Chracterizing urban land use patterns by variograms parameters from multispectral high spatial resolution satellite images: An application in Salvador, Bahia - Brazil

This article attempts to characterize urban land use patterns by variograms parameters from multispectral high spatial resolution satellite images. The variography is used to characterize variability and to characterize a land use urban pattern. Dataset compiled from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, consists in single QuickBird satellite scene, geometrically corrected, obtained on August 2nd, 2005. Four land urban patterns were identified at the study area and characterized using remote sensing image classification parameters. The principal components were calculated over the variance-covariance matrix of the four spectral channels of the images and while the variograms were calculated on the first principal components of each of the four urban patterns. In general the use of the variogram to aid the classification has proved satisfactory for the study area. Parameters (sill, range and nugget effect) were valuable tools for classification areas and to characterize occupation patterns.