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<br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Flood-irrigation practices in the area covered by one of the SPOT images <br />interfered with ttie ability of the greenness transformation to fully delineate green <br />~ vegetation. Consequently, a brightness transformation was applied to the SPOT image. <br />" The greenness and;brightness images for this area were then combined using a decision <br />~ rule based on the ,relations between brightness, greenness, healthy vegetation, and wet <br />(':1 soils. Areas with high-intensity greenness values and high-brightness values as well <br />(T.) as areas with low~intensity greenness values and low-brightness values were classified <br />CP as high-intensity irrigation. This accounted for wet conditions in some <br />high-intensity irrigated fields. Areas with low-intensity greenness values and high <br />brightness values were classified as low-intensity irrigation. <br /> <br />After the image greenness values were mapped to denote intensity of irrigation, <br />the images were cqmbined with rasterized field-boundary files to produce tabular ERIS <br />files. A digital overlay procedure was used to accomplish this. The files were <br />organized so that :the unique number assigned to each polygon by GES could be used as a <br />cross reference w~th the ERIS attribute files generated from the greenness images. <br /> <br />A majority rqle criterion was applied to the greenness tabular files to establish <br />irrigation intens~ty and status for all field polygons. By looking at whether the <br />majority of the ]greenness cells in a given polygon had high- or low-intensity <br />irrigation values, it was possible to make separate files for the two irrigation <br />categories. Polygons with equal numbers of high- and low-intensity cells were placed <br />into the high-intensity-irrigation category. Polygons with zero greenness values were <br />discarded. <br /> <br />The high- and low-intensity-irrigation greenness files were then merged with the <br />attribute files, 'using the unique polygon numbers as the matching variable. This <br />permitted preparation of acreage summaries using the areas stored automatically by GES <br />with each field ,polygon, rather than by counting satellite image pixels. Such <br />acreages are of 1a higher quality because field boundaries are more accurately <br />portrayed in a veqtor format than in a raster format. Using the attributes for each <br />polygon, it was then possible to create acreage summaries based on basin number, <br />county, quadrangle', township/range, and section. Tables 1-3 show the types of acreage <br />summaries that were calculated for the irrigated lands in the Upper Gunnison basin. <br /> <br />RESULTS <br /> <br />Acreages were calculated for all irrigated fields based on 1987 satellite data. <br />Small areas of the, project area in Hinsdale, Montrose, and Gunnison counties were not / <br />covered by the satellite imagery. In these areas (1599.5 acres) irrigated acreages <br />were reported as p~tentiallY irrigated based on the photointerpreted data. <br /> <br />After looking at the satellite imagery with the digitized field boundaries <br />overlain, it was ; determined that several fields were being counted as completely <br />irrigated when only parts of the fields were actually irrigated. Many of the fields <br />were flood irrigated and run-off water appeared to cross into other fields. Complete <br />irrigation coverage was also not achieved in some of the flood irrigated fields. To <br />account for these hon-irrigated acres, a correction factor was applied to the data. A <br />percent irrigated 'value was calculated by dividing total irrigated pixels by total <br />pixels for each field. The percent irrigated value was then mUltiplied times the <br />vector acreage for all fields with less than 90% irrigation to get a better accounting <br />of actual irrigated acreage. <br /> <br />Field boundaries were determined by location of irrigation ditches, fence lines, <br />roads, and other ~an-made and natural features. This resulted in a large number of <br />field polygons. ,Field complexity could have been significantly reduced by not <br /> <br />, <br />