Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis of Landsat Imagery for Wetland land-Cover Classification in Paldang Reservoir and Vicinity

Wetlands are lands with a mixture of water, herbaceous or woody vegetation and wet soil. And linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA) is one of the most often used methods in handling the spectral mixture problem. This study aims to test LSMA is an enhanced routine for classification of wetland land-covers in Paldang reservoir and vicinity (paldang Reservoir) using Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery. In the LSMA process, reference endmembers were driven from scatter-plots of Landsat bands 3, 4 and 5, and a series of endmember models were developed based on green vegetation (GV), soil and water endmembers which are the main indicators of wetlands. To consider phenological characteristics of Paldang Reservoir, a soil endmember was subdivided into bright and dark soil endmembers in spring and a green vegetation (GV) endmember was subdivided into GV tree and GV herbaceous endmembers in fall. We found that LSMA fractions improved the classification accuracy of the wetland land-cover. Four endmember models provided better GV and soil discrimination and the root mean squared (RMS) errors were 0.011 and 0.0039, in spring and fall respectively. Phenologically, a fall image is more appropriate to classify wetland land-cover than spring's. The classification result using 4 endmember fractions of a fall image reached 85.2 and 74.2 percent of the producer's and user's accuracy respectively. This study shows that this routine will be an useful tool for identifying and monitoring the status of wetlands in Paldang Reservoir.