Evaluating Airborne Multispectral Digital Video to Differentiate Giant Salvinia from Other Features in Northeast Texas

Reginald S Fletcher,James H Everitt,Howard S Elder

doi:10.3390/rs2102413

Reginald S Fletcher, James H Everitt + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs2102413

Copy DOI

Journal: Remote Sensing	Publication Date: Oct 19, 2010
Citations: 20	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Abstract

Giant Salvinia (Salvinia molesta) is one of the world’s most invasive aquatic weeds. We evaluated the accuracy of airborne multispectral digital video imagery for separating giant salvinia from other aquatic and terrestrial features at a study site located in northeast, Texas. The five-band multispectral digital video imagery was subjected to an unsupervised computer analysis to derive a thematic map of the infested area. User’s and producer’s accuracies of the giant salvinia class were 74.6% and 87.2%, respectively. Aerial multispectral digital videography has potential as a remote sensing tool for differentiating giant salvinia from other terrestrial and aquatic features.

Highlights

According to Westbrooks [1], invasive plants are plants that have been introduced into an environment in which they did not evolve and usually have no natural enemies to limit their reproduction and spread
(50–75%)—surface was a mixture of water and giant salvinia) and blue arrows-giant salvinia, white arrow—mixed woody vegetation, black arrow—mixed aquatic, and red arrow—water
These findings indicated that 74.6% of the areas labeled giant salvinia on the map were giant salvina and that 87.2% of the giant salvinia class was correctly identified

Summary

Introduction

According to Westbrooks [1], invasive plants are plants that have been introduced into an environment in which they did not evolve and usually have no natural enemies to limit their reproduction and spread. Sensors onboard airborne and satellite-borne platforms have provided remotely-sensed imagery that natural resource managers can use to detect, map, and monitor invasive plant infestations [3,4,5]. The sensors can obtain imagery of inaccessible areas infested with invasive plants. The imagery is a permanent record that managers can input into a geographic information database to monitor spread of the infestation over time and evaluate effectiveness of treatments used to control the infestation [7]. Investigators can subject imagery to computer analysis, leading to estimates of infested versus non-infested areas within the region of interest

Methods

Results

Conclusion