Private companies as consulting engineers play important role to the study of natural resources. Land use map is one of the information generated in the studies by the consulting engineer that the accuracy of this information is effective on the final results, expenditu
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Private companies as consulting engineers play important role to the study of natural resources. Land use map is one of the information generated in the studies by the consulting engineer that the accuracy of this information is effective on the final results, expenditures spending on the natural resources and future projects. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the capability of the visual interpretation of images from Google Earth (GE) in comparison with the map, which was produced by consulting engineers and object-based interpretation of Landsat images as a new and low-cost method for land use /cover mapping in the natural resources studies of Iran. For this purpose, the land use/cover map provided by consulting engineers (2007) was compared with land use maps, which was produced using object-based method of TM Image (2007) with eCognition software and GE images (visual interpretation) with ArcGIS software (2009) in terms of accuracy assessment results. Overall accuracy and Kappa of the land use/cover maps using GE images were 0.99 % and 0.99, and Overall accuracy and Kappa of consultant engineers and object-based method based on Landsat image were calculated 59% and 0.32, and 89% and 86%, respectively. Result of the study demonstrated the high capability of the GE images in land use/cover mapping. Overall, the map generated from the GE image has higher accuracy in comparison with the other two maps, and the map produced by the consultant engineers with the low Kappa coefficient was unacceptable.
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