Geospatial application: Assessment of merged Landsat TM and SPOT panchromatic data for Pool 26, Upper Mississippi River System

Satellite images offer an alternative to aerial photography in
mapping applications where large area coverage at brief time
intervals is required.  Their digital format allows either visual
or automated interpretation, with immediate incorporation into a
geographic information system.  Their primary disadvantage is a
coarser spatial resolution.  This study combined the benefits of
(1) the 10-m spatial resolution of SPOT panchromatic (PAN)
images, (2) the added spectral information of Landsat Thematic
Mapper's (TM) mid-infrared bands, and (3) digital classifications
to map terrestrial and aquatic cover types in the Mississippi and
Illinois River floodplains.  The PAN and the six non-thermal TM
bands were combined using an Intensity-Hue-Saturation transform. 
A supervised classification of the transformed image was compared
with one derived from the TM data alone.  No improvement in
classification accuracy resulted from the incorporation of the
PAN band, though the images produced from the transform were
visually sharper.