Accuracy comparison of Quickbird, Landsat TM and SPOT 5 imagery for 'Lantana camara' mapping

The distribution of an invasive species, 'Lantana camara' L., was mapped using Landsat TM, SPOT 5 and Quickbird imagery with the maximum likelihood supervised classification method. The cost-effectiveness of the three different kinds of imagery was also evaluated. Landsat TM multi-spectral (MS) imagery provided an overall accuracy of 85.1 percent and a kappa coefficient of 0.78, while SPOT 5 imagery gave an overall accuracy of 84.9 percent and a kappa value of 0.77. Landsat TM was suitable for detecting dense infestations of lantana. Quickbird showed an overall accuracy of 84 percent and a kappa coefficient of 0.76. Spectral resolution and band position were more important than spatial resolution in classifying lantana accurately and the most cost-effective option was provided by Landsat TM with no significant difference in overall accuracies between the three types of imagery.