Digital land-use classification using Space-Shuttle acquired orbital photographs: A quantitative comparison with Landsat TM imagery of a coastal environment, Chanthaburi, Thailand

The capability of Space-Shuttle-acquired orbital photography to provide acc urate land-use classification using popular commercial software and accepte d analytical procedures was investigated. The study area was the coastal re gion of the Chanthaburi Province, eastern Thailand, which exhibits a land-u se pattern consisting of rice fields, shrimp farms, plantations/orchards, a nd patches of healthy and degraded mangrove e habitat. We used a typical im age analysis protocol using ERDAS Imagine(TM) v8.2 combined with ground ref erencing, and compared the classification results using orbital photographs to results of the same study area using Landsat TM 5 imagery. The orbital photographs exhibited high spatial resolution, and performed similarly to L andsat for classification purposes. Accuracy assessments showed 81.3 percen t accuracy of the ground referenced orbital photograph classification, and 83.3 percent for the Landsat image. Using a GIS overlay, we calculated 71 p ercent agreement between the two ground referenced image types. We conclude that, under the appropriate conditions, digitized orbital photographs can be an excellent source of spatial information for studies combining images of high spatial and spectral resolution. In addition to our results, we dis cuss the benefits and limitations to using orbital photographs for land-use classification. Orbital photographs can serve as a low-cost, complementary form of data to automated satellite images for assessments of basic habita t parameters.