Comparison between Land Use/Land Cover Mapping Through Landsat and Google Earth Imagery

Abstract

2 Abstract: It is proved that land use/land cover mapping (LULC) in scales such as urban district through high spatial resolution datasets is too expensive for many pilot projects mainly due to the cost of purchasing raw satellite images and deciphering the LULC types with remote sensing techniques. Since the launching of Google Earth (GE) on June, 2005, its potential has been approved to be used in image processing and dissemination of scientific information. Images from GE with high spatial resolution are free for public and can be used directly in LULC mapping in small geographical extend like mapping of green areas of cities. This study explores the feasibility of mapping of green areas in Karaj city through images from GE and to constitute a comparative basis the results were compared with green area map produced by means of Landsat TM image. Accordingly, both images were classified using image processing techniques and final accuracy of both classified images were identified and compared by field investigation. The accuracy assessments show overall accuracy of 0.93 and Kappa coefficient of 0.87 for GE based map and also overall accuracy of 0.77 and Kappa coefficient of 0.75 belong to map derived from Landsat TM imagery.