Object-oriented information extraction for the monitoring of sensitive aquatic environments

According to the new European water framework directive, water management plans will become mandatory for all inland water bodies. The development of management plans requires information about the environmental status of the water bodies and their surroundings. Wetland vegetation is a good indicator for water quality monitoring. Remote sensing methods are assumed to be able to provide the specialist with the information needed for the monitoring of wetland vegetation. Applying methods offered by the object oriented eCognition software, an evaluation chain for sensitive aquatic environments is under development which should be used for monitoring purposes. This paper describes two approaches for wetland classification and the evaluation of reed stands. The first one is deriving the information exclusively from Ikonos data analysis, simulating the case of a basic inventory. The second one is taking advantage of existing thematic GIS layers, a situation which often appears in monitoring purposes.