GIS Portfolio: Ross Wygmans

Land cover is the biophysical description of the earth's surface and is directly observable, whereas land use is the documentation of human uses of the landscape and is not directly observable. There are many uses for Land Use / Land Cover (LULC) classification, such as urban planning, natural resource inventories, Utilities, and many more.  In this lab, we were given a natural color aerial photograph of an area in Pascagoula, MS and asked to create a LULC map based on the aerial imagery. We then generated 30 sample points and used Google Street View to "ground-truth" these points to see if our classifications matched what was observed on the ground. Below is the completed LULC map along with 30 sample points. Green points indicate areas that were mapped correctly, and red points indicate areas that were mapped incorrectly. The overall accuracy of this maps is 66.66%. 

Tone and Texture Identifying features in aerial photographs is not always a simple task. Fortunately, there are several principles and techniques available to analysts that can assist in interpreting aerial photos and help make sense of the images captured. First of all, it is important to be familiar with the various tones and textures one may encounter when interpreting aerial images. The map below highlights areas with five different tones (very light, light, medium, dark, and very dark) and five different textures (very fine, fine, mottled, coarse, and very coarse). Considering the tone and texture of an area or object can be a good starting point when interpreting aerial photographs.  Identifying Features There are also several identifying criteria that can be helpful when interpreting aerial images -- shape and size, shadow, pattern, and association. Shape and size define what an object "looks like", shadows provide an extra angle of vision of objects that cannot be see