Type of Document Master's Thesis Author DiGirolamo, Paul Alrik Author's Email Address pauldig@comcast.net URN etd-07242006-110800 Title A Comparison of Change Detection Methods in an Urban Environment Using LANDSAT TM and ETM+ Satellite Imagery: A Multi-Temporal, Multi-Spectral Analysis of Gwinnett County, GA 1991-2000 Degree Master of Arts Department Anthropology and Geography Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Dr. Zhi-Yong Yin Committee Chair Dr. Paul Knapp Committee Member Dr. Truman Hartshorn Committee Member Keywords
- NDVI
- Urban Sprawl
- Landcover
- Remote Sensing
- Change Detection
- Tasseled Cap
- PCA
Date of Defense 2005-09-17 Availability unrestricted Abstract Land cover change detection in urban areas provides valuable data on loss of forest andagricultural land to residential and commercial development. Using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper
(1991) and Landsat 7 ETM+ (2000) imagery of Gwinnett County, GA, change images were
obtained using image differencing of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), principal
components analysis (PCA), and Tasseled Cap-transformed images. Ground truthing and
accuracy assessment determined that land cover change detection using the NDVI and Tasseled
Cap image transformation methods performed best in the study area, while PCA performed the
worst of the three methods assessed. Analyses on vegetative and vegetation changes from 1991-
2000 revealed that these methods perform well for detecting changes in vegetation and/or
vegetative characteristics but do not always correspond with changes in land use. Gwinnett
County lost an estimated 13,500 hectares of vegetation cover during the study period to urban
sprawl, with the majority of the loss coming from forested areas.
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