Integrating field survey and orthophoto information to monitor coastal habitats — A pilot study to develop methods and resolve key issues

Spatial application of Random Forest models for fine-scale coastal vegetation classification using object based analysis of aerial orthophoto and DEM data

“…Yet for the purpose of identifying and delimiting detailed structural features within habitat types, appropriate satellite data (e.g., VHR image data from IKONOS, Quickbird or Worldview II) remains expensive if needed for large areas, and in regions such as Denmark difficult to acquire as a national coverage for a single year due to cloud cover. Aerial-based imagery also has some advantages, the major one being higher spatial resolution (Mullerova et al, 2013;Pringle et al, 2009), the reduction of certain atmospheric effects, and in some cases, better availability and lower cost (Juel et al, 2013). The higher spatial resolution opens possibilities for mapping that is closer to field-survey derived mapping scales, making them intuitively understandable and possible to verify in the field (Mullerova et al, 2013).…”