Problems in upscaling of high resolution remote sensing data to coarse spatial resolution over land surface Original Research Article

Characterization of land cover type for a grid cell (50 to 100 km) of General Circulation Models has to be achieved through spatial integration of satellite data available at higher spatial resolution. Preservation of information integrity is required during such upscaling and a suitable algorithm is to be developed and validated. The 36.25 and 72.5 m resolution IRS Linear Imaging Self Scanner (LISS) data were used for studying (i) change in proportion of the area under given land cover classes with the degradation in resolution and (ii) correlation between upscaled 72.5 m resolution (from 36.25 m) and observations in 72.5 m resolutions, and further upscaled resolutions, for different land cover types using different upscaling algorithms. In general, the percentage proportion of land cover types decreased with degradation of spatial resolution and the fractal method gave best correlations for water and agricutlure classes.