ABSTRACT
Renewable resources in any region are dependent upon water supplies. By definition, water in an arid region is scarce. It follows, therefore, that scarce water results in minimal biomass in desert regions. Inasmuch as vegetation is the major living renewable resource identified and mapped by remote sensors, as vegetation cover diminishes, the difficulty in detecting and mapping the cover increases significantly. It has been shown that Landsat data can be used effectively to detect and map renewable resources in arid regions, at certain levels of generalization and under certain conditions. The chapter shows how contrast enhancement and other computer techniques are applied to detect and map Guayule distribution in the Chihuahuan Desert of northeastern Mexico. It suggests that how contrast enhancement may be used as a preliminary inventory of the water resource. Preliminary field observation showed that Guayule typically occurs on gentle piedmont slopes, below the mountain front and well above the bolson basin floor.
