Multi-temporal VHR coverage of riparian forest habitats — Can we perform better segmentation?

Riparian forest habitats are biodiversity hotspots providing crucial ecological services, where Earth observation information can be used to analyze prevailing habitats, assess their quality and conservation status, as well as the change dynamics over time. Here we present advancing investigations in the Salzach river floodplain (`Salzachauen´) at the Austrian/German border, using multiannual/multiseasonal VHR data coverage. Object-based image analysis is applied to delineate forest habitats on different hierarchical levels. To enhance the stability of the basic segmentation levels, the usage of multitemporal WorldView-2 data is investigated. Based on five panchromatic bands, we created (1) temporal stable and textural homogeneous core segments and (2) edge segments caused by sensor driven data shifts and other effects.