Visualizing Land Cover Reflectances
Your measured reflectances from different land surface covers may be used to create a key of the colors seen in the most common of version of Landsat color images (see example on right).
Remember, Landsat measures 7 wavelengths of light, and your computer displays only 3 colors. This means there are 210 ways to view 3 unique Landsat wavelength measurements on the computer. Some nice person created only a few color standards to make it easier to share images with others.
The most common color convention for displaying Landsat images.
Measured Reflected Light |
Displayed on Computer Screen |
Near Infrared |
Red |
Red Light |
Green |
Green Light |
Blue |
What to Do...
Write your reflectance measurements into the table below, or use relative magnitudes of reflectance (such as low, medium, high).
Use the table of the color convention for displaying Landsat data above, to predict what colors these surface materialls will appear in the satellite image.
If you are not familiar with how to make colors on a computer screen, see the Color Investigations.
If you aren't familiar with digital images, visit the Digital Images Investigations.
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