We primarily use data from the Landsat satellites in our work. The Landsat Schematic Mapper is a sensor that records information or takes pictures in the green, blue, red, and near infrared and in two mid-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The sensor also takes pictures in the thermal region of the spectrum, but we're not going to be showing that here.

Each of these bands can be useful for identifying different features. For instance, Band 1 is the blue range. You can use that to identify healthy vegetation. Part of the problem with this though is that it's plagued by atmospheric scattering, it tends to be very hazy because its the shortest wavelength and it gets scattered by very small particles.

The green Band 2 corresponds to the green reflectance of healthy vegetation. The red,Thematic Mapper Band 3 is used for soil boundary delineation and 4 can be useful for good soil/ crops and land/water contrasts. Band 5 is one of the two bands in which you can discriminate clouds and ice and Band 7 can be used for water absorption. Usually, for visual interpretation, we combine three gray scale or black and white bands into a Red/Green/Blue color composite which helps to identify land cover. This is just a different kind of composite with different bands.

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