Analysis of thematic mapper simulator data collected over eastern North Dakota

The results of the analysis of aircraft-acquired thematic mapper simulator (TMS) data, collected to investigate the utility of thematic mapper data in crop area and land cover estimates, are discussed. Results of the analysis indicate that the seven-channel TMS data are capable of delineating the 13 crop types included in the study to an overall pixel classification accuracy of 80.97% correct, with relative efficiencies for four crop types examined between 1.62 and 26.61. Both supervised and unsupervised spectral signature development techniques were evaluated. The unsupervised methods proved to be inferior (based on analysis of variance) for the majority of crop types considered. Given the ground truth data set used for spectral signature development as well as evaluation of performance, it is possible to demonstrate which signature development technique would produce the highest percent correct classification for each crop type.