Glossary for Geospatial Science

Kauth�s Tasseled Cap or Kauth�s greenness / brightness / wetness:� A set of linear combinations of the Landsat TM spectral bands which computationally reduce the images to maps of a site�s greenness, brightness, and wetness.� Kauth, a scientist at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, extended the green biomass concepts developed by Dr. Lee D. Miller, a principal of MicroImages, to extract more biophysical information from Landsat MSS and TM multispectral images.� He developed the combinations by carefully correlating ground measurements made by Miller and others with values in the satellite images.� The plots of the data distribution in the original spectral bands resemble a tasseled cap � hence the general name by which these transformations are called.