ABSTRACT
The physical basis for collecting information on the physical environment by various remote sensing methods is briefly discussed and the role of imaging sensors is shown. Image interpretation is described in terms of a ‘concise description’ of the scene represented by the image and the importance of a priori information or knowledge is pointed out. The relative importance of temporal, spectral and spatial data for image interpretation is discussed. Imagery data are often used in digital form. Imaging systems must therefore be characterized in terms of their resolving power and their geometrical and radiometrical quantization. Some of the effects caused by quantizations are briefly discussed, and the necessity of formulating spatial resolution as a statistical problem is stressed. A broad description of a study using computer-simulated imagery is given. A photographic image with good ground resolution (approximately 10 cm) was digitized and filtered using a digital computer. The resulting imagery data were used for generating photographic products having ground resolutions ranging from 0.2 m to 80 m. These products were used both for comparison with satellite (Landsat) images and for conducting interpretation tests.
