Effect of scale on the information content in remote sensing imagery

Earth surface imaging satellites, quite commonly, have a large range in spatial as well as spectral resolutions. The potential for users to become overwhelmed, not only by the quantity of data, but also by the problem of multiple pixel sizes is very real. Second, individual platforms and sensors will have the ability to simultaneously image at multiple resolution. It may therefore be useful and necessary to integrate, or fuse, the images from a number of sources into a single data set. The approach taken in this study is that high resolution data should be degraded when fused with coarser data, rather than the more common approach of “sharpening” coarser imagery. This approach is at odds with the more common attitude but conforms with the generally accepted notion that one cannot introduce detail into a generalized data set