Abstract

Land cover mapping is important for regional and urban plannings. Most of the digital remote sensing based mappings use conventional classification techniques which are limited in their ability to define a wide variety of the existing types of land cover. The objective of this paper is to analyze the potential of fuzzy logic and artificial neural network approaches to produce land cover maps of the Brazilian territory for regional scales and urban environments. Two case studies were developed to test the methodological approach. Reliability analysis of resulting thematic maps was conducted through statistical coefficients and uncertainty measurements. Results showed that the use of fuzzy logic and artificial neural network approaches are suitable to fulfill the land cover mapping needs of the Brazilian territory.

Key words: Land cover mapping, fuzzy classification, artificial neural network, hierarchical classification.