cultivated rice from winter wheat, due to rices lower temperatures as it grows in flooded fields.

Signatures

Water open

Water flowing

rice

Winter Wheat alfalfa

Summer Wheat alfalfa

earlyCultivated rice

Bare Salty soil

Wild Vegetation reed

summer wheat alfalfa wild vegetation water -open water -flowing 2 reed rice 3 early cultivated rice Winter Wheat followed by alfalfa Summer wheat-alfalfa Early cultivated rice bare-salty soil 7 Wild Vegetation reed 1

1 0 46.4

30.0

20.0

114.5

81.0

86.7

124.9

106.5

103.9

49.5

87.1

73.0

67.4

50.3

38.0

Band 4 (y-axis) against band 2 (x-axis) feature space image of 4th July 2001 showing overlapping between wild vegetation, reed, summer wheat and early cultivated rice.

168.1

125.2

138.4

68.4

110.0

118.3

105.2

86.8

83.8

41.4

20.2

19.1

108.3