Invasive Lantana camara (L. camara) is one of the key drivers of social-ecological and environmental change. Understanding its distribution is critical in determining its impact on the environment and livelihoods and in developing sustainable remediation and rehabilitation strategies. In this study we demonstrate the first comparative assessment of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) satellite data in detecting and mapping of invasive L. camara from other land cover types (i.e., built up, fields/bare patches, grassland, and shrub) in semiarid rangeland ecosystems of South Africa. Discriminant analysis (DA) classification technique was used to detect and characterize the spatial distribution of L. camara using Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel-2 derivatives (i.e., spectral bands, indices, and combined variables). Comparatively, the results show that Sentinel-2 data were able to detect and map L. camara with a high overall accuracy (78.4%) than Landsat 8 OLI, which yielded an accuracy of 65.5%. Further, Student's t-test statistical analysis results showed that Sentinel-2 outperformed Landsat 8 (P < 0.05, Student's t < 0.233) in mapping L. camara from other land cover types. High performance from Sentinel-2 data indicates the relevance and potential of characterizing and profiling invasive species with the new-generation sensors, a previously daunting task, with broadband multispectral sensors. © 2020 The Society for Range Management
Scholarly peer-reviewed articles published by the Society for Range Management. Access articles on a rolling-window basis from vol. 1, 1948 up to 5 years from the current year. Formerly Journal of Range Management (JRM). More recent content is available by subscription from SRM.