Landsat thematic mapper products for rangeland assessment

Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data are useful for mapping rangeland resources worldwide. Spatial resolution and spectral characteristics of the data are adequate for performing a variety of range‐related tasks, including monitoring ecological change. The unique spectral characteristics of TM data are important in the development of products for manual interpretation of images to be used in rangeland assessment. Procedures were developed for using a histogram‐based, data‐dependent stretch of multispectml data values for producing site‐specific TM image products. The process optimizes image information for a given data set without a priori knowledge of the imaged site. Manual interpretation of TM products for rangeland assessment has many applications and will be aided by a standardized procedure for compositing spectral bands.