Indigenous Forest composition
Indigenous forest composition of the Wellington region as a continuum of proportions: beech (red); broadleaves (green) and conifers (blue)
Once areas of indigenous forest have been mapped in the basic land cover, it is possible to determine the proportions of beech, conifer, and broadleaf trees if these tree types have consistent spectral signatures in the acquired image. In this case, any pixel in indigenous forest may be considered a mixture of these three canonical signatures. The proportion of these canonical signatures may be determined using spectral unmixing to produce the proportion of beech, conifer, and broadleaf trees. The unmixing procedure has been tested in the Wellington region, and results show a good correlation between the measured and predicted percentages.