Study of LANDSAT-D thematic mapper performance as applied to hydrocarbon exploration

Many scenes of particular interest have a light dusting of snow cover. The possible use of hue-saturation-intensity transformations to reduce the effect of snow cover is being investigated. A tape of the Greeley, Colorado scene was reviewed on the interactive system and image types to be produced (decorrelated 2,3,4; natural color 1,2,3,; hue separation value 5/2,5/7 eigen 1; 4,5,7 in two color combinations) were selected. In several instances, a 1,3,4 combination produces a more useful false color infrared version of TM data than the more common 2,3,4 arrangement, probably because band 1 is less highly correlated with the band 3 and 4 than is band 2. A review of spacecraft performance suggests that the standard corrections applied at GSFC are more complicated than necessary in some areas and insufficient in other cases. The image motion compensation device on the TM works so well that bow-typing effects are very small; there are differences in the radiometry of forward and backward scans that make additional calibration necessary.