Lab 8: spectral signiturre analysis

In this lab students conducted exercises that better their understanding of spectral reflectance signatures of various Earth surface and near surface features.  To practice this skill students used a Landsat ETM+ image of north central Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota to digitize and record spectral tendencies of various features.

specficaly we were asked to collect spectral data on the following features:

To obtain these spectral signatures, all one has to do was draw a polygon containing a uniform piece of the land/feature you are interested in and run an operation using the signature editing tool under the raster tab to collect the data.  after collecting the information this is what I was able to obtain:

The data collected showed that plants generally reflect a lot of green light and absorb longer wavelengths.  The only differences was that some plants absorbed more levels of light, indicating that they were more active/were producing more food for themselves to consume.  man made features like roads, parking lots and runways had high reflectivity in the longer wavelengths, but absorbed more blue light than other features. 

This skill could be one of the most important we've learned so far in this class, in that it can be applied to track the fluidity and function of various systems in the natural environment.