CSR/TSGC Team Web
The University of Texas at San Antonio and the Center for Space Research (CSR), University of Texas at Austin were tasked by The Bionetics Corporation to provide multi-temporal classification of vegetation at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Proposed goals for this project included qualitative and quantitative analysis of remotely sensed data sets and development of an automated classification procedure for discriminating vegetated land-cover.
One of the main environmental management objectives was to determine the usefulness of remotely sensed data in the study of vegetation at KSC; that is, whether remotely sensed data provides enough meaningful information to make an accurate assessment of the state of the vegetation, in terms of both vegetation typing and change detection, as opposed to performing manual ground truthing which can be rigorous but time intensive. In addition, the study is to determine which sensor(s) is best suited for discriminating between types of vegetation on KSC.
Data Analysis
CSR in conjunction with the University of Texas at San Antonio, is developing automated classification algorithms to accurately identify different vegetation types and locate non-native or introduced flora. The datasets that CSR is working with includes Thematic Mapper(TM), SPOT multispectral and panchromatic, and SIR-C (Imaging Radar).
With KSC lying in a transition zone between the warm temperate zone to the north and the subtropical zone to the south, it is one of the most botanically and biologically diverse regions. The terrestial vegetation of KSC is comprised of both upland and wetland communities. The KSC vegetation communities are broken out as
| Community | Type | Acreage (approx) |
| Scrub & Pine Flatwoods |
Upland |
26,000 |
| Freshwater Marsh |
Wetland |
19,500 |
| Impoundments |
Wetland |
10,500 |
| Broadleaved Woodlands |
Mixed |
10,300 |
| Salt Marsh |
Wetland |
7,500 |
| Ruderal |
Mixed |
5,700 |
| Miscellaneous Disturbed |
Mixed |
4,500 |
| Spoil and Islands |
Mixed |
2,700 |
| Lagoon |
N/A |
53,000 |
For More Information about KSC
KSC Ecological Resources