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Multi-temporal Sub-pixel Landsat ETM+ Classification of Isolated Wetlands in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA

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Abstract

The goal of this research was to determine the utility of subpixel processing of multi-temporal Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data for the identification and mapping of isolated wetlands ≥ 0.20 ha (0.50 acres) in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Segmentation and object-oriented analysis of Landsat ETM+ was used to map forested and emergent marsh isolated wetlands in Alachua County, Florida, previously; however, the isolated wetlands in our study area lacked the well-defined, high-contrast boundaries between wetland and surrounding upland needed to make this method successful. We developed a new methodology that incorporated Landsat ETM+; a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index mask; and subpixel matched filtering–which determines the apparent abundance of wetlands at subpixel levels in the presence of spectrally-mixed, unknown background through a partial unmixing algorithm–to map > 43 km2 (16 mi2) of isolated wetlands in our 1,189 km2 (459 mi2) study area. The final overall accuracy of the classification was 92.8%, with a Kappa coefficient of 0.86; producer accuracy for isolated wetlands was 87.9% (omission error 12.1%) and user accuracy was 97.4% (commission error 2.6%). The subpixel matched filtering method used in this research appears to provide an effective means for mapping isolated wetlands ≥ 0.20 ha, especially those with boundaries that are not easily identified.

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Acknowledgments

The United States Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development partially funded and collaborated in the research described here under contract EP-D-06-096 to Dynamac Corporation. This paper has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. We received the DaRG dataset from the Cuyahoga River Community Planning Organization (Marie Sullivan, CRCPO GIS Expert, personal communication, August 2008), and Kevin Skerl provided the data from Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We appreciate the review and insightful comments provided by Ken Bailey, US EPA, and editing and formatting provided by Justicia Rhodus, Dynamac Corporation.

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  1. Dynamac Corporation c/o U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), 26 W. Martin Luther King Dr., Cincinnati, OH, 45268, USA

    Robert C. Frohn, Ellen D’Amico, Justicia Rhodus & Hongxing Liu

  2. Department of Geography, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 45221-0131, USA

    Robert C. Frohn & Hongxing Liu

  3. Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), 26 W. Martin Luther King Dr., Cincinnati, OH, 45268, USA

    Charles Lane & Brad Autrey

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  1. Robert C. Frohn
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  2. Ellen D’Amico
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  6. Hongxing Liu
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Correspondence to Charles Lane.

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Dr. Robert Frohn passed away on October 16, 2010.

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Frohn, R.C., D’Amico, E., Lane, C. et al. Multi-temporal Sub-pixel Landsat ETM+ Classification of Isolated Wetlands in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA. Wetlands 32, 289–299 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-011-0254-8

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