Remotely sensed satellite imagery as an information source for industrial peatlands management.

Production (industrial) bogs are those from which peat is extracted, for fuel and horticultural purposes, using highly mechanised methods. The possible applications of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite imagery to a production bog complex in Ireland were studied. Three distinct phases were identified in the life cycle of these bogs, i.e. pre-production, in-production and post-production. Within these categories, 13 land cover classes, ranging from virgin bog to after-use timber plantation, were identified and shown to be statistically separable on the satellite imagery. Some overlap was noted, particularly between the classes of low density production and recent cutaway bog, virgin bog and Sitka spruce plantation, and drained bog and unsuccessful timber plantation. A supervised classification of a satellite image was carried-out from which a land cover classification map was produced and the areas of the different classes were determined. An adjusted overall classification accuracy of 82% was achieved. Infrared (IR) TM bands 4 and 5 gave the best discrimination of land cover type, and demonstrated an advantage that multispectral imagery has compared with conventional aerial photography in this type of application. The potential of remotely sensed satellite data, as a single and cost-effective data source, to provide useful information on land cover types in production peatlands was demonstrated.