Skip to main content
ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #185433
Title: CHARACTERIZING LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE WITH IMAGE TEXTURE PARAMETERS

Author
item Walthall, Charles
item Pachepsky, Ludmila
item Daughtry, Craig

Submitted to: American Geophysical Union
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/17/2005
Publication Date: 12/4/2005
Citation: Walthall, C.L., Pachepsky, L., Daughtry, C.S. 2005. Characterizing landscape composition and structure with image texture parameters [abstract]. Abstracts from American Geophysical Union Fall Conference. 2005 CDROM.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: There is a need to characterize landscapes using parameters that contain information beyond that of traditional land cover/land use categories. Surface composition and structure are desirable factors for applications such as modeling soil-plant-atmosphere interactions, understanding watershed hydrologic processes, and characterizing factors affecting plant and soil productivity, among others. Species composition, surface roughness, heterogeneity of vegetation cover, foliage clumping, and the spatial arrangement of landscape structures are among the desirable factors. These factors are potentially retrievable from the spatial domain of remote sensing data via analysis of image texture. Although image texture analysis tools are widely available, an understanding of the physical meaning of texture parameters from the perspective of landscape composition and structure is lacking. Investigations into the information content of image texture parameters from high spatial resolution imagery are presented. The roles of plant species architecture, plant canopy architecture, and landscape heterogeneity as factors controlling image texture parameters, and the implications for temporal stability of texture parameters relative to spectral parameters are discussed. Directions for future empirical and theoretical studies are suggested.