Landsat Large-Area Estimates for Land Cover

A methodology for using ground-gathered and Landsat MSS data to obtain natural resources information over large areas was developed by the USDA, Statistical Reporting Service (SRS) and NASA! NSTL, Earth Resources Laboratory. The SRS´s remote-sensing techniques for improving crop area estimates were expanded and modified to obtain land-cover data. These techniques employ statistical relationships ships between field-level ground data and corresponding Landsat pixels to determine classification accuracy and variances for acreage estimates. State-level and land-cover surveys were conducted in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. During the Missouri project, all costs for person-hours, materials, and computer time were tracked for the various analysis steps. Classified Landsat data stored on computer tapes and area estimates with known precision are two products obtained from these surveys.