Assessment of merged Landsat TM and SPOT panchromatic data Joria, P. E. 1995. Geospatial application: Assessment of merged Landsat TM and SPOT panchromatic data for Pool 26, Upper Mississippi River System. National Biological Service, Environmental Management Technical Center, Onalaska, Wisconsin, September 1995. LTRMP 95- P010. 21 pp. + Appendix A. (NTIS PB96-118880) ABSTRACT 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. KEYWORDS Remote sensing, satellites, Landsat Thematic Mapper, SPOT, Intensity-Hue-Saturation, land cover, Mississippi River