881 
Symposium on Remote Sensing for Resources Development and Environmental Management / Enschede / August 1986 
Spatial resolution requirements for urban land cover mapping 
from space 
William J.Todd 
Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Sunnyvale, Calif., USA 
Robert C.Wrigley 
Ames Research Center, National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), Moffett Field, Calif, USA 
ABSTRACT: Very low resolution (VLR) satellite data (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, DMSP 
Operational Linescan System), low resolution (LR) data (Landsat MSS), medium resolution (MR) data (Landsat 
TM), and high resolution (HR) satellite data (Spot HRV, Large Format Camera) were evaluated and compared for 
interpretability at differing spatial resolutions. VLR data (500 m - 1.0 km) is useful for Level 1 
(urban/rural distinction) mapping at 1:1,000,000 scale. Feature tone/color is utilized to distingish 
generalized urban land cover using LR data (80 m) for 1:250,000 scale mapping. Advancing to MR data (30 m) 
and 1:100,000 scale mapping, confidence in land cover mapping is greatly increased, owing to the element of 
texture/pattern which is now evident in the imagery. Shape and shadow contribute to detailed Level I I/I 11 
urban land use mapping possible if the interpreter can use HR (10-15 m) satellite data; mapping scales can be 
1:25,000 - 1:50,000. 
1 INTRODUCTION 
The payloads of earth resources satellites offer 
great potential for urban mapping, but data is now 
available in a wide range of spatial resolutions — 
ranging from 10 m to 1.1 km -- and may or may not be 
suitable for a particular application. Our 
objective was to examine data from a wide range of 
resolutions to evaluate interpretability of urban 
land cover and derive a set of spatial resolution 
requirements for urban land cover mapping. 
2 ANALYSIS OF DATA COLLECTED FROM SPACE OVER URBAN 
AREAS 
The example data which we compared is shown 
graphically in Figure 1. Very low resolution data 
was collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution 
Radiometer (AVHRR) with 1.1 km resolution carried on 
NOAA's TIROS satellite, Coastal Zone Color Scanner 
(CZCS) with 800 m resolution on NASA's Nimbus-7, 
Operational Linescan System (0LS) with 600 m 
resolution on the Defense Meteorological Satellite 
Program's (DMSP) Block 5D, and the Heat Capacity 
Figure 1. Spatial resolution and electromagnetic 
spectrum characteristics of selected satellite 
sensors useful for mapping urban areas. 
Mapping Radiometer (HCMR) with 500 m resolution, 
part of NASA's Heat Capacity Mapping Mission. While 
Nimbus-7‘s Scanning Multichannel Microwave 
Radiometer (SMMR) has spatial resolution measured in 
tens of kilometers and did not deserve discussion in 
this paper, it is included on the chart as an 
example of a passive microwave sensor. 
Low resolution data is represented by the 80 m 
resolution Multispectral Scanner (MSS), which has 
been carried on all five of NASA's Landsat 
satellites. Medium resolution data includes the 
Landsat-3 Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) 40 m resolution 
imagery, and Landsat-4 and -5 Thematic Mapper 30 m 
resolution multispectral data. 
Figure 2. Digitally enhanced AVHRR thermal infrared 
image (Band 4, 10,300-11,300 nm) of central and 
southern California collected on August 17, 1984. 
The San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose metropolitan area 
is in the upper part of the 1.1 km resolution image, 
and Los Angeles the lower section.