Major land cover types: buildings/roofs, paved areas (e.g., streets, backyards), trees (e.g., park trees, street trees), grass (e.g., lawns, soccer field), crops (on agricultural sites), bare soil (e.g., agricultural sites, construction sites), and water (e.g., lakes, swimming pools).
The spatial detail of most urban features (e.g., buildings, streets, trees along streets or in private gardens) disappears due to spatial aggregation at spaceborne scale. However, large homogenous urban features (e.g., waterbodies, sport grounds, tree stand in parks) remain apparent.
Pure spectra can be collected for homogenous urban surfaces with a patch size of ~100 x 100 m and larger (e.g., roofing material spectra for large industrial buildings, ground paving material spectra for yards of industrial complexes, grass spectra on lawns or soccer fields, tree spectra in dense stands, water spectra from water bodies). Pure spectra cannot be collected for urban surfaces with a patch size below ~100 x 100 m (i.e., for most roofing materials, street asphalt, street trees).
The roof class shows a very high within-class variability. The classes pavement, low vegetation, and tree show a high within-class variability. The classes soil and water show a rather low within-class variability.
The classes roof and pavement are highly similar with regard to the following surface materials: bitumen vs. asphalt, red clay tiles vs. red sand, grey roofing materials (most likely concrete) vs concrete. The classes roof and soil are highly similar with regard to the following surface materials: concrete vs. bare soil, red clay tiles vs. bare soil. The classes low vegetation and tree are highly similar regarding the following vegetation types: darker grass types (clover, agricultural grassland) vs. brighter trees.
High impervious fractions can be observed in the city center. A general increase in vegetation cover and decrease in impervious cover is observed when moving towards suburban areas. Soil is only abundant on single patches, e.g., along rail tracks or on construction sites. Fractions for each class are in the physically meaningful range between 0 and 1. The sum of fractions per pixel over all classes is, however, often larger than 1.
Soil fractions are overestimated by around 20%, particularly for areas where red clay tiles / bitumen / asphalt mixtures are apparent but no soil surfaces. Water fractions are overestimated by around 20% throughout the city on all impervious surfaces.