Effects of LiDAR-Quickbird fusion on object-oriented classification of mountain resort development

Mountain resort development is having increasing effects on ecological functions in the intermountain West. High-resolution remote sensing has the potential to assist in monitoring this development. We evaluated classification of mountain resort development in the Big Sky, Montana, watershed using Quickbird 2.4-m multispectral imagery with an object-oriented classification. Quickbird imagery, however, has limited spectral resolution; we therefore also evaluated the benefits of fusing Quickbird imagery with LiDAR bare ground and surface model data in an object-oriented approach. Classification accuracies with the fused data increased approximately 1% and were not statistically significantly different based on a 1735 point sample. The classified objects, however, demonstrated more spatial coherency, with more realistically defined shapes and edges.