CASI and LIDAR Habitat Map

This record is for Approval for Access product AfA439. A habitat map derived from airborne data, specifically CASI (Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager) and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data.

The habitat map is a polygon shapefile showing site relevant habitat classes. Geographical coverage is incomplete because of limits in data available. It includes those areas where the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme have carried out sufficient aerial and ground surveys in England.

The habitat map is derived from CASI multispectral data, LIDAR elevation data and other GIS products. The classification uses ground data from sites collected near to the time of CASI capture. We use ground data to identify the characteristics of the different habitats in the CASI and LIDAR data. These characteristics are then used to classify the remaining areas into one of the different habitats.

Habitat maps generated by Geomatics are often derived using multiple data sources (e.g. CASI, LIDAR and OS-base mapping data), which may or may not have been captured coincidentally. In instances where datasets are not coincidentally captured there may be some errors brought about by seasonal, developmental or anthropological change in the habitat.

The collection of ground data used in the classification has some limitations. It has not been collected at the same time as CASI or LIDAR capture; it is normally within a couple of months of CASI capture. Some variations between the CASI data and situation on site at the time of ground data collection are possible. A good spatial coverage of ground data around the site is recommended, although not always practically achievable. For a class to be mapped on site there must have been samples collected for it on site. If the class is not seen on site or samples are not collected for a class, it cannot be mapped.

No quantitative accuracy assessment has been carried out on the habitat map, although the classification was trained using ground data and the final habitat map has been critically evaluated using Aerial Photography captured simultaneously with the CASI data by the processors and independently by habitat specialists. Please note that this content contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [2014] and you must ensure that a similar attribution statement is contained in any sub-licences of the Information that you grant, together with a requirement that any further sub-licences do the same.