GIS4035 Module 4 - Ground Truthing and Accuracy Assessment

Land Use / Land Cover Classification Accuracy
Pascagoula, Mississippi

This module included a lot of completely new material for me. Although the lab exercise was straightforward and rather easy, the preparatory information was rather overwhelming. The lab exercise itself involved using last module's classification map and adding sample points. The actual land use or land cover for these sample points was determined using Google Maps Street View where possible or zooming in on Google Maps aerial view. This was compared to the classification selected last week for the same points. The results were tabulated for accuracy. Best accuracy for this map was determined for non-forested wetlands, probably because they were so easy to distinguish. Barren lands had lowest accuracy because of having classified open areas as barren lands when a better classification would have been herbaceous rangeland. The lab itself was a fun exercise. The resultant map with sample points is shown here.

GIS4035 Module 3 - Land Use / Land Cover Classification Mapping

Land Use / Land Cover Classification
(Pascagoula, Mississippi)

Creating a classified land use and land cover (LULC) map from an aerial image was the goal for this lab. After a polygon feature shapefile was created and additional fields were added to the attribute table for LULC code and description, Editor was used to create features by digitizing polygons for different categories of land use and land cover. Vertex and edge snapping were used to digitize adjacent polygons, but eventually some issues involving the Snapping Toolbar were encountered that could not be resolved promptly. The ability to clip out polygons from within other polygons is a skill that will be handy for future projects. The identify tool was very helpful while clipping out polygons.

Although time-consuming, especially because of the scale and zoom level I selected (it seemed like a good choice initially), this was a very enjoyable lab to complete.