Mapping prairie pothole communities with multitemporal Ikonos satellite imagery

We evaluated the ability of Ikonos imagery from August and October 2000 to classify prairie pothole community types of the Missouri Coteau of North Dakota. Classification tree analyses were conducted to create land-cover maps at three levels of detail. The analyses successfully distinguished broad cover types (potholes including emergent vegetation versus upland vegetation) at 92 percent overall accuracy. Overall accuracy dropped to 80 percent when upland vegetation was segregated into woody and grassy communities and to 71 percent when we attempted to classify at the species or near-species levels. The use of two image dates was of importance in the classifications; the failure to acquire early season imagery, therefore, might have impaired our results.