Research Task: RB00CFC.1.0
Task Manager: Stephen Germaine
Land-use and land-cover changes are occurring with increasing rapidity and are altering physical and biological environments on every continent. Accurate measurements of land-use and land-cover change are necessary to fully understand their effects on natural systems. However, mapping these changes has been constrained by resolution and interpretation limitations associated with traditional remote-sensing platforms and software. FORT scientists evaluated the current state of information-extraction technology for remotely sensed imagery by comparing the ability of three information-extraction software programs and manual hand digitization to interpret and classify information from three types of remotely sensed imagery: 30-m resolution Landsat, 10-m resolution SPOT (Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre), and 0.6-m resolution, pan-sharpened QuickBird imagery. Our evaluation assessed the ability of each software–resolution combination to accurately measure areas of disturbance and correctly classify types of disturbance, and compared cost–benefit efficiency while performing the first two objectives. The full report was published in 2012 and is available at http://www.fort.usgs.gov/Products/Publications/pub_abstract.asp?PubID=23443.
For more information contact Stephen Germaine
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.fort.usgs.gov/Research/research_tasks.asp
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