1. A computer implemented singleband multispectral remotely sensed imagery data for earth science observation method of eliminating processing window artifacts that occur in segmentation of data having spatial characteristics through a recursive approximation of a segmentation process using a computer to perform the steps of:: (a) recursively dividing the data into subsections, each subsection having a boundary and no more than a predetermined number of data elements, designating as contagious each new region that is adjacent to a data subsection boundary; (b) calculating a dissimilarity criterion between each new region and each other spatially adjacent region; (c) if the dissimilarity criterion between one new region and another spatially adjacent region is less than or equal to a maximum merging threshold and if the one new region is not contagious, merge the one new region with a predetermined spatially adjacent region, further including if the predetermined number of merged regions in a data subsection has not been reached, remove a contagious designation from all regions in that data subsection and compute a new dissimilarity criterion between each new region and each other spatially adjacent region and each candidate region: (d) repeat step (c) until a predetermined number of merged regions is attained or until no further merges can occur, (e) compare each region to every other region through said dissimilarity criterion, and if said dissimilarity between a pair of regions is below a predetermined value, designate each of the pair of regions a candidate region of the other and, further including for each pixel designated as a split pixel, associate candidate regions to the pixel equal to the candidate regions associated with the region originally assigned to the pixel, adding the original region assignment of the pixel to the candidate regions for the pixel, and the split pixel out of the region to which the pixel was originally assigned.