Evaluation of effectiveness of supervised classification algorithms in land cover classification using ASTER images-A case study from the Mankweng (Turfloop) Area and its environs, Limpopo Province, South Africa

The production of land cover maps using supervised classification algorithms is one of the most common applications of remote sensing. In this study, the effectiveness of supervised classification algorithms in land cover classification using ASTER data was evaluated in the Mankweng Area and its environs. The false colour composite image generated from combination of band 1, 2 and 3 in red, green and blue, respectively, was used to generate training classes for six land cover types (waterbody, forest, vegetation, Duiwelskloof leucogranite, Turfloop granite and built-up land). These were used to construct land cover maps using eight supervised classification algorithms: Maximum Likelihood, Minimum Distance, Support Vector Machine, Mahalanobis Distance, Parallelepiped, Neural Network, Spectral Angle Mapper and Spectral Information Divergence. To evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithms, the land cover maps were subjected to accuracy assessment to determine precision of the algorithms in accurately classifying the land cover types and level of confidence that can be attributed to the land cover maps. Most algorithms poorly performed in classifying spatially overlapping land cover types without abrupt boundaries. This indicates that the environmental conditions and distribution of land cover types can affect the performance of certain classification algorithms, and thus need to be considered prior to selection of algorithms. However, Support Vector Machine and Minimum Distance proved to be the two most effective algorithms as they provided better producer’s and user’s accuracy in the range of 80-100% for all land cover types, which represent good classification.