Landsat Thematic Mapper Land Cover Classification for the Golden Triangle

A classified Landsat Thematic Mapper image captures the Northern Highlands of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos on February 14, 1991. The data was produced under the TREES project contract with the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and corresponds to satellite path 131, row 46. This single-scene classification provides a historical snapshot of land cover in a region historically known for opium production.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical land cover classes for change detection studies in the Golden Triangle region.
• Validating or comparing newer land cover maps against this 1991 classification for accuracy assessment.
• Studying the spatial distribution of forest, agriculture, and other land types from the classified image pixels.
• Correlating land cover patterns from this scene with socio-economic or drug crop production data for the early 1990s.

Strengths

• Provides a specific, dated snapshot (14 February 1991) for temporal analysis.
• Covers a historically significant and geographically distinct region (the Golden Triangle).
• Data is classified, offering pre-processed land cover categories for direct analysis.

Limitations

• Data is a single scene from 1991, offering no time-series or recent context.
• The specific land cover classification scheme and its accuracy are unknown.
• Spatial resolution is limited to that of the Landsat Thematic Mapper sensor (~30 meters).

Provenance

Source

Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy, under the TREES project.

Collection Method

Classification applied to a Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite image.

Time Range

1991-02-14

Geography

Northern Highlands of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos (Golden Triangle), corresponding to Landsat Path 131, Row 46.