Species Identification From Spatial Analysis of Digital Imagery

Our research tested whether spatial-spectral analysis techniques, when applied to digital camera imagery of wetlands, allow discrimination of plant species. We collected oblique imagery of emergent wetlands species as well as nearby upland vegetation at more than 100 sites in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. We limited our analysis to those portions of each oblique image in which the spatial resolution was calculated to be between 1 mm and 10 cm and applied the texture analysis techniques developed by RM Haralick and available in the ENVI software. Our results suggest that plant species can be discriminated with reasonable accuracy in oblique photography with this range of spatial resolutions.