Mangrove detection from high resolution optical data

Abstract

Mangroves are an important part of the ecosystem in tropical region. Unfortunately, they are also under intense ecological pressure from fishing, tourism or logging. As they are often in not easily accessible places and scattered over large areas, satellite observation is an ideal solution to monitor the mangrove evolution over the past few years. However, the mapping of mangrove from satellite images is a difficult task and mostly done manually. Here we propose a detection method based on support vector machine, exploring more than 100 features, provinding a good accurary, enabling the mangrove expert to focus on the most difficult areas. © 2010 IEEE.