Spectral mixture analysis of land surface composition in a coastal city based on the V-I-S model

Spectral mixture analysis has been used in monitoring surface compositions of urban areas in recent years. Many of those urban researches select inland cities on flat plain as study areas, meanwhile water is masked off before unmixing, to acquire acceptable results and conform to the conceptual model of urban composition named V-I-S. This paper took Xiamen as an example of mountainous coastal cities, compared four unmixing methods using Landsat TM images, and assessed their accuracy through the visual interpretation of SPOT 5 image. Results show that 3 endmember methods masking water off would lead to spectral confusion in such mountainous coastal cites, while 4-endmember methods including water got better results. More tests should be executed and some details must be modified to improve the unmixing accuracy in this type of cities.