A regional assessment of land-use/land-cover types in Sicily with TM data†

Abstract

Digital analysis of Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data was evaluated as a mechanism for mapping the distribution of nine land-use/land-cover types found within five regional provinces of Sicily. Digital data from TM wavebands 1, 4, 5 and 7, along with corresponding ground truth data for 280 training sites, were used to characteize the spectral response of the land-use/land-cover categories under study. Training data were then input to supervised and unsupervised classification algorithms to map the distribution of the nine categories within eight Landsat-5 TM quarter-scenes needed for complete coverage of the study area. A quantitative assessment of classification performance was not performed.