A land‐cover classification for landslide susceptibility mapping by using feature components

Abstract

Classifying original bands and/or image components may cause unsatisfactory results in fields that have heterogeneous reflectance. In such cases, the demand for accurate land‐use, land‐cover, vegetation, and forestry information may require more specific components. The components should represent peculiar information collected from several inputs for target land covers. In this study, a new technique of land‐cover classification was explored to prepare an input which increases the success of landslide susceptibility mapping in a subtropical region, Asarsuyu Catchment Area (Duzce). Land‐cover mapping is a difficult issue in this area by only carrying out field studies and aerial‐photo interpretations. Moreover, applying different classifications of Landsat Thematic Mapper bands and/or their secondary products does not produce acceptable results. For this reason, vegetation indices, soil/surface moisture indices, topographic wetness index and drainage density were calculated to produce feature representative components for the land‐cover classification process. Results obtained from the proposed technique show that feature representative components significantly improve the conventional classification accuracy from 77% to 89% and the resultant land‐cover map is such a valuable input for landslide susceptibility mapping that it increases the success of the landslide susceptibility map from 63% to 88%.

Keywords:

• Land‐cover classification
• Vegetation indices
• Soil/surface moisture indices
• PCA
• Landslide susceptibility map

Acknowledgments

The financial support for this project was provided by Middle East Technical University by the project AFP‐03‐09‐03‐04.