STATISTICAL METHOD FOR SELECTING LANDSAT MSS RATIOS.

Abstract

To overcome certain problems associated with the visual selection of Landsat MSS ratios for color-combining, the authors devised a quantitative technique that ranks the 20 possible three-ratio combinations based upon their informational content. By use of standard deviations and correlation coefficients, a value, called the Optimum Index Factor (OIF), is computed for each of the 20 possible combinations. The OIF identifies the combination that contains the most information and the least amount of duplication. To minimize potential information loss, the OIF method was also used with principal-components analysis. Interpretation results for a geology test site in north-central Arizona support the OIF selections.