Procedure to automate the classification and mapping of the vegetation density in arid aeolian sedimentary systems

The temporal variation in vegetation cover in aeolian sedimentary systems, especially those in arid regions, provides an indication of environmental change. Based on this, the objective of this paper is to design a simple method for classifying the vegetation density of arid aeolian sedimentary systems through the digital processing of aerial images. The green band of a high resolution orthophoto of La Graciosa island (Canary Islands, Spain) is used as an example. The pixels identified as vegetation were vectorized to point geometry, the vegetation density was then calculated, and a digital vegetation density model (DVDM) thereby obtained. Both spatial and statistical analyses were performed to find the optimal procedure to achieve the objective. Speed, objectivity, cost, and the possibility of working with historical records are discussed, and the proposed method is compared with others based on visual analysis or digital remote sensing. The importance of this method for countries with less research funding or low GDP per capita is also discussed. The proposed procedure opens up future lines of research for comparison of results across various environmental and anthropogenic variables. In addition, vegetation density can be used as a variable in computational fluid dynamic modeling of vegetation in arid dune systems