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sampled in this study. In relation to this, a sliding scale of standard deviation for<br />

pixels in the red colour band between bog, coniferous forestry and mixed forestry<br />

is evident –from under 10 values for the area of bog, averaging at 20 for areas of<br />

coniferous forestry and over 30 for areas of mixed forestry. Matching these to the<br />

mean could give a useful relative indication for automatic identification of bog<br />

present in an area. At this point it is probably useful to comment on the nature of<br />

the vector data for areas of bog. These types of areas are generally bounded by<br />

polylines (though these are not coded), it could be the case that the same polygon<br />

contains an area of bog and rough pasture (similar to mixed forestry); being able<br />

to estimate the relative values for this transitional analysis based on the above data<br />

is useful in such cases. If an area polygon bordering one or more areas containing<br />

pixel values contains values close to those of mixed forestry but with a low<br />

standard deviation it is probable that the polygon is describing this type of<br />

transitional area.<br />

The second type was a pasture sample taken for comparison as it is the most likely<br />

neighbouring polygon to an area of mixed forestry and is common to most (rural/<br />

semi urban) areas in the country. This sample of pasture is separate from others<br />

used in this thesis but returned similar values (as expected). The most notable<br />

difference was in the level of standard deviation present in the sample area, with<br />

particular respect to the red and green colour bands. The mean pixel values for<br />

these colour bands also showed a distinct relative difference (over 45% and over<br />

35% for the red and green bands respectively). This variation in values is a useful<br />

indication of which type of ground colour pixel values belong to. In particular it<br />

could serve as one of the primary steps in the algorithm. It is useful to begin the<br />

analysis by eliminating known values from the search so as the target comparison<br />

list (ground cover types to pixel values) is smaller and has a higher chance of<br />

being successful. One further aspect that can be included in any automated<br />

analysis looking for areas of bog is the size of the polygons in the search. Most<br />

large polygons will be assigned a value based on the input vector coding. They<br />

will generally represent known parts of the image such as plots of forestry and<br />

water parcels. The remaining large polygons will (in the context of the Irish<br />

landscape being analyzed) most probably by areas of bog. This can further be<br />

refined by eliminating areas of flat rock as islands within the large polygons (these<br />

64

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