Glossary of remote sensing terms

Term: Supervised Classification

Definition:

A procedure for identifying spectrally similar areas on an image by identifying ‘training’ sites of
known targets and then extrapolating those spectral signatures to other areas of unknown
targets.

Explanation:

Supervised classification relies on the a priori knowledge of the location and identity of land cover
types that are in the image. This can be achieved through field work, study of aerial photographs
or other independent sources of information.

Training areas, usually small and discrete compared to the full image, are used to “train” the
classification algorithm to recognize land cover classes based on their spectral signatures, as
found in the image. The training areas for any one land cover class need to fully represent the
variability of that class within the image. There are numerous factors that can affect the training
signatures of the land cover classes. Environmental factors such as differences in soil type,
varying soil moisture, and health of vegetation, can affect the signature and affect the accuracy of
the final thematic map.

Term: Unsupervised Classification

Definition:

Categorization of digital image data by computer processing based solely on the image statistics
without availability of training samples or a-priori knowledge of the area.

Explanation:

The classification creates natural groupings in the image values, called spectral clusters or
classes. In this fashion, values with similar grey levels are assumed to belong to the same cover
type. The analyst must then determine the identity of these spectral clusters. Principle clustering
algorithms include: K-means clustering, ISODATA clustering, and Narenda-Goldberg clustering.

Related Terms:

Term: Principal Component Analysis

Definition:

A digital image enhancement technique that transforms spectral radiance values of the original,
correlated image data sets into new, uncorrelated data sets. Multivariate analysis method is used
to reduce the number of variables.

Explanation:
PCA can also be used as a pre-processing technique prior to auto-classification. Performing a
PCA before classifying image data speeds up the process and increases the accuracy of the
classification.