Land use qualities identified in remotely-sensed images

  • Authors:
  • A. Wastfelt

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Remote Sensing
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Land use can be defined as the intentional use of a specific piece of land resulting in patterns of ecological responses that are visible in land cover and landscape. The responses to land use often result in a heterogeneous combination of classes of land cover. Existing methods used in the classification of satellite imagery are limited in their capacity to handle categories consisting of heterogeneous or multiple land cover classes. Accordingly, a spatial relational post-classification (SRPC) method has been developed which uses a spatial relational post-classification of land cover classes based on the incorporation of information about identified land use qualities. This paper explains how this method works, and presents the results from a case study of the surroundings of Sotåsa village located in southern Sweden. Different land cover classes were aggregated semantically into two land use quality classes. In conclusion, it is argued that it is possible to make the semantic shift from reflectance to land use qualities using the developed method on satellite data, and that this provides considerable scope for the future analysis of land use.