Estimation of consistency about permafrost distribution and steppe classification in the QinghaiTibetan Plateau

Correlations between various types of frozen ground and steppes may provide useful insights for the regularity of permafrost distribution and steppe classification, and a better understanding of mutual feedback mechanism between frozen ground and steppes. The frozen ground on the QinghaiTibetan Plateau (QTP) is characteristic by permafrost, seasonal frost and others, which occupies 49.64%, 46.68% and 3.68% of total areas of QTP, respectively. In contrast, the steppe is divided into dominant grassland, transition grassland and others, which occupies 57.51%, 41.08% and 1.41% of total areas of QTP, respectively. Through image merging and analyzing the error matrix of image classification, we found that consistency precision of permafrost distribution and steppe classification is 65.95%, which suggested that conspicuous consistency presents among them.