Some very excellent work relating ground water proximity to the 
surface and ground water quality, in the Pampa of Argentina, was done 
by Dr. Dieter Bannert (1974) of the Federal Geological Survey of Germany. 
In an environmental sense, the most significant observation that can be 
made is that of man's changing use of the land. This information has a 
tremendous bearing on such diverse factors as sediment loads in streams, 
malaria distribution, wildlife habitat predictions, crop forecasting, 
and the siting of energy facilities, to name but a few. 
Landsat was not designed to identify land use at large scales but 
to provide a national overview in gross categories and "flag" changes 
in land cover. However, results of analyses of digital data from Landsat 
processed by computer, suggest that by employing sophisticated processing 
techniques and images acquired at two seasons of the year, actual land 
cover classes can be mapped down to pixel size at a level of between 2 
and 3 of the United States national land use classification system 
(Anderson and others, 1976). This would be commensurate with mapping at 
scales significantly larger than 1:250,000. These results clearly 
, 
demonstrate that the spectral data provided by Landsat and the repetitive ' 
nature of the observations can be substituted, in Part, for spatial 
resolution in the recognition Process (Wray, 1975). 
Scientists in Bangladesh have prepared a map from Landsat data from 
which to measure the accretion of new land to islands in the Bay of 
Bengal. The problem being addressed is that often new land is used 
immediately for agricultural purposes before it becomes stable. When 
this happens, the new land is washed away during the next flood. The 
objective of the Government of Bangladesh is to identify the new land 
rapidly, stabilize it by planting trees, and ultimately to open the land 
for agricultural use. The map required 16 manhours of interpretation 
and was compiled by porjecting 35-mm slides of Landsat imagery on a 
piece of paper on the wall and drawing the boundaries. The map shows 
the stable land, new land, areas of water containing large amounts of 
turbidity where new land will be forming, and areas of clear water that 
are favorable for fishing and navigation. 
A study was made (Robinove, 1975) at-the request of USAID on the use 
of Landsat data for worldwide disaster assessment. The study concludes 
that floods, fire, glacier movement, and drought assessment are the 
disasters most amenable to satellite sensors and analysis. Table 2 
summarizes the capabilities of Landsat data for use in monitoring 
disaster situations. 
18 
TYPE 
FLOO! 
EART] 
VOLC, 
DROU 
FIRE 
CROP 
HAIL 
GLAC 
WATE 
Defi