Relating Spatial Patterns in Image Data to Scene Characteristics

In remote sensing, the primary goal is accurate scene inference, in which characteristics of the scene are inferred from the image data. More effective inference of scene characteristics can be accomplished through the use of techniques that use explicit models of spatial pattern. Spatial patterns in image data are functionally related to the size and spacing of elements in the scene and to the spatial resolution of the image data. At resolutions where variance is high, scene inference techniques should rely heavily on data from the spatial domain. As variance decreases, effective scene inference will increasingly rely on spectral data.