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Moderate resolution sensors such as Landsat satellites are a vital component of earth observation and required in a wide variety of applications across many disciplines. Failure of Landsat 7 and the aging Landsat 5 could create a data gap for studies depending on medium resolution satellite data in the near future. The objective of this paper is to investigate the compatibility of CBERS-2 satellite data with the Landsat-TM satellite in land use and land cover change studies. We compared Landsat-TM and CBERS-2 Charge Coupled Device (CCD) images using four methods: intra bands similarities of reflectance values, land cover classification, vegetation indices (SR, NDVI, and TNDVI), and water index (NDWI), and found that CBERS-2 and Landsat-TM are very similar. Despite the differences in spatial resolution, coverage area and data availability between CBERS-2 and Landsat-TM, CBERS-2 was comparable to Landsat-TM and thus appears to be useful in the studies requiring vegetation mapping. To confirm the similarities of CBERS-2 and Landsat-TM data in vegetation mapping, more studies in different eco-regions are needed. Furthermore, inconsistencies in CBERS-2 data quality and availability are limitations of using CBERS-2 as an alternative source of medium resolution data in vegetation mapping.