The application of a ratio estimator to determine confidence limits on land use change mapping

The objective of this project was to evaluate the utility of 10 m spatial resolution SPOT Panchromatic imagery as a means to update the state of New Jersey's air‐photo based land use/land cover data in a cost effective manner. A secondary objective was to provide statistically based confidence limits on the estimated amount of land use change over the five‐year period between 1995 and 2000. A ratio estimation technique was applied to provide a more accurate estimate of land use change to help correct for consistent under‐ or overestimation when using the lower resolution, lower cost SPOT Pan imagery and 95% confidence limits on the land use change area estimates.