Land use in the Paraiba Valley through remotely sensed data

Abstract

A methodology for land use survey was developed and land use modification rates were determined using LANDSAT imagery of the Paraiba Valley (state of Sao Paulo). Both visual and automatic interpretation methods were employed to analyze seven land use classes: urban area, industrial area, bare soil, cultivated area, pastureland, reforestation and natural vegetation. By means of visual interpretation, little spectral differences are observed among those classes. The automatic classification of LANDSAT MSS data using maximum likelihood algorithm shows a 39% average error of omission and a 3.4% error of inclusion for the seven classes. The complexity of land uses in the study area, the large spectral variations of analyzed classes, and the low resolution of LANDSAT data influenced the classification results