High Level Semantic Land Cover Classification of Multitemporal Sar Images Using Synergic Pixel-Based and Object-Based Methods

Abstract

Land cover mapping is one of the classic applications of synthetic aperture radar remote sensing. However, despite of the algorithmic progress in classification techniques, the semantic content of available maps does remain unchanged, with only a few macro-classes (like water, forest, urban, and bare soil) being discriminated in the majority of the works from past years. In this paper, a methodology to extract a higher level semantics from synthetic aperture radar images is presented. It is based on coupling pixel-based clustering with object-based image analysis and contextual information. Preliminary results have been produced from multitemporal SAR datasets over a forest area in Colombia. They demonstrate that the synergic exploitation of pixel and object information can provide higher quality land cover results and more information to map users.