Assessment of Ecosystem Classification Systems at Various Scales on Environmental Parameters Using Remote Sensing Techniques

The main purpose of this study was to assess the effect of ecosystem classification systems at various scales on environmental parameters using remote sensing techniques. The processes included applying hybrid classification to generate a land-use map of northern Taiwan using Landsat-5 image in 1995; using the DTM and the SEBAL model to calculate 16 environmental parameters to compare the differences among various land-use types; and assessing the effects of 2 ecosystem classification (i.e., geographic climate method and watershed division method) on environmental parameters using stepwise discriminated analysis. The result indicated that the study area was classified into 7 land-use types (i.e., forest-land, building, farm-land, baring farm-land, water body, cloud, and shadow). Comparison of environmental parameters among different land-use types showed that forestland had higher value with cosine of solar incidence angle, twenty-four hour extraterrestrial radiation, net radiation, normalized difference vegetation index, emissivity, estimating friction velocity, surface roughness for momentum transport, sensible heat flux, soil heat flux, evapotranspiration, and had lower value with transmittance, air density, surface albedo, surface albedo at the top of atmosphere, aerodynamic resistance to heat transport, surface temperature. As for the assessment of ecosystem classification systems at various scales on environmental parameters, the result showed that ecosystem classification systems at various scales do cause the variation of environmental parameters according to the selected parameters and the number of parameters for discriminating land-use types. However, among environmental parameters, normalized difference vegetation index and emissivity are the most important factors regardless of ecosystem classification systems at various scales.