When the Landsat satellite was launched in June 1972, the Corps of Engineers undertook several experiments related to the use in water resources development programs of automatic classification of the digital data gathered by the satellite. In one application, the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi, developed techniques for analyzing the multispectral data to determine surface concentrations of pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay and several tributary rivers. Our San Francisco District, with contract support from North American Rockwell, used automatic classification of multi-spectral data to delineate flow patterns and sediment movement in the San Francisco Bay and California coast areas. These experiments established the feasibility of automatic classification for Corps of Engineers applications.
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