Skylab/EREP application to ecological, geological, and oceanographic investigations of Delaware Bay

Abstract

Skylab/EREP S190A and S190B film products were optically enhanced and visually interpreted to extract data suitable for; (1) mapping coastal land use; (2) inventorying wetlands vegetation; (3) monitoring tidal conditions; (4) observing suspended sediment patterns; (5) charting surface currents; (6) locating coastal fronts and water mass boundaries; (7) monitoring industrial and municipal waste dumps in the ocean; (8) determining the size and flow direction of river, bay and man-made discharge plumes; and (9) observing ship traffic. Film products were visually analyzed to identify and map ten land-use and vegetation categories at a scale of 1:125,000. Digital tapes from the multispectral scanner were used to prepare thematic maps of land use. Classification accuracies obtained by comparison of derived thematic maps of land-use with USGS-CARETS land-use maps in southern Delaware ranged from 44 percent to 100 percent