PE&RS September 2000

Cover Image

This cover shows a Landsat TM mosaic of Africa and corresponding land cover classification. The center image is a 1275-scene Landsat TM mosaic compiled from data acquired for the NASA Science Data Buy. This data set will include complete coverage of the Earth with Landsat TM circa 1990 and Landsat MSS circa 1975. These TM scenes were orthorectified with NIMA DTED-1 and GTOP30 DEM. Massive block triangulation achieved positional accuracy of better than 50m rms. Band combination is TM bands 7, 4, and 2 as red, green, and blue. The bottom left inset is an example of the 13-class land cover classification at the Straits of Gibraltar. In red are the urban areas of Gibraltar on the north side and Tangier on the south. Dark green is evergreen forest, light green is shrub/scrub and tan is agriculture. The top right inset shows the completed land cover extent of 1200 TM scenes of North Africa and the Middle East.

For information about EarthSat, contact Earth Satellite Corporation at 301-231-0660 (rmitchell@earthsat.com or info@earthsat.com) 6011 Executive Blvd, Rockville, MD 20852 301-231-0660. Websites: www.earthsat.com & www.geocover.com.

Peer-Reviewed Articles (Click the linked titles to see the full abstract)

1073 Kronos: A Software System for the Processing and Retrieval of Large-Scale AVHRR Data Sets
Zengyan Zhang, Joseph JáJá, David A. Bader, Satya N.V. Kalluri, Huiping Song, Nazmi El Saleous, Eric Vermote, and John R.G. Townshend

An integrated software processing system for archiving, retrieving, and processing AVHRR remotely sensed data is described.

1083 Assessing the Quality of the Radiometric and Spectral Calibration of casi Data and Retrieval of Surface Reflectance Factors
Anne Jacobsen, Kathleen B. Heidebrecht, and Alexander F.H. Goetz

Water vapor correction on a pixel-by-pixel basis was not possible on the spatial data, and surface reflectance retrieval was accomplished using modeled path radiance and field spectra from the calibration target.

1093 Extraction and Delineation of Alluvial Fans from Digital Elevation Models and Landsat Thematic Mapper Images
G.Ch. Miliaresis and D.P. Argialas

A region-growing segmentation algorithm was applied to both the one-degree digital elevation model and the Landsat TM image of Death Valley to extract alluvial fans.

1103 Accuracy Evaluation of Ground Points from IKONOS High-Resolution Satellite Imagery
Guoqing Zhou and Ron Li

A mathematical model and software for IKONOS was developed, and an error analysis of image measurement and exterior orientation errors; number, distribution, and accuracy of ground control points; and the polynomial fit to the orbital path was performed.

1113 Effects of Various Factors on the Accuracy of DEMs: An Intensive Experimental Investigation
Jianya Gong, Zhilin Li, Qing Zhu, Haigang Shu, and  Yi Zhou

The effects of four factors on DEM accuracy were tested, i.e., the accuracy, the density of source data, the characteristics of the terrain surface, and the modeling approaches.

1119 A Stereo Matching Algorithm for Urban Digital Elevation Models
C. Baillard and O. Dissard

The method has proved reliable and fast, and is robust to image variability.

1129 Classifying Hills and Valleys in Digitized Terrain
Terrence Cronin

Landforms may be classified as hills or valleys by observing the elevation-based containment properties of a contour map.

Announcements
1056 ASPRS & ACSM Fall 2000 Conference —  Practical Applications in the Geospatial  Information Sciences

Columns & Updates
1043 Lt. General King’s Keynote Address
1055 Marta Brown Accepts George E. Brown, Jr. Award
1060 ASPRS Building Fund Contributions
1061 Letter to the Editor
1063 Grids & Datums — The Republic of Poland
1065 Industry News

Departments
1068 New Members
1069 Who’s Who in ASPRS
1070 Sustaining Members
1072 Index to Advertisers
1092 Forthcoming Articles
1102 Instructions to Authors
1138 Calendar
1139 Classifieds
1143 Bookstore
1147 Professional Directory
1151 Membership Application