The objective of this study is to develop a methodology for land-use survey and to determine the land-use modification rates using data of LANDSAT system. The Paraiba Valley (state of Sao Paulo) was selected as test site. Both visual and automatic interpretation methods were employed to analyze seven land-use classes. They are: urban area, industrial area, bare soil, cultivated area, pastureland, reforestation and natural vegetation. By means of visual interpretation it is observed little spectral differences among those classes. The automatic classification of LANDSAT MSS data using maximum likelihood algorithm shows a 39% average error of omission and a 3,4% error of comission for the seven classes. The classification results were under the influences of the complexity of land-uses in the study area, the large spectral variations of analyzed classes and the low resolution of LANDSAT data.
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