The Estuary Partnership recently completed a high resolution land cover classification map for the lower Columbia. The data provide vital information to support our Habitat Restoration and Ecosystem Monitoring activities. In addition, the data comprises the highest hierarchical level of the Columbia River Estuary Ecosystem Classification, which the Partnership recently completed in collaboration with the USGS and University of Washington. The land cover classification was done by the Sanborn Map Company, and utilized recent (2009) aerial imagery, LiDAR, LandSAT, and other supporting data sets. Additional support for this project was provided by the NOAA Coastal Services Center Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP). By teaming with Sanborn and NOAA C-CAP, the EP was able to capitalize on an innovative approach to land cover mapping that has been developed by these groups which involves image segmentation and object based classification. The chosen classification scheme was based on existing, standard classifications, with additional focus on estuarine and tidal freshwater habitats. Training data used for the classification consisted of existing data collected for previous mapping efforts, as well as an extensive set of new field data collected specifically for this effort. Mapping results were within expected accuracy ranges for all nearly all land cover classes. With the exception of 3 classes, all user’s and producer’s accuracies were calculated at greater than 75%, with the majority of classes exceeding 85% accuracy.
This data can be accessed through the links below: