Research Methodology - Historical Land Use/Land Cover Classification Using Remote Sensing - page 142

Fig. 5.57 The general classes classification, irrigation mapping, and agriculture classification
methods that were performed based on the spatial extent of each irrigation project

fallow areas. Under the first mask, a supervised classification was carried out to
obtain the permanent and winter crops classification results (alfalfa, wheat, barley,
sugar beet and other crops). The second mask for herbaceous and fallow areas,
where some of herbaceous areas would be replanted in summer (e.g., corn after
barley), produced the thematic map of summer crops (cotton, corn and other crops)
using summer remote sensing data for August.
The concept in classification adopted above was applied for other study years
(Fig. 5.58 )

to obtain historical remote sensing based statistical numbers

(Table 5.8 ).
Finally, all the previously adapted steps and methods were applied and data was
added for the other 15 projects to the thematic map/s for the 21,000 ha project
(Fig. 5.59 ).

5.11 Post-Classification Processing

Many researchers have argued that post-classification is a vital step to improve the
results of classification (Lu and Weng 2004 ). Ancillary data are often used to
enhance the classification result based on performed expert rules. As, dense forests