COMBINING PANCHROMATIC AND MULTISPECTRAL IMAGERY FROM DUAL RESOLUTION SATELLITE INSTRUMENTS

In this paper a technique is developed for combining dual resolution digital data, as from SPOT and the planned Thematic Mappers, to produce high spatial resolution multispectral data. The goal of this work is essentially equivalent to that of Cliche et al. , except that the analysis is based on statistical properties in the data. The analytic approach may serve as a basis for design of future earth observing systems, and the resultant products, representing a reconstruction of high spatial resolution multispectral data from a sampled data set, are suitable for further numerical studies, such as computer classification. Data simulating the French SPOT satellite were processed to resemble high altitude aerial photography, but image artifacts can hamper photointerpretative methods. This work is pertinent to mapping and land use studies.