Landsat data in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) archive are being reprocessed to generate a tiered collection of consistently geolocated and radiometrically calibrated products that are suitable for time series analyses. With the implementation of the collection management, no major updates will be made to calibration of the Landsat sensors within a collection. Only calibration parameters needed to maintain the established calibration trends without an effect on derived environmental records will be regularly updated, while all other changes will be deferred to a new collection. This first collection, Collection 1, incorporates various radiometric calibration updates to all Landsat sensors including absolute and relative gains for Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), stray light correction for Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), absolute gains for Landsat 4 and 5 Thematic Mappers (TM), recalibration of Landsat 1-5 Multispectral Scanners (MSS) to ensure radiometric consistency among different formats of archived MSS data, and a transfer of Landsat 8 OLI reflectance based calibration to all previous Landsat sensors. While all OLI/TIRS, ETM+ and majority of TM data have already been reprocessed to Collection 1, a completion of MSS and remaining TM data reprocessing is expected by the end of this year. It is important to note that, although still available for download from the USGS web pages, the products generated using the Pre-Collection processing do not benefit from the latest radiometric calibration updates. In this paper, we are assessing radiometry of solar reflective bands in Landsat Collection 1 products through analysis of trends in on-board calibrator and pseudo invariant site (PICS) responses.
The Landsat Project is planning to implement a new collection management strategy for Landsat products generated at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. The goal of the initiative is to identify a collection of consistently geolocated and radiometrically calibrated images across the entire Landsat archive that is readily suitable for time-series analyses. In order to perform an accurate land change analysis, the data from all Landsat sensors must be on the same radiometric scale. Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) is calibrated to a radiance standard and all previous sensors are cross-calibrated to its radiometric scale. Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) is calibrated to both radiance and reflectance standards independently. The Landsat 8 OLI reflectance calibration is considered to be most accurate. To improve radiometric calibration accuracy of historical data, Landsat 1-7 sensors also need to be cross-calibrated to the OLI reflectance scale. Results of that effort, as well as other calibration updates including the absolute and relative radiometric calibration and saturated pixel replacement for Landsat 8 OLI and absolute calibration for Landsat 4 and 5 Thematic Mappers (TM), will be implemented into Landsat products during the archive reprocessing campaign planned within the new collection management strategy. This paper reports on the planned radiometric calibration updates to the solar reflective bands of the new Landsat collection.
Both Terra MODIS and Landsat 7 (L7) Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) have been successfully operating for over 15 years to collect valuable measurements of the earth’s land, ocean, and atmosphere. The land-viewing bands of both sensors are widely used in several scientific products such as surface reflectance, normalized difference vegetation index, enhanced vegetation index etc. A synergistic use of the multi-temporal measurements from both sensors can greatly benefit the science community. Previous effort from the MODIS Characterization Support Team (MCST) was focused on comparing the top-of-atmosphere reflectance of the two sensors over Libya 4 desert target. Uncertainties caused by the site/atmospheric BRDF, spectral response mismatch, and atmospheric water-vapor were also characterized. In parallel, an absolute calibration approach based on empirical observation was also developed for the Libya 4 site by the South Dakota State University’s (SDSU) Image Processing Lab. Observations from Terra MODIS and Earth Observing One (EO-1) Hyperion were used to model the Landsat ETM+ TOA reflectance. Recently, there has been an update to the MODIS calibration algorithm, which has resulted in the newly reprocessed Collection 6 Level 1B calibrated products. Similarly, a calibration update to some ETM+ bands has also resulted in long-term improvements of its calibration accuracy. With these updates, calibration differences between the spectrally matching bands of Terra MODIS and L7 ETM+ over the Libya 4 site are evaluated using both approaches.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat-8 has been collecting imagery on orbit for 17 months. The radiometric performance of the OLI is monitored using on-board systems (lamps and solar diffusers) as well as by reference to lunar and ground measurements and other satellite systems. Over this nearly 1½ years of operation the OLI has been extremely radiometrically stable in all of its 9 spectral bands. Only the shortest wavelength band, centered at 443 nm, which has degraded about 0.8%, has changed by more than the variability among the measurements (~0.2%). This consistency between the lamps, diffusers, moon, and ground measurements lends high confidence to these statements, which is unusual for a system so early in its lifetime. Comparisons to other satellite systems and ground measurements show that the OLI is calibrated to within requirements and generally better than 3% in both radiance and reflectance.
The Thematic Mapper (TM) onboard the Landsat 5 (L5) has provided an unprecedented amount of earth observations for more than 25 years since its launch on March 1, 1984. The MODIS sensor onboard the Aqua satellite is a part of the afternoon constellation of spacecraft and has been successfully providing near-continuous observations of the earth’s surface and atmosphere since July 2002. A synergistic use of TM and MODIS reflective solar bands (RSB) measurements is immensely beneficial to the broad user community for different land cover change and global climate studies. A consistent radiometric calibration between the sensors is a prerequisite for creating high quality science products. Various pseudo-invariant calibration sites (PICS) identified by CEOS have been widely used to monitor the on-orbit calibration consistency for a number of sensors. Near-simultaneous observations of the Saharan PICS by L5 TM and Aqua MODIS are used in this study. The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance from the spectrally matching RSB are corrected for test site Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF), relative spectral response (RSR) mismatch, and impacts for atmospheric water-vapor, and used to estimate the long-term calibration differences between the two sensors. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the Landsat 8 (L8) launched in February, 2013, is a follow-on mission to maintain the continuity of Landsat acquisitions. A similar cross-calibration methodology was extended to compare the spectrally matching bands of Aqua MODIS with OLI. A long-term drift is observed in bands 1 (3.7%) and 3 (1.86%) of L5 TM, which is expected to be mitigated in the next calibration coefficient update. With the exception of the SWIR-2 band (L5 TM band 7), the agreement with Aqua MODIS is seen to be within 4%. The L8 OLI and Aqua MODIS agreement is seen within 4% across all wavelengths.
Test sites are central to any future quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) strategy. The Committee on Earth
Observation Satellites (CEOS) Working Group for Calibration and Validation (WGCV) Infrared Visible Optical Sensors
(IVOS) worked with collaborators around the world to establish a core set of CEOS-endorsed, globally distributed,
reference standard test sites (both instrumented and pseudo-invariant) for the post-launch calibration of space-based
optical imaging sensors. The pseudo-invariant calibration sites (PICS) have high reflectance and are usually made up of
sand dunes with low aerosol loading and practically no vegetation. The goal of this paper is to provide preliminary
assessment of "several parameters" than can be used on an operational basis to compare and measure usefulness of
reference sites all over the world. The data from Landsat 7 (L7) Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and the Earth
Observing-1 (EO-1) Hyperion sensors over the CEOS PICS were used to perform a preliminary assessment of several
parameters, such as usable area, data availability, top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance, at-sensor brightness
temperature, spatial uniformity, temporal stability, spectral stability, and typical spectrum observed over the sites.
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