OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter you should be able to understand, explain, or describe 

• why it is important and useful to classify vegetation into specific categories
• what criteria are used to classify vegetation
• the importance of considering levels of detail for detecting and mapping classification categories
• the difference between hierarchical and non-hierarchical classification schemes
• general concepts used by some popular classification schemes
• how remote sensing data are used for mapping vegetation classes
• different approaches to classifying satellite images
• the importance of accuracy assessments and ground validation when creating vegetation maps from satellite imagery.