The effects of sensor advancements on Thematic Mapper data classification

Abstract

Analyses of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data were conducted to assess the effects of sensor advancements on the thematic classification of remote sensing data. The effects of altering three sensor characteristics (spatial resolution, data quantization, and spectral band configuration) from Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) specifications were investigated using analysis-of-variance (ANOVA). Analyses were conducted on data from two TM scenes: Washington, D.C. (late autumn) and western Pennsylvania (late summer). Results indicate that the contribution of sensor advancements to thematic classification are highly dependent of spectral and spatial scene attributes.