11
'-ESSES
>
z
H
i
ID
O
"O
ESSES
H
H
ecosystems research
complement each
discusses the
f remote sensing
es of thematic
erpretations are
by the level of
rpreter. If the
gh, there is
gainst. For the
oned questions,
terpretation is
particular this
heoretical back-
eal contributes
fication, and so
estigation. It
e influence of
omputer-assisted
e amount of
ise. The latter
ccount for the
like with the
by means of the
it is formally
ATA SETS
Austrian Unesco
iosphere (MaB)"
been transformed
fstem, using the
Institute for
iter Graphics in
to compare the
itents of the
ster on a pixel
3.1 Basic data
The following data were available:
Airborne multispectral scanner data of
the 11 band Bendix Scanner from the
German Flugzeugmeßprogramm (FMP),
covering an area of 512 x 700 pixels of
2 x 2 to 3 x 3 m2 size;
Landsat MSS data (Buchroithner 1982);
- Landsat TM data;
two colour infrared aerial photographs
(film diapositives);
a topographic map 1 : 5 000 (Pillewizer
1982) ;
a vegetation map 1 : 2 500, only
covering part of the study area (Karrer
1980) ;
a soil map 1 : 5 000 (Müller 1982);
a geological map 1 : 5 000, generated by
photographic enlargement of an original
map 1 : 25 000 (Cornelius & Clar, 1935);
an ecotopic map 1 : 5 000 (Neuwinger in
prep . ) .
3.2 Data processing
3.2.1 Digitizing of colour infrared aerial
photographs
The two CIR aerial photographs available for
the study area with a format of 23 x 23
cm2 were digitized with an optoelectronic
filmwriter. The measured intensities were
quantized in 8 bits (0 - 255) and stored on
a magnetic tape.
3.2.2 Geometric rectification of digital
imagery
In order to create a reference system for
the map data available, the CIR images and
the airborne scanner data had to be brought
into the system of the map data which in our
case was the Gauss Krueger System. For this
the different geometries of the various data
sets had to be taken into consideration.
Whereas the aerial photographs display a
central projection, the airborne scanner
data were generated through scanning of the
earth surface. The geometric rectification
was done by means of the program system
GAMSAD (Kaufmann 1985). The applied
interpolation algorithm was the nearest
neighbour pixel asignment which prevented a
falsification of the original grey values.
The identification of the ground control
points in the images was rather difficult as
the clearly identifiable points were almost
exclusively located along a mountain road
which more or less runs close to the
vertical axis of the imagery. Through this
very unfavourable distribution of control
points extrapolations along the margins of
the images were unavoidable. This led to
slight deviations in the peripheral parts of
the rectified images.
3.2.3 Digitizing of map information
The digitizing of the various maps mentioned
in section 3.1. was performed using the
geoinformation system DESBOD (Ranzinger ,
Kainz & HUtter 1985, HUtter 1986). The
transformation of map data into the digital
form was carried out at a digitizing light
table by means of a curser. A special
problem for the digital storing was the
geological map which had been produced by
photographic enlargement of the original map
1 : 25 000. Through the generalization and
the thickening of the lines, the correspon
dence with the other maps was restricted.
Especially along the road the deviations are
rather strong (cf. section 5). In order to
reach geometric correspondence with the
other maps, the road was not digitized and
the thematic information was transformed by
an affine transformation using some well
identifiable points.
After the manual digitization the map
information was transformed into the image
data formats to allow the analysis of the
remote sensing data, i.e. a vector-
to-raster-convertion was performed. After
that digital map information was displayed
on a raster screen, and colours were asigned
to the various classes.
3.2.4 Generation of a digital terrain
model
The basic data for the generation of the
digital terrain model (DTM) by means of the
program system GTM (Leberl & Olson 1982,
Hafner & Raetzsch 1985) were the contoyr and
drainage lines of the topographic map. The
respective film sheets were automatically
scanned and the resulting raster data
converted to vectors. After that, the data
were transformed into the Gauss Krueger
System and discretized into a grid of
2x2 m2. This raster contains all points
which are located on a control line of the
respective height of this line. Eventually
the height values for all not yet defined
raster points were determined by
interpolation between the known points. The
resulting raster can then be treated like a
digital image.
3.2.5 Information derived from the digital
terrain model
As an additional information for the
pixelwise interpretation of remote sensing
data for each picture element of the
airborne scanner image slope gradient and
aspect were derived by applying the first
derivation of the DTM data. In order to
prevent a so-called terrace generation which
might result from the integration of a too
small area and to better adapt those data to
the actual terrain, gradients and aspects
were calculated using an algorithm which
takes all eight neigboured pixels into
account. Thus, the desired smoothing effect
was reached but, on the other hand, a
significantly higher effort in computation
had to be accepted.
In addition, the influence of the sun
elevation and azimuth has been derived from
the digital terrain model by applying the
method of the horizon. For the moment of
the scanner data acquisition, azimuth and
sun elevation of those pixels, which were
situated in the shadow, were marked. This
resulted in a binary image.