Field Work

Fieldwork are being carried out to provide "ground truth" data on all LULC types, to verify the maps of urban surface and canopy attributes and to understand better the urban landscape in Indianapolis. The field survey includes collection of information on surface cover condition including (1) building number, dimensions, density, construction materials, roof materials, street canyon orientation; (2) tree cover dimensions, density, species, grass, and shrubs; (3) impervious coverage, type (roads, driveways, sidewalks, parking lots, rooftops, etc.) and nature of materials (such as concrete, asphalt, etc), (4) open water (lakes, rivers, ponds, etc) and (5) soild and bare ground (sand, dirt, etc).

During the summer of 2006 a total of 350 sites 90m x 90m (equal to the spatial resolution of ASTER thermal data) were randomly sampled, with approximately 50 sites for each LULC category (stratified). The A high quality 2003 color orthophotos at 1, 9,600 scale  was registered to ASTER and was used as the base map for field verification, making measurements and updating changes in surface cover conditions. The proportions of plane metric area covered by each type of surface cover were computed for each  site. GPS was used for locating the sample sites.

The collected data were then sorted and then converted into an interactive web pages showing the both the classified data and the site reality with other relevant details.

A sample page of the field work is displayed below