Comparson of Landsat MSS and TM Data for Urban Land-Use Classification

Abstract

A supervised classification of digital Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) data for the Raleigh, North Carolina, metropolitan area was conducted in 1982. These data were categorized into 10 land-use/land-cover types representative of the area. Digital Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data, for the Raleigh metropolitan area, were obtained in 1985 and analyzed for comparison to the MSS data. A stratified classification based upon principal components analysis was applied to the TM data, classifying the data into the 10 land-use/land-cover categories used in the analysis of the MSS data. Comparison of photo-interpreted land-use types and Landsat derived land-use types indicates that TM data provides significantly higher classification accuracies than can be obtained from MSS data. However, an increase in confusion between urban cover types was observed for the classified TM data over the MSS data. It is felt that the stratified classification approach was instrumental in reducing classification errors between general land-use/land-cover types such as urban areas, coniferous forests, and deciduous forests. It is not clear that the information extracted from the TM data regarding the urban environment will be of much more use to city planners than that obtained from MSS data.