Spectral mixture analysis for mapping abundance of urban surface components from the Terra/ASTER data

Using a linear unconstrained least squares (LSS) method and a non-linear artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm, we conducted a spectral mixture analysis to the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER) image data in Yokohama city, Japan, for mapping the abundance of the urban surface components. ASTER is a newly developed research facility instrument. The regions of interest of four endmembers (Vegetation, Soil, High/Low albedo impervious surfaces) were determined in Maximum Noise Fraction (MNF) feature spaces. The spectral signatures of the four endmembers were then extracted from the ASTER VNIR (15-m resolution) and SWIR (30-m resolution) imagery by referring to high spatial resolution airborne imagery (The Airborne Imaging Spectrometer, AISA, with 2-m resolution) and land use/land cover map for training and testing the LSS and ANN algorithms. Experimental results indicate that ASTER VNIR and SWIR image data are capable of mapping the abundances of urban surface components with a reasonable accuracy and that the ANN outperforms the unconstrained LSS in this spectral mixture analysis.