An Evaluation of Different Training Sample Allocation Schemes for Discrete and Continuous Land Cover Classification Using Decision Tree-Based Algorithms

Land cover mapping for large regions often employs satellite images of medium to coarse spatial resolution, which complicates mapping of discrete classes. Class memberships, which estimate the proportion of each class for every pixel, have been suggested as an alternative. This paper compares different strategies of training data allocation for discrete and continuous land cover mapping using classification and regression tree algorithms. In addition to measures of discrete and continuous map accuracy the correct estimation of the area is another important criteria. A subset of the 30 m national land cover dataset of 2006 (NLCD2006) of the United States was used as reference set to classify NADIR BRDF-adjusted surface reflectance time series of MODIS at 900 m spatial resolution. Results show that sampling of heterogeneous pixels and sample allocation according to the expected area of each class is best for classification trees. Regression trees for continuous land cover mapping should be trained with random allocation, and predictions should be normalized with a linear scaling function to correctly estimate the total area. From the tested algorithms random forest classification yields lower errors than boosted trees of C5.0, and Cubist shows higher accuracies than random forest regression.