URBAN CHANGE STUDY IN MISSOURI USING LANDSAT AND CENSUS DATA

Decision makers need information about urban change within the large metropolitan areas. This study focuses on urban changes in Missouri’s major metropolitan areas such as St. Louis and Kansas City. A major goal of this assessment is to provide useful study data that may highlight priority urban growth regions that are within the metropolitan area, and assist in developing growth policies. This study examines two data sources, which are the U.S. Census data and Landsat imagery. In particular, population changes are examined in the U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000. For this study, classification results from Landsat imagery are compared to census data for several regions within the larger metropolitan area.

Landsat images are classified using the standard maximum likelihood classifier. Same-year multi-season Landsat data sets are used to increase the classification accuracies for each census timeframe. For comparison to changes in Census data, a change analysis on the Landsat classifications is performed on several typical land types.

This research is sponsored through a subcontract from Raytheon/STX Corporation.