Selection of classification techniques for land use/land cover change investigation

The concerns over land use/land cover (LULC) change have emerged on the global stage due to the realisation that changes occurring on the land surface also influence climate, ecosystem and its services. As a result, the importance of accurate mapping of LULC and its changes over time is on the increase. Landsat satellite is a major data source for regional to global LULC analysis. The main objective of this study focuses on the comparison of three classification tools for Landsat images, which are maximum likelihood classification (MLC), support vector machine and artificial neural network (ANN), in order to select the best method among them. The classifiers algorithms are well optimized for the gamma, penalty, degree of polynomial in case of SVM, while for ANN minimum output activation threshold and RMSE are taken into account. The overall analysis shows that the ANN is superior to the kernel based SVM (linear, radial based, sigmoid and polynomial) and MLC. The best tool (ANN) is then applied on detecting the LULC change over part of Walnut Creek, Iowa. The change analysis of the multi temporal images indicates an increase in urban areas and a major shift in the agricultural practices.