Comparison of Resource Mapping Imagery to Ikonos Satellite Imagery

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes

Acacia Koa Plantation Forest, Big Island, Hawaii

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes

High resolution Ikonos or Quickbird imagery can also be purchased for these areas. Our sampling approach to vegetation mapping will work equally well with this type of satellite coverage. However, those data are extremely expensive when they are non-archival or explicitly ordered

It is less expensive to fly complete regional coverage with our camera system (30-cm natural color, 1-m multispectral) and produce differentially rectified orthophotoquads than to order original Ikonos data. Our imagery (near right) has better color discrimination than the 4-meter multispectral bands of the Ikonos data (far right) and ...

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes

... better spatial discrimination than its 1-meter panchromatic band (far right). In addition, our imagery comes with a high resolution DEM generated from the coverage and matched to the orthophotoquads, allowing the mosaics to be draped over their DEMs and shown within the context of their topography. The georeferenced block files of the original images that can be viewed ...

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes

Ikonos Panchromatic band, 1-m per pixel resolution.

Resource Mapping's natural color, 40 cm per pixel.
3D view of same section of river bank as above.
(Image below requires use of red/blue anaglyph glasses to view in stereo.)

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes

Image at right requires use of red/blue anaglyph glasses to view in stereo.

A 3D red/blue view of the main research station at Los Amigos shows the distinct relief of this site in a way that a 2D image could not convey. It is this combination of sampling and detailed stereo interpretation linked to a regional classification of spatial and spectral patterns that makes our approach to resource mapping unique and successful.

©Winrock International reproduced with their permission for illustrative purposes