Abstract
The location and distribution of wetlands and riparian zones influence the ecological functions present on a landscape. Accurate and easily reproducible land-cover maps enable monitoring of land-management decisions and ultimately a greater understanding of landscape ecology. Multi-season Landsat ETM+ imagery from 2001 combined with ancillary topographic and soils data were used to map wetland and riparian systems in the Gallatin Valley of Southwest Montana, USA. Classification Tree Analysis (CTA) and Stochastic Gradient Boosting (SGB) decision-tree-based classification algorithms were used to distinguish wetlands and riparian areas from the rest of the landscape. CTA creates a single classification tree using a one-step-look-ahead procedure to reduce variance. SGB uses classification errors to refine tree development and incorporates multiple tree results into a single best classification. The SGB classification (86.0% overall accuracy) was more effective than CTA (73.1% overall accuracy) at detecting a variety of wetlands and riparian zones present on this landscape.
Similar content being viewed by others
Literature Cited
Bolstad, P. V. and T. M. Lillesand. 1992a. Improved classification of forest vegetation in northern Wisconsin through a rule-based combination of soils, terrain, and Landsat Thematic Mapper data. Forest Science 38: 5–20.
Bolstad, P. V. and T. M. Lillesand. 1992b. Rule-based classification models: flexible integration of satellite imagery and thematic spatial data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 58: 965–971.
Civco, D. L. 1989. Knowledge-based land use and land cover mapping. p. 276–291. In Technical Papers, 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Custer, S. G., P. Fames, J. P. Wilson, and R. D. Snyder. 1996. A Comparison of Hand- and Spline-Drawn Precipitation Maps for Mountainous Montana. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 32: 393–405.
Ehrenfeld, J. G. 2000. Evaluating wetlands within an urban context. Ecological Engineering 15: 253–265.
ERDAS. 2001. ERDAS Imagine® Configuration Guide. ERDAS Incorporated, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Finlayson, C. M. and A. G. van der Valk. 1995. Wetland classification and inventory: A summary. Vegetatio 118: 185–192.
Harvey, K. R. and G. J. E. Hill. 2001. Vegetation mapping of a tropical freshwater swamp in the Northern Territory, Australia: a comparison of aerial photography, Landsat TM and SPOT satellite imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing 22: 2911–2925.
Hewitt, M. J. 1990. Synoptic inventory of riparian ecoystems: The utility of Landsat Thematic Mapper data. Forest Ecology and Management 33/34: 605–620.
Huang, C., B. Wylie, L. Yang, C. Homer, and G. Zylstra. 2002. Derivation of a Tassled Cap transformation based on Landsat and at-satellite reflectance. International Journal of Remote Sensing 23: 1741–1748.
Huang, C., L. Yang, C. Homer, B. Wylie, J. Vogelman, and T. DeFelice. 2001. At-satellite reflectance: a first order normalization of Landsat and ETM+ images. USGS White Papers, http://landcover.usgs.gov/pdf/huang2.pdf, last accessed February 13, 2006.
Insightful. 2001. S-Plus 6 User’s Guide. Insightful Corporation, Seattle, WA, USA.
Jensen, J. R. 1996. Introductory Digital Image Processing, second edition. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA.
Johnston, R. M. and M. M. Barson. 1993. Remote sensing of Australian wetlands: An evaluation of Landsat TM data for inventory and classification. Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Resources 44: 235–252.
Kendy, E. 2001. Ground-water resources of the Gallatin Local Water Quality District, southwestern Montana. U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 007-01.
Kindscher, K., A. Fraser, M. E. Jakubauskas, and D. M. Debinski. 1998. Identifying wetland meadows in Grand Teton National Park using remote sensing and average wetland values. Wetlands Ecology and Management 5: 265–273.
Lakshmi, V., E. F. Wood, and B. J. Choudhury. 1997. Evaluation of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager satellite data for regional soil moisture estimation over the Red River Basin. Journal of Applied Meteorology 36: 1309–1328.
Lawrence, R. L. and A. Wright. 2001. Rule-based classification systems using classification and regression tree (CART) analysis. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 67: 1137–1142.
Lawrence, R., A. Bunn, S. Powell, and M. Zambon. 2004. Classification of remotely sensed imagery using stochastic gradient boosting as a refinement of classification tree analysis. Remote Sensing of Environment 90: 331–336.
Mahlke, J. 1996. Characterization of Oklahoma Reservoir wetlands for preliminary change detection mapping using IRS-1B Satellite imagery. IGARSS 1996: 1996 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1769–1771.
Mitsch, W. J. and J. G. Gosselink. 2000. The value of wetlands: importance of scale and landscape setting. Ecological Economics 35: 25–33.
Montgomery, G. R. 1996. RCA III Riparian areas: reservoirs of diversity. Working paper No. 13, http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/pubs/wp13text.html, last accessed February 13, 2006.
Muller, E., H. Decamps, and K. D. Michael. 1993. Contribution of space remote sensing to river studies. Freshwater Biology 29: 301–312.
Narumalani, S., Y. Zhou, and J. R. Jensen. 1997. Application of remote sensing and geographic information systems to the delineation and analysis of buffer zones. Aquatic Botany 58: 393–409.
Peck, D. E. and J. R. Lovvorn. 2001. The importance of flood irrigation in water supply to wetlands in the Laramie Basin, Wyoming, USA. Wetlands 21: 370–378.
Ramsey, E. W. and S. C. Laine. 1997. Comparison of Landsat Thematic Mapper and high resolution aerial photography to identify change in complex coastal wetlands. Journal of Coastal Research 13: 281–292.
Sader, S. A., D. Ahl, and W. S. Liou. 1995. Accuracy of Landsat-TM and GIS rule-based methods for forest wetland classification in Maine. Remote Sensing of Environment 53: 133–144.
Salford Systems. 2001. TreeNet stochastic gradient boosting: An implementation of the MART methodology. Salford Systems, San Diego, CA, USA.
Semilitsch, R. D. and R. Bodie. 1998. Are small, isolated wetlands expendable? Conservation Biology 12: 1129–1133.
Tabacchi, E., D. L. Correll, R. Hauer, G. Pinay, A. Planty-Tabacchi, and R. C. Wissmar. 1998. Development, maintenance and role of riparian vegetation in the river landscape. Freshwater Biology 40: 497–516.
Tiner, R. W. 1993. Using plants as indicators of wetlands. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 144: 240–253.
Tiner, R. W. 2003. Geographically isolated wetlands of the United States. Wetlands 23: 494–516.
Townsend, P. A. and S. J. Walsh. 2001. Remote sensing of forested wetlands: application of multitemporal and multispectral satellite imagery to determine plant community composition and structure in southeastern USA. Plant Ecology 157: 129–149.
Toyra, J., A. Pietroniro, L. W. Martz, and T. D. Prowse. 2002. A multisensor approach to wetland flood monitoring. Hydrological Processes 16: 1569–1581.
U.S. EPA 2003. Section 404 of the Clean Water Act: how wetlands are defined and identified. http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/wetlands/facts/fact11.html (last updated September 26, 2003).
Venables, W. N. and B. D. Ripley. 1997. Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS, second edition. Springer, New York, NY, USA.
Wang, L., J. Lyons, and P. Kanehl. (2001). Impacts of urbanization on stream habitat and fish across multiple spatial scales. Environmental Management 28: 255–266.
Western Regional Climate Center. 2002. Historical Climate Information. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/index.html (last accessed 20 January 2003).
Willard, D. E. 1935. Montana: the Geological Story. The Science Press Printing Company, Lancaster, PA, USA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Baker, C., Lawrence, R., Montagne, C. et al. Mapping wetlands and riparian areas using Landsat ETM+ imagery and decision-tree-based models. Wetlands 26, 465–474 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2006)26[465:MWARAU]2.0.CO;2
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2006)26[465:MWARAU]2.0.CO;2