Mapping Land Cover from Satellite Images: A Basic, Low Cost Approach

摘要

Land resource inventories utilize a wide variety of interpretive and machine processed methodologies in extracting and mapping information provided by remotely sensed data. Quite often, even for generalized Level I land cover information, these methodologies are beyond me reach of potential users because they require special expertise, special equipment, and many times, large amounts of money.nThis paper reports on some simple, inexpensive methodologies developed for mapping general land cover and land use categories from Landsat images. One methodology, a stepwise, interpretive, direct tracing technique was developed through working with university students from different disciplines with no previous experience in satellite image interpretation. The technique results in maps that are very accurate in relation to actual land cover and relative to the small investment in skill, time, and money needed to produce the products.