THE EFFECT OF SPATIAL-RESOLUTION ON THE EXPERIMENTAL VARIOGRAM OF AIRBORNE MSS IMAGERY

A measurement may be thought of as comprising the true or underlying value of a property (information) and measurement error. These components of variation appear in the experimental or measured variogram, a function commonly used to represent spatial dependence. For variograms that are obtained from observations that are abutting, or approximately so as for remotely sensed imagery, these components are approximately separable. The part of the variogram representing underlying, spatially dependent variation can be regularized, that is, predicted for new spatial resolutions using a simple relation. However, measurement error cannot be predicted for new spatial resolutions using this relation and must, therefore, be investigated empirically. This Letter presents experimental variograms for two airborne MSS images recorded near simultaneously with different spatial resolutions enabling inferences to be made about the relation of spatial resolution to both information and measurement error for airborne MSS imagery.