Preliminary Comparisons of the Information Content and Utility of TM Versus MSS Data

Some preliminary indications were provided as to the relative merits of actual TM data versus MSS data for land cover mapping related applications. Three analyses were designed which had sensitivity to the differences in spectral, spatial and radiometric parameters between the TM and MSS. In the water body analysis, a primarily spatially related test, the detectability of small uniform targets was examined. The principal components analysis, an examination of the inherent dimensionality of the data, was more spectrally and radiometrically related. The spectral clustering analysis, also heavily spectrally and radiometrically influenced, provided information on the types of targets separable on TM versus MSS data. These analyses were to be conducted with simultaneously collected LANDSAT-4 complete TM (7 band) and MSS (4 band) data. In actuality, 4-band TM data, and archived LANDSAT-2 MSS data of the same area were used.