Some MultiSpec Tutorials/Exercises

The following are some small tutorials or exercises that one can follow to gain some experience using MultiSpec. These tutorials will illustrate how to display multispectral and thematic images, run unsupervised classification (ISODATA), run supervised classifications view the results, learn how to combine separate image files into one image file, overlay shape files onto images, enhance images and work with the coordinate view. There is a separate pdf document for each tutorial.

The documents are in Adobe Acrobat Format and can be read within your web viewer if you are using version 3 or later of Netscape Navigator and version 4 or later of Acrobat Reader. An Acrobat Reader for Macintosh, Windows, or Unix can be downloaded from
"http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html".

Tutorials 1-4 & 6-7 were revised in October 2009; tutorials 8 & 9 were added in June/July 2010; tutorial 5 was revised in September 2013. Tutorial 10 was added in August 2014.

Note that there is a tutorial using an area around Arequipa, Peru in both Spanish and English in the second section of this page and there are some tutorials in Greek and Hungarian provided by MultiSpec users at the bottom of the page.

Tutorials/Exercises

1. Display and Inspection of Image Data with MultiSpec
   In this exercise, you will display an aircraft image file and view the data in several ways using MultiSpec.
   
2. Image Enhancement
   This exercise illustrates how you can control the enhancement of the image in the multispectral image window by setting five different options in the Enhancement portion of the Display Specifications dialog box.
   
3. Unsupervised Classification (Cluster Analysis)
   Two Clustering algorithms are available in MultiSpec. They are useful in grouping similar pixels in the image into clusters or categories. One algorithm implemented is a simple one-pass type. The second is an iterative type called ISODATA. You will use the ISODATA algorithm for this exercise.
   
4. Supervised Classification
   You can also do a supervised classification of an image file by selecting training areas for selected classes from known areas.
   
5. Combining Separate Image Files into a Single Multispectral Image File
   One can use the "Logically Linking" capability in MultiSpec to link several image files together to be treated as one image file in an image window and/or create a new image file that incorporates all of the separate images. For example many times one will receive Landsat images from the EROS Center via ftp or on a DVD that contains one file for each of the 4-10 Landsat bands. This tutorial will illustrate how to do this. (A sample set of individual bands can be downloaded or you can provide your own set of files.)
   
6. Overlay Shape Files on Image Window
   This exercise will illustrate how to open ArcView Shape files and overlay them onto an image.
   
7. Selecting Areas and the Coordinate View
   One can make selections of areas within an image using line-column units, map units or latitude-longitude units. The map and latitude-longitude units are only available for images where the required map projection information is available. This exercise will illustrate how this work.
8. Creating Vegetation Indices Images
   One can create images that represent algebraic combinations of the original channels of an image to try to enhance the image. This technique is used to enhance the vegetation or mineral variations in the image. One example is the Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI) image. This exercise will illustrate how to do this.
9. Handling HDF and netCDF Formatted Image Files
   HDF and netCDF formatted files can contain from one to many data sets. The data sets can be any combination of tables, arrays and raster images. Each of the raster images can contain multiple channels and represent different spatial resolutions and data types. This exercise illustrates how to use MultiSpec to select HDF/netCDF image datasets (or a group of image data sets) to be used like any other raster image file. An ASTER HDF file is used as the example.
10. Visualizing Growing Degree Day (GDD) Images
    This exercise illustrates how MultiSpec can me used for handling and analysis of general geospatial images. The image data used in this example is not multispectral data collected by a satellite or aircraft or the results of analysis of those data. Rather it is a geospatial image created from gridded data obtained from the Applied Climate Information System (ACIS); the data is derived from measurements collected by many weather stations. 

Image Files for Exercises Above

Tutorial/Exercises Using Sentinel 2B data over Majes area in Peru

The following exercises were used for a Remote Sensing Workshop during August 2018 for the Arequipa Nexus Institute for Food, Energy, and the Environment, a joint project between Purdue University and Universidad Nacional de San Agustin (UNSA) in Arequipa, Peru. The exercises use four 10-meter bands of Sentinel 2B data of the Majes area in the Arequipa Department of Peru. The tutorial includes exercises 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 in the above list.

1. English version
   
2. Spanish version

Image files for the exercises (Nexus_RS_Workshop_image_files.zip) [20 MB]

 

Landsat 5 Flood Lesson used for Middle/High School students

The objective of the ‘Remote Sensing Flood Analysis Lesson’ is to analyze a flood event that occurred in southern Indiana and Illinois in June of 2008. You will use a freeware tool on mygeohub.org titled MultiSpec Online to view a portion of the area that was flooded and determine the area that the flood covered. The lesson was developed for middle and high school.

AmericaView Middle to High School Tutorials

AmericaView helped sponsor the development of tutorials which introduce middle to high school students to land cover classification using MultiSpec. They can be accessed from AmericaView's Lesson Plans web site. They were developed by the University of Georgia Chapter of the America Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).

Other Tutorials

Tutorials (Greek) provided by Konstantinos Papatheodorou of Geomatics & Surveying Department, Technological Education Institute, Serres, Greece.

Tutorials (Hungarian) provided by Imecs Zoltán of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania.