Inventories of Delaware's coastal vegetation and land-use utilizing digital processing of ERTS-1 imagery

Digital analysis of ERTS-1 imagery was used in an attempt to map and inventory the significant ecological communities of Delaware's coastal zone. Eight vegetation and land use discrimination classes were selected: (1) phragmites communis (Giant Reed grass); (2) spartina alterniflora (Salt marsh cord grass); (3) spartina patens (Salt marsh hay); (4) shallow water and exposed mud; (5) deep water (2 meters); (6) forest; (7) agriculture; and (8) exposed sand and concrete. Canonical analysis showed that classification accuracy was quite good with spartina alterniflora, exposed sand-concrete, and forested land - all discriminated with between 94% and 100% accuracy. The shallow water-mud and deep water categories were classified with accuracies of 88% and 93% respectively. Phragmites communis showed a classification accuracy of 83% with all confusion occurring with spartina patens which may be due to use of mixed stands of these species as training sets. Discrimination of spartina patens was very poor (accuracy 52%).