Diego Pedreros. Citation: Helmer, E.H.; Kennaway, T.A.; Pedreros, D.H.; Clark, M.L.; Marcano-Vega, H.; Tieszen, L.L., Ruzycki, T.R.; Schill, S.R.; Carrington, C.M.S. 2008. Land cover and forest formation distributions for St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, Grenada and Barbados from decision tree classification of cloud-cleared satellite imagery. Caribbean Journal of Science. 44(2): 175-198.
Forest formation and land cover maps for several Caribbean islands were developed from satellite imagery as part of a multi-organizational project. For the map of Barbados (Helmer et al., 2008), we used decision tree software as the original approach to classify Landsat ETM+ images. Unfortunately the high cloud cover in the available Landsat images led to a low-quality classified map in many areas. Ikonos images for the years 2001 and 2002 where obtained and used as the basis to classify most of the island by "heads-up" digitizing. The forest classification scheme relates closely to that of Areces-Malea et al. (Areces-Mallea et al., 1999), with modifications similar to those in Helmer et al. (Helmer et al., 2002).
This is version 2 of the Barbados map. In this version, the high resolution imagery viewable on Google Earth was used to interpret land cover in areas that were cloud-obscured in the original map and imagery. In addition, a projection problem was corrected.
Citation: Helmer, E.H.; Kennaway, T.A.; Pedreros, D.H.; Clark, M.L.; Marcano-Vega, H.; Tieszen, L.L., Ruzycki, T.R.; Schill, S.R.; Carrington, C.M.S. 2008. Land cover and forest formation distributions for St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, Grenada and Barbados from decision tree classification of cloud-cleared satellite imagery. Caribbean Journal of Science. 44(2):175-198.
Data are posted at the FSGeodata Clearinghouse (<https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/>).
Purpose:
Satellite image-based mapping of tropical forests is often vital to conservation planning. Standard methods for automated image classification, however, limit classification detail in complex tropical landscapes. The purpose of this map is to provide an inventory of the existing vegetation land cover of the country to help monitoring possible changes.
Supplemental_Information:
The map for Barbados was developed by Diego Pedreros with collaboration from Eileen Helmer, Mathew Clark, Tom Albright, John Walkey, Carrintong, S. and Larry Tieszen, as part of a joint project between the USFS - International Institute of Tropical Forestry, USGS - Center for EROS, The Nature Conservancy, NASA, CSU - CEMML, USAID - Caribbean Program Office. With the collaboration of the Ministry of Energy and the Environment of Barbados. Landsat imagery provided by NASA - GOFC, USGS - Center for EROS, and IITF.
Marie Held and Thomas Ruzycki of the Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CML) of Colorado State University made the corrections and additions that resulted in version 2 of the Barbados map.
0 Ocean
1 High-Medium Density Urban or Built-up Land
2 Low Density Built-up Land (Rural or Residential)
3 Sugar cane
4 Minor crops
5 Mixed and Woody agriculture
6 Pasture, Hay or Inactive Agriculture (e.g. abandoned sugar cane)
7 Pasture, Hay or other Grassy Areas (e.g. soccer fields)
8 Golf course
9 Drought Deciduous Woodland
10 Deciduous, Evergreen Coastal and Mixed Forest or Shrubland and Drought Deciduous
Forest/Shrub
11 Drought Deciduous Forest/Shrub
12 Semi-Deciduous and Drought Deciduous Forest on Limestone (includes Semi-Evergreen Forest)
13 Semi-Deciduous and Drought Deciduous Forest (includes Semi-Evergreen Forest)
14 Seasonal Evergreen Forest
15 Emergent Wetland
16 Mangrove
17 Quarries
18 Coastal Sand, Rock, Cliffs or Bare Ground
19 Bare Soil (including bulldozed land)
20 Water - Permanent
21 Clouds in imagery
Time_Period_of_Content:
Time_Period_Information:
Single_Date/Time:
Calendar_Date: 2001-2002
Currentness_Reference: ground condition
Status:
Progress: Complete
Maintenance_and_Update_Frequency: None planned
Spatial_Domain:
Bounding_Coordinates:
West_Bounding_Coordinate: -59.666003
East_Bounding_Coordinate: -59.400523
North_Bounding_Coordinate: 13.351630
South_Bounding_Coordinate: 13.031413
Keywords:
Theme:
Theme_Keyword_Thesaurus:
REQUIRED: Reference to a formally registered thesaurus or a similar authoritative source of theme keywords.
Theme_Keyword: land cover
Theme_Keyword: land use
Theme_Keyword: forest formation
Theme_Keyword: forest type
Place:
Place_Keyword: Barbados
Place_Keyword: Caribbean
Temporal:
Temporal_Keyword: 2001
Temporal_Keyword: 2002
Access_Constraints: No access constraints.
Use_Constraints:
This map was developed based on IKONOS data with a resolution of 1m x 1m, the final product has been resampled to 30m x 30m. The map should be use for general information gathering not for detail mapping
Browse_Graphic_File_Description: Barbados land cover and forest formations
Browse_Graphic_File_Type: GIF
Data_Set_Credit:
Citation: Helmer, E.H.; Kennaway, T.A.; Pedreros, D.H.; Clark, M.L.; Marcano-Vega, H.; Tieszen, L.L., Ruzycki, T.R.; Schill, S.R.; Carrington, C.M.S. 2008. Land cover and forest formation distributions for St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, Grenada and Barbados from decision tree classification of cloud-cleared satellite imagery. Caribbean Journal of Science. 44(2):175-198.
Native_Data_Set_Environment:
Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 2; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.2.6.1500
The only two Landsat scenes available for Barbados, at the time, were utilized to run the C5 classification process. Due to the large cloud cover the result was a low-quality classified map, mainly for the Northern and Eastern part of the island. Ikonos images for the year 2001-2 were acquired and utilized to fill-in the gaps in the decision tree product. The Ikonos images were registered to the existing Landsat images with difficulty due to the cloud cover, in some areas. There where areas, in the decision tree product, that needed to be completely replaced with classification from Ikonos. For those areas, the Ikonos image was resampled to 30 m to match the resolution of Landsat, the individual classes were identified by a process of elimination, and the final edits were done by "heads-up" digitizing over the Ikonos original image. Individual classes such as forest, grassland, urban, etc. were identified by running an unsupervised classification with 100 classes, then the first 5 to 10 classes were selected, depending on how much they would represent a single main class. The process was run many times until a main class was obtained. These pixels representing a single class were taken away from the Ikonos image. The process was run for each main class. After having all the individual classes for an image, classes were merged with the C5 product. (see final report)
Under no circumstances shall the USAID, Forest Service or the International Institute of Tropical Forestry be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from the use, misuse, or inability to use this software, even if IITF has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
