Separability of Agricultural Cover Types by Remote Sensing in the Visible and Infrared Wavelength Regions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the statistical separability of multispectral measurements from agricultural cover types: com, soybeans, green forage (hay and pasture), and forest, in one to 12 spectral channels. Multispectral scanner data in 12 spectral channels in the wavelength range 0.4-11.7 μm, acquired on July 16, 1971 for three flight lines, were analyzed by applying automatic pattern recognition techniques. The same analysis was performed for data acquired on August 12, 1971 over the same three flight lines to investigate the effect of time on the statistical separability of agriculture cover types. In subsets of one to six spectral channels, the combination of wavelength regions (where V, N, M, and T denote the visible, near-infrared, middle-infrared, and thermal-infrared wavelength regions, respectively): V, V M, V N M, V N M T, V V N M T, V V N M M T, respectively, were found to be the best choices for getting good overall statistical separability of the agricultural cover types for the data acquired on July 16 as well as August 12. An effort was made to explain these results on the basis of the spectral properties of agricultural cover types. The overall statistical separability of the agricultural cover types was found to be greater for the data of August 12 than the data of July 16 (Table II).