Using SPOT 5 fusion-ready imagery to detect Chinese tamarisk (saltcedar) with mathematical morphological method

Chinese tamarisk (saltcedar) is a deciduous shrub that occurs widely across the Yellow River Delta in China. The spatial structure of Chinese tamarisk is believed to have an influence on the landscape and habitats of rare birds. In this study, first, Chinese tamarisk is detected using Canny edge detector and mathematical morphological operators based on SPOT 5 fusion-ready imagery. Then the numbers, areas, locations, and patch spacing of Chinese tamarisk patches are calculated. The experiments show that the detection accuracy of Chinese tamarisk patches is about 93.4% after the disconnection of connected patches. The distribution orientation of about 70% of the patches is approximately south-north. About 91% of the minimum distances among the patches are between 12.5 and 57.5 m. The rose graph indicates that the main azimuth between patches is north-northwest, and the second is northeast and southeast. The present study indicates that the integrating Canny edge detector with the algorithms for extracting circular and elliptical objects based on mathematical morphology is simple and effective for detecting Chinese tamarisk patches and is easy to identify the spatial structure of Chinese tamarisk patches, which reduces the time and labor for the visual interpretation of Chinese tamarisk patches.