Land Cover Classification for Planning and Management

Learning Unit Description:

The Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training Project (iGETT) presents a series of Learning Units (LU) designed to incorporate federal land remote sensing data into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruction. The Classifying and Evaluating Land Cover in California LU, created by Dan Scollon of Shasta College, uses data sets, remote sensing, and Geographic Information Systems to develop a land cover map of the transition area between Redding and Whiskeytown. In this 5-part assignment, students are guided through standard procedures for image processing and classification before deciding upon the methods that best fit the desired outcome. An optional field validation procedure is provided.

The iGETT Learning Unit amounts to about twenty hours of work (or four or five four-hour lab sessions), and are designed for use both as "skills-based case studies and building blocks for new courses." All LUs are intended for students with a basic understanding of GIS. Each LU includes three core documents, an instructor's guide, a student guide, and a curriculum support document, as well as the remote sensing data needed to complete the unit.

Upon completion of the lesson students should be able to contrast spectral and spatial characteristics of different types of medium resolution imagery; manipulate imagery using different band combinations; perform an unsupervised classification on imagery; update classification by clumping and combining; evaluate classification; implement GPS-based field sampling; and derive statistics on land cover types.

For orientation purposes, viewers should begin with Scollon_Thumbnail.pdf, which offers a description of the LU as well as an overview of topics covered, required software, and the intended audience.

Lesson Contents: 

The attached files associated with this LU exist in a variety of formats and a variety of geospatial data file types.

Below is a list of the files contained within the .zip attachment. The size of each file is included in parenthesis. 

LU_Scollon.zip

• Documents
  • Scollon_IG_July2011 rmkhjan10ob(3).pdf (181 KB)
  • Scollon_LU.CurriculumGuide.pdf (34 KB)
  • Scollon_SH_July2011 rmkhJan11ob.pdf (3.9 MB)
  • Scollon_Thumbnail.pdf (264 KB)
• Data
  • Imagery1
    • Aster (35 items, 272.3 MB)
  • Imagery2
    • Shasta_NAIP (12 items, 3.62 GB)
  • RasterData
    • NLCD (12 items, 3.1 MB)
  • SupportDocs
    • refDoc.GLOBE_187510main_MUC_Codes[1].pdf (219 KB)
    • refDoc.LULC_class_system_1976.pdf (789 KB)
    • refDoc.NLCD1992.doc (212 KB)
    • supDoc.ASTER_LANDSAT.doc (265 KB)
    • supDoc.GLCF_GloVis_Procs.doc (1.7 MB)
    • supDoc.ProjectWorkflowDiagram.doc (32 KB)
  • VectorData (35 items, 271 KB)