Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA.
Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2023 Mar 17;195(4):478. doi: 10.1007/s10661-023-11071-6.
Phragmites australis is a widespread invasive plant species in the USA that greatly impacts estuarine wetlands by creating dense patches and outcompeting other plants. The invasion of Phragmites into wetland ecosystems is known to decrease biodiversity, destroy the habitat of threatened and endangered bird species, and alter biogeochemistry. While the impact of Phragmites is known, the spatial extent of this species is challenging to document due to its fragmented occurrence. Using high-resolution imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) from 2017, we evaluated a geospatial method of mapping the spatial extent of Phragmites across the state of DE. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and principal component analysis (PCA) bands are generated from the NAIP data and used as inputs in a random forest classifier to achieve a high overall accuracy for the Phragmites classification of around 95%. The classified gridded dataset has a spatial resolution of 1 m and documents the spatial distribution of Phragmites throughout the state's estuarine wetlands (around 11%). Such detailed classification could aid in monitoring the spread of this invasive species over space and time and would inform the decision-making process for landscape managers.
芦苇是一种分布广泛的入侵植物物种，它在美国大量存在，并通过形成密集的斑块和与其他植物竞争而对河口湿地产生重大影响。芦苇入侵湿地生态系统会降低生物多样性，破坏受威胁和濒危鸟类物种的栖息地，并改变生物地球化学。尽管芦苇的影响是已知的，但由于其分散的存在，很难记录该物种的空间范围。我们使用 2017 年国家农业图像计划（NAIP）的高分辨率图像，评估了一种在 DE 州范围内绘制芦苇空间范围的地理空间方法。从 NAIP 数据生成归一化差异植被指数（NDVI）和主成分分析（PCA）波段，并将其用作随机森林分类器的输入，以实现约 95%的高芦苇分类总体准确性。分类的网格化数据集具有 1 m 的空间分辨率，记录了该州河口湿地中芦苇的空间分布（约 11%）。这种详细的分类可以帮助监测这种入侵物种在空间和时间上的传播，并为景观管理者的决策过程提供信息。
