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Mapping Floating and Emergent Aquatic Vegetation in Coastal Wetlands of Eastern Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Canada

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Abstract

Expansion and contraction of floating and emergent vegetation due to fluctuating water levels has a direct impact on the amount of critical fish habitat in the coastal marshes of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron (Canada). Traditional mapping approaches developed for site-specific studies are too expensive to quantify such changes at the scale of Georgian Bay. Here, we use IKONOS images to develop a classification method (process-tree classification (PTC)), an automated, object-based, image-analysis approach that can produce regional maps of wetland habitat for south-eastern Georgian Bay (1466.7 Km). PTC discriminated among six wetland habitat classes (emergent, high-density floating, low-density floating, meadow, water, and rock) in four IKONOS satellite images with a mean accuracy of 87.4%. The PTC was then applied without modification to 17 other IKONOS images collected concurrently in 2002. Based on analysis of 50 randomly chosen wetlands in these images, we estimate that at 2002 water levels, at least 25% of an average wetland (6.5 ha) contains potential fish habitat. Although the PTC developed is specific to the 21 IKONOS images used in this study, the framework is transferable to satellite images acquired in other regions of Georgian Bay, and the approach itself could be applied to other large lakes.

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Acknowledgments

This study could not have been carried out without funding and access to IKONOS imagery provided by Georgian Bay Forever (GBF). We thank the Georgian Bay Association (GBA), especially Mary Muter, who helped us gain access to the coastal wetlands and generously provided their cottages for us to stay in. Other funding for this research came from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Maja Cvetkovic, Daniel Rokitnicki-Wojcik, Lyndsay Smith, Henry Heiser, and Anhua Wei for helpful suggestions and comments, and everyone in the Chow-Fraser lab who helped collect field data.

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  1. Department of Biology, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, LSB 206, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada

    Jonathan D. Midwood & Patricia Chow-Fraser

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  1. Jonathan D. Midwood
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  2. Patricia Chow-Fraser
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Correspondence to Jonathan D. Midwood.

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Midwood, J.D., Chow-Fraser, P. Mapping Floating and Emergent Aquatic Vegetation in Coastal Wetlands of Eastern Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Canada. Wetlands 30, 1141–1152 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-010-0105-z

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