Mapping vegetation types in a savanna ecosystem in Namibia : concepts for integrated land cover assessments

The characterisation and evaluation of biodiversity and land-cover in Southern Africa’s Savannas is a major prerequisite for suitable and sustainable land management and conservation purposes. However, mechanisms for frequent update of the status and trends of biodiversity and land change...
Ausführliche Beschreibung

The characterisation and evaluation of biodiversity and land-cover in Southern Africa’s Savannas is a major prerequisite for suitable and sustainable land management and conservation purposes. However, mechanisms for frequent update of the status and trends of biodiversity and land change processes are still missing. The knowledge of the spatial distribution of vegetation types is an important information source for all social benefit areas. Remote sensing techniques are essential tools for mapping and monitoring of land-cover. The development and evaluation of concepts’ for integrated land-cover assessments attracted increased interest in the remote sensing community since evolving standards for the characterisation of land-cover enable an easier access and inter-comparability of earth observation data. Regarding the complexity of the savanna biome in terms of the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the vegetation structure and rainfall variability, the main research needs are addressing the assessment of the capabilities and limitations of using satellite data for land-cover and vegetation mapping purposes. While integrating Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time series data for mapping vegetation types in Namibia, the temporal characteristics of semi-arid life-forms types were used for the classification of vegetation types in Namibia. The Random Forest framework was applied and evaluated for classifying vegetation types using MODIS time series metrics as input features. The study region comprised the Kalahari in the north-eastern communal lands of Namibia. Ausführliche Beschreibung