Lab 3 - Land Use / Land Cover Classification Mapping

This lab gave us more experience with recognizing ground features using a true color aerial photograph. For this assignment, we were to digitize an area of Pascagoula, MS, and create a land use/land cover map using the USGS Standard Land Use / Land Cover Classification System. For this assignment, classifying the map up to Level 2 was fine.

First I added the aerial photograph and created a new shapefile, adding 2 fields: one for the two digit code and one for the code description. My main focus when attempting to select areas to digitize was to stay consistent. I used the Editor tool to draw the polygons and add their classifications to the new LULC shapefile. I started with features that were easier to identify and had a more clear starting and ending point; for example, deciduous forest areas surrounded by residential or commercial areas. I started with the forest areas, then moved on to the wetland areas, especially the islands on the west side of the map. The water was easy to identify but tough to classify as the streams meandered and the wetlands were sometimes in the way. Houses have a rather distinctive shape and size and they tend to be clustered into neighborhoods, so they were not difficult to identify. Commercial and industrial buildings were sometimes difficult to set apart, but I figured that commercial buildings are more likely to be nearer residential structures than industrial buildings are. Both, however, tended to be larger and more square or rectangular than houses. Barren land was usually somewhat easy to determine, although the level 2 portion of the barren land category was sometimes difficult to distinguish. I also was running into a bit of a time issue with this one, so later I was not focused on getting every tiny little curve and nuance correct with some of the digitization, but I made sure not to be too inaccurate with it. This was an interesting but time-consuming assignment, and it gives me a whole new respect for those land cover or land use maps we sometimes download as a layer to use in an analysis. Below is my land use / land cover map of Pascagoula, MS.