Sangita V. Mhatre

Georgian Bay Islands National Park (GBINP) is located in the Canadian Province of Ontario. The study focused on Beausoleil Island, located in the Georgian Bay portion of Lake Huron. The goal was to use image processing techniques on remotely sensed imagery to determine areas of Phragmites australis invasion along the shoreline of the island, enabling the park to possibly take remedial action and engage in management planning. There is a native species of Phragmites that occurs naturally in North America, often referred to as the common species Phragmites. The invasive species Phragmites australis is native to Eurasia (herein referred to as Phragmites). It is a concern for the park, because it reduces wetland ecosystem biodiversity. Pansharpened Quickbird imagery from 2003 and orthophotos from 2009 were combined with additional information layers including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), texture measures (mean) and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data to create a maximum likelihood supervised classification of Phragmites invasion. The best classification results were achieved using a combination of the Red, Green, Blue and Near Infra-Red image bands, plus NDVI, and mean texture measures with accuracies of 86% and 88% respectively. The results showed that an area of approximately 0.303 square kilometres (2.68% of Beausoleil Island) is covered with Phragmites. The image processing was conducted using PCI Geomatica and ESRI ArcGIS software.