Alleviating Topographic Influences on Land-Cover Classifications for Mobility and Combat Modeling

Abstract : Techniques were applied to alleviate topographic influences on a TM scene prior to land-cover classification for mobility modeling. Illumination models were created using two different resolutions of DEM data. These illumination models were based on linear regression of the two parts (cosine and sine) of the equation for the incidence angle of the solar beam with the first principal component of the TM data. A topographic normalization procedure was applied to correct the TM data utilizing the derived models. The near IR band required a completely different model because of high correlation between areas of high relief and vigorously growing vegetation. Results are presented showing improved utility for visual interpretation and land-cover classification on the corrected data.