简介:Weusedgeographicinformationsystemapplicationsandstatisticalanalysestoclassifyyoung,prematureforestareasinsoutheasternGeorgiausingcombineddatafromLandsatTM5satelliteimageryandgroundinventorydata.Wedefinedprematurestandsasforestswithtreesupto15yearsold.Weestimatedtheprematureforestareasusingthreemethods:maximumlikelihoodclassification(MLC),regressionanalysis,andk-nearestneighbor(kNN)modeling.Overallaccuracy(OA)ofclassifyingtheprematureforestusingMLCwas82%andtheKappacoefficientofagreementwas0.63,whichwasthehighestamongthemethodsthatwehavetested.ThekNNapproachrankedsecondinaccuracywithOAof61%andaKappacoefficientofagreementof0.22.RegressionanalysisyieldedanOAof57%andaKappacoefficientof0.14.WeconcludethatLandsatimagerycanbeeffectivelyusedforestimatingprematureforestareasincombinationwithimageprocessingclassifierssuchasMLC.