# Presentation: 359440

## Missouri Landscapes: A Workshop on the Production and Use of Missouri’s Land Cover Database

- The land cover project was undertaken by MoRAP at the direction of the Steering Committee, and under the guidance of the Land Cover Working Group

## Workshop Goals

- provide a general understanding of remote sensing and of how the Missouri Land Cover Database was created
- provide examples of applications of land cover data for natural resource management
- gain input/review in order to refine the final land cover data layer
- gain input to help define needs and direct future efforts (analyses, applications, data delivery, etc.)

## Funding Partners:

- Missouri Department of Conservation
- Missouri Department of Transportation
- Missouri Department of Natural Resources
- Natural Resources Conservation Service
- Ozark National Scenic Riverways
- United States Environmental Protection Agency
- United States Fish & Wildlife Service
- Mark Twain National Forest
- United States Geological Survey

## Historical Perspective

- first talks and inter-agency meetings on production of a statewide land cover were in the mid - 1970’s
- current Missouri Land Cover Working Group formed in 1995 - Elizabeth Cook, Chair
- Dr. Kan He hired by MoRAP - May 1996
- Taisia Grodon began on project at MoRAP in  mid-1997
- most time and effort put in by: Terry Barney, NRCS; Tim Nigh, MDC; and Mike Schanta, USFS (MTNF)

## Remote sensing is still relatively new to many natural resource managers

- You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. - Yogi Berra
- Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. - Edward R. Murrow

## Anyone who takes on the task of statewide land cover mapping is a fool, a masochist, or just plain oblivious. -- David Diamond

- Never-the-less, the land cover working group was tempted to try.
- The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.  - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
- Do, or do not. There is no 'try'. - Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

## What is Remote Sensing?

- collection of data without being on site
- air photos, a well-known remote sensing technique, have been routinely used by natural resource managers for more than 60 years
- satellite remote sensing systems generally record electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from target objects
- each satellite-born sensor has a defined spectral (reflectance band), spatial (pixel or gain size), temporal (return interval), and radiometric (brightness scale) resolution

## Why use Remote Sensing for the Missouri Land Cover Project?

- there is no substitute for a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the land; mapping the spatial extent of land cover across millions of square miles cannot be done using any other technique at any cost
- a picture is worth MORE than a thousand words
- quick and cheap even when other substitutes are available
- results can be combined with other spatial data in a GIS for analysis

## The Missouri Land Cover Project: Basic Philosophy & Approach

- the target is statewide initially; smaller areas may be targeted later
- committee picked a national ‘standard’ land cover classification, which was flexibly applied
- Phase 1 was ‘coarse’ and done quickly;  Phase 2 is based on a large amount of ground-truth data;  we’re still moving as fast as possible
- Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data was selected as the data source for practical reasons: cost, time, ability to process and manage data volume

## Thematic Mapper Satellite Data

- 30 meter grain (pixel) size (spatial resolution)
- multi-spectral (6 band spectral resolution)
- approximately 185 × 185 km per scene; 15 to cover the state
- two dates - 35 scenes total
- data from 1991 to 1993

## Slide 11

## Phase One Classification

- scene-based clustering
- 60 spectral clusters per scene
- land cover (information) classes assigned on-screen
- land cover classes collapsed into six categories: forest, woodland, grassland, cropland, urban, and water
- results have been used by agency partners

## Phase Two Classification

- approach: verify a sample of all spectral clusters for all scenes within each ecological subsection (more than 100 polygons)
- assumption: land cover is uniform within an ecological subsection versus a whole TM scene, so more accurate assignment of land cover classes is possible

## Collection and Use of Ground-based Information

- cooperative effort ; methodology based on pilot study involving partner agencies
- first step: preparation of materials in the lab
- second step: survey of sites in the field
- third step: data capture and  management; efficient use for production of Phase Two Land Cover Classification

## Slide 15

## Arc/INFO GIS

*Arc/INFO GIS*

**Ground Verification Data**
**Processing Environment**

*Access Database*

**Arc/INFO Open Development**
**Environment (ODE)**

**Microsoft Data**
**Access Object (DAO)**

## Production of Phase II Classification

- compare ground verification results to original land cover class assignments for  each spectral class by scene and by ecological subsection
- calculate percent agreement
- in areas of scene overlap, if pixel land cover assignments disagree assign cover class with highest certainty

## General Types of  Applications

- visual display
- area within polygons (watershed, ecoregion, stream corridor)
- landscape characterization for planning: habitat distribution, patch size, configuration, edge
- species-specific modeling
- watershed modeling (e.g. land cover by soil type and slope category with a watershed, etc.)

## Remote Sensing and GIS are just tools to add to the toolbox

- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein
- I am not young enough to know everything. - Oscar Wilde