Canadian Forest Service Publications
Comparing AVHRR and CANFI 91 land classes. 1995. Penner, M. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 21(1): 10-15.
Year: 1995
Issued by: Pacific Forestry Centre
Catalog ID: 4512
Language: English
Availability: Order paper copy (free)
Abstract
The land classes obtained from a recent classification of AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) data for Canada are compared with the national forest inventory to investigate the potential of AVHRR for land class inventory. Twenty-one points, representing the range of ecozones in Canada, were selected for comparison. The results indicate that AVHRR classification tends to overestimate the extent of dominant land classes and underestimate the extent of less common land classes relative to the national inventory. The mean absolute bias between AVHRR estimates of the proportion water and the inventory-derived estimates was 4.3 percentage points, the mean absolute bias for the proportion of forest was 10.7 percentage points, and the mean absolute bias for the amount of coniferous forest was 12.9 percentage points. The classified AVHRR provides good information on dominant land classes suitable for mapping purposes but does not yield unbiased estimates of the extent of the land classes. These biases limit the usefulness of AVHRR for inventory purposes.