Final Project

Photo Interpretation and Remote Sensing - Final

The final project for this class was to use what was learned in all the previous classes to answer a question.  I chose to go with the suggested project for which the data was provided.  The question being, Is urbanization to blame for the decrease in clarity of the waters of Lake Tahoe.  

To answer this question a composite image was created of individual bands of a 2010 Landsat 5 TM image in ArcMap, then imported into Erdas Imagine where spectral signatures were created and a supervised classification was run.  This image was then returned to ArcMap to compare to a 1992 National Land Cover Database image.  The comparison showed urbanization is likely the cause of the problem.

It's a relief to finally finish this course as it was the most difficult of them all.  I think part of the problem was I kept looking for things to be black and white, and quite frequently they were more best guess.  It was a difficult concept for me to adjust to.  In the end I think I did okay, and somewhere along the way I also came to enjoy it.  I think that was at the very end, when I knew it was almost over and I'd never likely need to do this again.  But at least now I can look back at this with fond memories.