Sensitivity of multitemporal NOAA AVHRR data of an urbanizing region to land-use/land-cover changes and misregistration

Our objectives were to: (1) investigate the sensitivity of multitemporal image data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite data for detecting land-use/land-cover changes primarily associated with urbanization and (2) test the effectiveness of a misregistration compensation model on the same data set, Empirical analyses were conducted using to near-anniversary, single-date NOAA AVHHR images of a rapidly urbanizing region of southern and Baja California. Analyses were facilitated by reference data from detailed GIS data layers of land-use land-cover types for the 2 years corresponding to image acquisition dates (1990 and 1995). Almost all AVHRR pixels containing land-use, land-cover changes were mixed with nonchange areas, even when the extent of change features was greater than the nominal 1 km(2) ground sampling area. The strongest signals of image brightness change ere detected by temporal differences of NDVI and Channel 4 surface temperature. "Undeveloped to urban" and "undeveloped to water" were the land-use/land-cover transition sequences with the most definitive AVHRR change signals. Mean magnitudes of misregistration errors were estimated to be around 0.2 pixel units in x and y directions. Mean values for misregistration noise equivalent in brightness change (MNEDeltaB) were 0.02, 0.02, and 1.96 K for image differences of Channel 1 reflectance, NDVI, and Channel 4 surface temperature, respectively. The misregistration compensation model reduced false detection of change, but improvements in detection of land-use/land-cover changes were not conclusive. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.