GIS 4035 - Visual Interpretation

This has been another busy week. The Lab for Photo Interpretation and Remote Sensors was actually a three for one.

The first Exercise for Visual Interpretation was to use Tone and Texture to discern various features using an aerial photo. I used an aerial photo that showed features such as a runway, housing subdivisions, water and vegetation. Tone is defined as the  brightness or darkness of an area and the first part of the lab had us classify areas from very light, to very dark. Using the "Convert Graphics to Features" went smoothly for the first Exercise, but I had some technical challenges for the second Exercise. Another objective of this lab was to look critically at the features you are given in an aerial photo so that you can distinguish the subtle differences between organic and man-made features. Below is the map I created for Exercise 1:

  Exercise 2 consisted of Identifying Features by using Shape & Size, Shadows, Patterns and Association. The objective here was to use all available information to ensure you correctly identified the object or feature you were looking at. As I said above, I had some technical challenges with part 2 with the "Convert Graphics to Features" option. It  seemed as though each time I needed to convert my selection (Shape & Size, Shadows, Patterns and Association) the option was greyed-out and not available. I tried Starting an Editing session and Stopping Editing; I tried opening and closing AcrMap. I walked away for a while and when I came back, the Convert option was still not available. Somehow, I did get the Convert Graphics to Features to work....mostly. But I do not know why the option was greyed-out.  Below is my map for Exercise 2:

The last portion of the Lab, Interpreting Color, had us use two .tif's to compare the indicated color of features using True Color and False Color. False Color is also called Color Infrared. I found various features including land, water, healthy vegetation and distressed vegetation. The colors I found matched closely, but were not exactly the same as what the "legend" for "False Color IR vs True Color" stated in the Lab instructions.