The NASA AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer) instrument acquired data over the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, on March 23, 1996. AVIRIS acquires data in 224 bands of 10 nm width with center wavelengths from 400 - 2500 nm. The KSC data, acquired from an altitude of approximately 20 km, have a spatial resolution of 18 m. After removing water absorption and low SNR bands, 176 bands were used for the analysis. Training data were selected using land cover maps derived from color infrared photography provided by the Kennedy Space Center and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. The vegetation classification scheme was developed by KSC personnel in an effort to define functional types that are discernable at the spatial resolution of Landsat and these AVIRIS data. Discrimination of land cover for this environment is difficult due to the similarity of spectral signatures for certain vegetation types. For classification purposes, 13 classes representing the various land cover types that occur in this environment were defined for the site.
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