Land Cover/Land Use

Resource Mapping Hawai'i (RMH), an aerial mapping and remote sensing company, maps land cover and land use over wide areas for resource-management clients. Telling crops and land uses apart over large areas is uncertain without considerable ground assessment, even where crops are spectrally distinct.

RMH applies semi-automated, object-based image classification to multispectral satellite imagery, then uses visual interpretation of its own high-resolution aerial imagery to identify crops and land uses and to validate the maps as "virtual groundtruthing" in place of field visits.

In its published case study, RMH was tasked by EKNA Services, Inc. to identify agricultural uses for an assessment of ditch irrigation systems throughout the state of Hawai'i. It classified WorldView-2 multispectral satellite imagery acquired in 2011 into crop classes such as corn, miscellaneous produce, and fruit and nut trees, and flew aerial surveys in 2014 to produce natural-colour ortho-mosaics at 4 cm ground sampling distance against which the satellite-derived crop maps were checked.

What distinguishes the service is that RMH owns and flies its own aircraft and sensors in Hawai'i, so satellite classification can be paired with aerial imagery at resolutions of up to 1 cm for interpretation and validation. The work is delivered as a client project.