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.