Combining the matter element model with the associated function of probability transformation for multi-source remote sensing data classification in mountainous regions

That the multi-source remote sensing information integrates knowledge-based geospatial constraints to develop efficient and practical Land cover classification algorithm has become one of the most important developing directions in the field of remote sensing ground object classification. Remote sensing classification is a strictly incompatible problem, but the spectra distribution of remote sensing data has compatible attributes especially in mountainous regions, and such contradiction is one of the main reasons leading to uncertainties in remote sensing classification. In this paper, the remote sensing spectra feature compatible information is transformed into the probability of the association degree firstly, and then the matter-element theory is introduced to establish models to achieve the integrated classification of multi-source data to fuse knowledge-based geographical constrained condition probability. Taking the grassland–wetland fragile ecosystem in Ruoergai plateau of China as a case study, this paper selected the multi-source data including images of Landsat TM and CBERS, ASTER-GDEM and MODIS-NDVI to construct a comprehensive classifier, in which the relationship between topography and land cover, and the prior knowledge on vegetation growth difference were taken as constraints to support the decision-making. The classification accuracy was evaluated by a field investigation and existing land cover map. The test result shows that, the overall accuracy (89.89%) and Kappa coefficient (0.8870) are better than those derived by the Maximum Likelihood method. It indicates that the proposed classification method is not subject to the dimensionality and form of data sources, and it can integrate the data source information to improve the classification accuracy, so that it is very useful to apply multi-source data and prior knowledge to land cover classification in mountainous regions.