Final Project for Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation

Qian Yu, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Summary

The objective of the project is to extract land cover information for an area covering the Amherst area.

Context

Type and level of course
Introductary level remote sensing course, elective course for geology, geography and earth systems majors.

Geoscience background assumed in this assignment
not required.

GIS/remote sensing skills/background assumed in this assignment
Image display, image enhancement and image classification.

Software required for this assignment/activity:
ITT ENVI v4.7

Time required for students to complete the assignment:
18 hours including computer work and report writing.

Goals

GIS/remote sensing techniques students learn in this assignment

  1. The major online sources of satellite images .
  2. Pansharpening of the multispectral image with Panchromatic band.
  3. Image classification.

Other content/concepts goals for this activity

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Description of the activity/assignment

The project is to bring together what students learned through lectures, and weekly exercises and lab practices and to apply remote sensing technology to your interested application area. The objective of the project is to extract land cover information for an area covering the Amherst area. Students are required to classify the land cover of the selected area into 3-5 classes such as vegetation cover, water body (lake or reservoir or river) and settlements (residential and commercial landuse). The classification should be conducted by using both images with spatial resolution of 30 and 15 meters). And then they need to compare the accuracy of classifications from using images at different spatial resolutions. This project provides students with a very useful experience of extracting land cover information from satellite images.

Determining whether students have met the goals

The final product of the project is a 5-10 page report. The report should be in the format of a scientific article including background information, objectives, data and classification methods, results and analysis, and ended with a summary paragraph which contains a take home message for the reader.
More information about assessment tools and techniques.

URLs and References

Download LandSat image from http://www.landcover.org

Download teaching materials and tips

Other Materials