ECO-CLIMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF TUSCANY THROUGH NOAA-AVHRR DATA

Eco-climatic classifications have proved to be of great utility for th e planning and management of various agricultural and forestry activit ies. Since the usual methods are often expensive and not easy to apply , remote sensing data processing has recently been proposed to identif y ecologically homogeneous land units. NOAA AVHRR data in particular h ave been demonstrated to be suitable for this purpose thanks to their spatial resolution and frequent acquisition. While most works in this field have dealt only with NDVI imagery, it has been suggested that th ermal and ancillary data could also bring significant information. The se considerations have been kept in mind during the present study, whi ch concerns the eco-climatic classification of a complex Italian Regio n by the use of NOAA NDVI and thermal images from two years in additio n to ancillary data. A complete methodology was developed for the proc essing of this integrated data set with particular reference to the id entification of the suitable numbers of main and sub-classes. The fina l output was compared to existing climatic and land use information ab out the region. The substantial agreement between these sources testif ies to the eco-climatic value of the product obtained.