Baseline Invasive Species Community Mapping at Lower Klamath Wetland, Oregon-California (USA)

Abstract

Frequent and intense droughts have occurred over the last decade creating a severe shift in water availability that has concurrently increased an expansion of open lands that were inundated before by water. This open land will allow colonization of invasive non-native species. To select and apply the most appropriate flood management practices to restore wetland vegetation communities, it is vital to evaluate the spatial distribution of native vegetation communities, as well as invasive species, within the area. A time series of Sentinel-2 data was used to separate vegetation communities based on characteristic phenological patterns using Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classifier, using time series signatures instead of spectral signatures. Results showed that the best accuracy was obtained with the combination of the spectral index NDVI and the Spectral Shape Indexes in the green and red parts of the spectrum. In addition, results from this research showed the usefulness of SAM in the temporal space instead of the spectral space as it has been traditionally used.