Mapping Florida's Altered Landscapes

In 2007, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's (FWC) Center for Spatial Analysis contracted with Avineon, Inc., located in Clearwater, to classify and map areas of Florida identified as "disturbed" or "non-natural" in order to enhance our understanding of the distribution of these land cover types in Florida.

Avineon personnel used Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper+ (ETM+) satellite imagery from 2006 and 2007 to identify 11 land cover and land use classes in the map. Avineon used land cover/land use data from Florida's water management districts to create a set of training points which were used to identify parametric and nonparametric spectral signatures. Those signatures served as reference information which was applied to the imagery, resulting in an 11-class map of altered land cover classes. This ESRI GRID represents that effort's results. In 2009, FWC biologists conducted an accuracy assessment of these data, by comparing the modeled land cover to photo-interpreted land cover.

Download the Altered Landscapes Accuracy Assessment Final Report.