Spatial Enhancement, Multispectral Data, & Band Indices Lab

 

This is a map of the rivers on this landscape within a TM False Natural Color band combination. I looked at the histogram in metadata and noticed that the pixel spike was really tall, so the feature was going to have a relatively large surface area on the map. Also, the range where the pixels spiked was really low, which means it was going to be a dark feature. The two darkest areas were the tree-cover on the land and the rivers. I used the inquire tool to look at the exact pixel values in layer_4 for a dark spot on the tree-cover and then for a spot on the river to see if they were within 12 and 18. The spot on the river fit the prompt description, so I decided to represent that feature on this map.

This map shows the snow cover on the mountaintops of this area. I looked at the histogram and knew that the high pixel value in layers 1-4 meant that the feature should be bright in these layers and the low pixel value in layers 5 and 6 meant that the feature should be darker in these layers. I think that the snow on top of the mountainous terrain represents these criteria well. The higher the band number, the darker the snow gets (black when all layers are 5 and 6). I found this by trying the lower layer combinations and looking for bright features and then looking at those same bright features after changing the layers to a combination of 5 and 6 to see if any features got dark. I used RGB 3,5,6 to represent this feature.

This map represents the wetlands in this area of the landscape. This wetland was much brighter than the river in layers 1-4, but became the same color as the river by layer 6. I used the RGB combination 2,2,6. The brighter color in layers 1-4 means that this wetland must have higher reflectance than the river. Therefore, I assume that this wetland has water that is still or that moves at a much slower pace than what the water in the river is moving at.

Overall, this lab was pretty time-consuming for me because there were a lot of new concepts. I got through all of the exercises up to the deliverables and realized that I must not have fully comprehended any of the material like I originally thought I did because I didn't understand a lot from the deliverables exercise instructions. It took a lot of going back and experimentation to get through the deliverables section as a result. I experienced both passive and active learning in this lab.