Landsat and SPOT Satellite Image Watershed Mapping in the Philippines

Client: CIDA

Cebu City and Davao City watersheds were being encroached by urban and rural dwellers, and by agriculture. The watersheds around these cities had been determined to be insufficient to supply water to the growing population. Management of the water resources was required in order to preserve the watersheds and to educate people in water conservation measures.

McElhanney orthorectified Landsat 7 and SPOT 4 satellite images for the watersheds around Cebu City and Davao City. We also drove through the watersheds collecting ground truth information and indicating locations of current ground cover types. We then applied a supervised classification technique to stratify the satellite images into land cover maps based on the ground truth information and converted the classified images into GIS datasets. Finally, we provided GIS and remote sensing training courses on how to analyze and manipulate satellite images and land cover maps for water resource applications.