The Use of TM Thermal Band for Land Cover/Land Use Mapping in Two Different Environmental Conditions of Iran

ABSTRACT Many investigations have demonstrated that arid regions display ideal conditions for remote sensing applications such as, land cover/land use detection. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capability of Thematic Mapper (TM) thermal band in land cover/land use mapping in the Ardakan region of Yazd province, an area of desert with severe salinity conditions, and the Mook region in the Farse province, an area of mountains, forests, dry farming and orchards. Landsat TM imagery recorded on September and October, 1990 were used for land cover/land use classifications of Ardakan and Mook areas respectively. Maximum likelihood classifications were used by including TM thermal band (TM6) in band combinations. The results of image classifications showed that TM6 has improved the accuracy of classification in Ardakan, while no meaningful role was found in Mook region. Based on the results obtained it may be concluded that the effectiveness of TM bands for classification is highly dependant on land cover type, climatic, and geographic conditions. Based on the results obtained it was also concluded that TM6 plays a key role in separating urban and dark colour salt crust classes as in Ardakan area. In other words, in climatic and geographic conditions represented by dry surface and sparse vegetation, thermal band data may prove more useful.