ESTONIAN ACADEMY
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eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
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Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Biology. Ecology
Remote sensing of urban areas: linear spectral unmixing of Landsat Thematic Mapper images acquired over Tartu (Estonia); pp. 19–32
PDF | https://doi.org/10.3176/eco.2007.1.02

Author
Tõnis Kärdi
Abstract

Urban areas are characterized by a pattern of very heterogeneous patches resulting from the co-occurrence of different materials within the ground instantaneous field of view of a moderate resolution scanner, e.g. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM). The main objective of this study was to map vegetation, impervious surface, and soil from Landsat TM images acquired over the town of Tartu (Estonia) on three different dates (in 1988, 1995, and 2001). The linear spectral unmixing method was utilized for endmember fraction estimation. Accuracy assessment was conducted on the 1995 fraction images using the Estonian basic map at 1 : 10 000 scale. The overall fraction estimation error was 9% (by classes: vegetation and soil 6%, impervious surface 15%).

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