The change of land cover classification accuracies according to spatial resolution in case of Sunchon bay coastal wetland

위성영상 해상도에 따른 순천만 해안습지의 분류 정확도 변화

Since remotely sensed images of coastal wetlands are very sensitive to spatial resolution, it is very important to select an optimum resolution for particular geographic phenomena needed to be represented. Scale is one of the most important factors in spatial analysis techniques, which is defined as a spatial and temporal interval for a measurement or observation and is determined by the spatial extent of study area or the measurement unit. In order to acquire the optimum scale for a particular subject (i.e., coastal wetlands), measuring and representing the characteristics of attribute information extracted from the remotely sensed images are required. This study aims to explore and analyze the scale effects of attribute information extracted from remotely sensed coastal wetlands images. Specifically, it is focused on identifying the effects of scale in response to spatial resolution changes and suggesting a methodology for exploring the optimum spatial resolution. The LANDSAT TM image of Sunchon Bay was classified by a supervised classification method, Six land cover types were classified and the Kappa index for this classification was 84.6%. In order to explore the effects of scale in the classification procedure, a set of images that have different spatial resolutions were created by a aggregation method. Coarser images were created with the original image by averaging the DN values of neighboring pixels. Sixteen images whose resolution range from 30 m to 480 m were generated and classified to obtain land cover information using the same training set applied to the initial classification. The values of Kappa index show a distinctive pattern according to the spatial resolution change. Up to 120m, the values of Kappa index changed little, but Kappa index decreased dramatically at the 150m. However, at the resolution of 240 m and 270m, the classification accuracy was increased. From this observation, the optimum resolution for the study area would be either at 240m or 270m with respect to the classification accuracy and the best quality of attribute information can be obtained from these resolutions. Procedures and methodologies developed from this study would be applied to similar kinds and be used as a methodology of identifying and defining an optimum spatial resolution for a given problem.

공간상의 지리현상은 축척에 따라 공간적 분포패턴이 다르게 표현되고 측정될 수 있다. 특정한 지리현상은 특정한 축척에서 보다 선명하게 관찰될 수 있다. 지표면의 정보를 담고 있는 위성영상 역시 공간해상도의 영향에 의해 독특한 특성을 보이고 있다. 위성영상의 분석을 위한 적정해상도를 모색하기 위해서는 영상으로부터 분류되는 속성의 특성을 파악하여야 한다. 본 연구에서는 순천만 해안습지를 대상으로 위성영상으로부터 토지피복 정보를 추출하고, 공간 해상도의 변화에 따른 변화를 살펴보았다. 순천만 영상을 대상으로 토지피복 분류정확도를 파악한 후 30m 해상도부터 480m 해상도까지 30m 간격의 16가지 해상도로 영상을 제작하여 분류정확도의 변화를 살펴보았다. 순천만 해안습지는 다양한 토지유형이 다양한 크기로 분포하고 있어 해상도의 변화에 따라 토지피복 특성이 변화하고 있으며, 순천만의 위성영상 역시 축척 효과에 의해 해상도에 따라 속성정보의 특성의 변화가 뚜렷하게 나타난다.