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Remote Sensing Technology-CE: 703 Lab Exercise 3 Colour Composites and Spectral Properties of Various Features

This document provides instructions for performing various remote sensing analysis techniques in ERDAS such as stacking bands, displaying true and false color composites, and using spectral, surface, and spatial profiling tools. Bands from a Landsat TM image are stacked to create single files for true and false color composites. A standard false color composite uses bands 2, 3, and 4 assigned to blue, green, and red colors respectively. Spectral profiling visualizes the reflectance spectrum of a single pixel across bands while surface and spatial profiling examine reflectance values within a rectangular or polyline region. Students are assigned tasks analyzing composites and profiling water, vegetation, urban and open areas in the image.

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67 views7 pages

Remote Sensing Technology-CE: 703 Lab Exercise 3 Colour Composites and Spectral Properties of Various Features

This document provides instructions for performing various remote sensing analysis techniques in ERDAS such as stacking bands, displaying true and false color composites, and using spectral, surface, and spatial profiling tools. Bands from a Landsat TM image are stacked to create single files for true and false color composites. A standard false color composite uses bands 2, 3, and 4 assigned to blue, green, and red colors respectively. Spectral profiling visualizes the reflectance spectrum of a single pixel across bands while surface and spatial profiling examine reflectance values within a rectangular or polyline region. Students are assigned tasks analyzing composites and profiling water, vegetation, urban and open areas in the image.

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Remote sensing Technology- CE: 703

Lab Exercise 3
Colour composites and Spectral properties of various features
Instructor-In Charge: RAAJ Ramsankaran

Prepared by: Anita Chandrasekaran


(TA- PhD Research Scholar)

Date of lab assignment: 24.9.2014

Last date of submission: 1.10.2014

Stacking of bands
Remote Sensing sensors record the spectral properties (radiance,emittance,backscatter) of terrain
features in different wavelength regions. Different features reflect differently in different bands.
Therefore the selection of bands for any study will depend on the band in which it gives distinct
responses. So, even if there are many bands in a sensor system, all may not be useful for our
purpose and selection of wrong bands will lead to incorrect interpretation. Stacking is a process
of combining in layers the bands required for any study into a single output file.
To do stacking in ERDAS, go to RASTER
will open.

SPECTRAL

Here the Input file will be multiple files we want to stack together.

Layer Stack. A dialog box

Note: The data for Landsat is stored in .tiff format. So in file types go for tiff . Then you will be
able to see the individual files. There will be 7 files as this sensor has 7 bands.
Now click on each of the file you want to stack and click ok. In the layer stack window click add.
Continue selecting the bands you want to stack and adding them (Example: Let us stack bands 1,
2 and 3).
After selecting the input files select an output folder and give an output file name
(layer_123.img).
Data type: It is important that the data type of the input and output files are same. Otherwise
there will be a possibility that data gets lost while stacking.
Output Options:
Union: It will use the area from all the input files
Intersection: It will use only the common areas in the input files.
Ignore zero stats: Check this so that pixels with zero file values are ignored when statistics are
calculated for the output file
To do layer stacking only for an area of interest, you can select the area using AOI.
Then click OK. The processing starts.
To display the stacked image, open raster layer and navigate to the folder where you have stored
the stacked output file and open.
Use inquiry tool to view the DN values of each band in the stacked image

Displaying a multispectral images


A multispectral image consists of several bands of data. For visual display, each band of the image
may be displayed one band at a time as a grey scale image, or in combination of three bands at a
time as a colour composite image. Interpretation of a multispectral colour composite image will
require the knowledge of the spectral reflectance signature of the targets in the scene. In this case,
the spectral information content of the image is utilized in the interpretation.

Grayscale image (display one band at a time)

Colour Composite Images


In displaying a colour composite image, three primary colours (red, green and blue) are used.
When these three colours are combined in various proportions, they produce different colours in
the visible spectrum. Associating each spectral band (not necessarily a visible band) to a separate
primary colour results in a colour composite image.
True Colour Composite (TCC)
If a multispectral image consists of the three visual primary colour bands (red, green, blue), the
three bands may be combined to produce a "true colour" image. For example, the bands 3 (red
band), 2 (green band) and 1 (blue band) of a LANDSAT TM image can be assigned respectively
to the R, G, and B colours for display. In this way, the colours of the resulting colour composite
image resemble closely what would be observed by the human eyes.
To obtain a true colour composite, 1st stack bands 1, 2 and 3 and form a single file
(layer_123.img). Now open the image and in raster options, give band1 through blue, band 2
through green and band 3 through red.

False Colour Composite


The display colour assignment for any band of a multispectral image can be done in an entirely
arbitrary manner. In this case, the colour of a target in the displayed image does not have any
resemblance to its actual colour. The resulting product is known as a false colour composite
image. There are many possible schemes of producing false colour composite images. However,
some scheme may be more suitable for detecting certain objects in the image.
Standard False Colour Composite:
In a standard false colour composite, the green, red and Near Infrared bands are used. In
Landsat, these are bands 2, 3, and 4. So to obtain a Std FCC, 1st make a stack using bands 2, 3
and 4 of TM data. Then, the TM band 2 is given to blue colour ,TM band 3 is given to green
colour and TM band 4 is given to red colour

Various other FCCs can be made using different combinations of bands and colours. Different
FCCs will highlight different features.

Spectral/Surface/Spatial Profiles
Spectral Profiles
Use the Spectral Profile Viewer to visualize the reflectance spectrum of a single pixel through
many bands.
From the Multispectral Tab

Utilities

Spectral Profile

When the Spectral Profile Windowappears, click on the Plus sign and then select a water
pixel from the image

Surface Profile
Use the Surface Profile Viewer to visualize the reflectance spectrum of a rectangular area of data
file values in a single band of data. You can overlay the wireframe surface with a grayscale,
thematic or true color image.
Multispectral Tab

Utilities

Surface Profile

Click on the Polygon Icon in the Surface Profile window and draw a bounding box in the 2d
viewer
The surface profile will be plotted. You can change the band and see how the values change
from Plot Layer to see how DN values changes within the bounding box.

Spatial Profile
Use the Spatial Profile Viewer to visualize the reflectance spectrum of a polyline of data file
values in a single band of data (one-dimensional mode) or in many bands (perspective threedimensional mode). The most common example of single band data profile is that of a Digital
Elevation Model (DEM) being used to create a height cross-section profile along a route. This
helps in interpreting changes in elevation along a planned route and in identifying sections of the
route which are particularly steep or flat. Information can also be calculated along the height
profile such as observer line of site. For example, color coding which sections of the profile an
observer located at the end of the line can actually see.
Multispectral Tab

Utilities

Spatial Profile

Click on the Polyline Icon in the Spatial Profile window


Draw a polyline through various features (through water, vegetation, impervious surface)
The Spatial profile gives you a cross-section of the DN values (Spectral Responses) at each
location along that line.
In the Plot Layer box, change the Band numbers to see how the DN values vary for each
feature by waveband.

Assignment 3:
1. Open the TCC and FCC of the image in 2 different 2d view windows and note the
differences in colours of different features like water bodies, sea water, vegetation, urban
area.
2. What is the colour of vegetation in Std FCC and why?
3. Create the false colour composites for the following band combinations and find the
predominant features in each FCC
a) Bands 7, 2, 4 (in R, G, and B)
b) Bands 4, 5, 1 (in R, G, and B)
` 4. Use spectral profile tool and find the spectral values of water, vegetation, an urban area
and open space pixel in 4 different locations. Find the mean digital number and standard
deviation for these classes in each band.
Class
DN1 for B1
Water
Vegetation
Urban
Open Space

DN2 for B1

DN3 for B1

DN4 for B1

Mean DN for B1

Generate similar table for the remaining bands, exclude panchromatic band. Also send
screen shots of the 4 locations and spectral profile.

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