USGS MIPS Tmmix Documentation

USGS MIPS Tmmix Documentation

This program will generate three output bands from the six TM bands by selecting three user specified optimum desired bands for each of three major categories of vegetation, soils, and water. This allows the user to generate a three band only data set that has been optimized for all three major cover types. It can be used as input for digitized analysis, classification and/or color composites. For example, the pixels identified as vegetation could have TM bands 2, 3 and 4; soils TM bands 2, 4 and 5; water TM bands 1, 2 and 3.

Files

This program requires as input six unsigned 8-bit TM image files. It assumes that they are TM bands 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 respectively. It will produce three unsigned 8-bit image files. The following information is transfered from the input files to the output files(if appropriate):

Image labels
Mosaic labels
Projection labels
History file

Parameters

VBANDS, SBANDS and WBANDS: These parameters are arrays used to select the combination of bands for vegetation, soil and water. The defaults for VBANDS are 2, 4 and 3 (vegetation is green in this color composite). The defaults for SBANDS are 2, 4 and 5 and for WBANDS, 1, 2 and 3.
VEGTOL and SOILTOL: These parameters are used to select vegetation and soil threshold values within the vegetation Ratio (TM3/TM4). The default for VEGTOL is 0.7 and for SOILTOL 1.45. This implies that pixels who's vegetation ratio values are less than 0.7 are considered vegetated; pixels who's values are greater than 0.70 and less than 1.45 are soils; values greater than 1.45 are classified as water.

Examples

An example of band mixing within a 3 image data set could be: vegetation pixels use TM bands 2,4, and 5; soil pixels use TM bands 1,4, and 5; while water pixels use TM bands 1,2, and 3. This will allow the three output bands to be used for either color compositing or digital processing and analysis, knowing that these three 'new' bands contain the combination you consider the best for these three major cover types.