Development and validation of the Landsat-8 surface reflectance products using a MODIS-based per-pixel atmospheric correction method

ABSTRACT

Landsat satellites have the longest history of making global-scale Earth observations at medium spatial resolution of any series of satellites and have been widely used in various remote-sensing fields. However, many remote-sensing applications, including large-area or long-term land-cover monitoring, need Landsat reflectance data that have had accurate atmospheric correction carried out. In this research, a MODIS-based per-pixel atmospheric correction procedure was developed and employed to produce the surface reflectance (SR) product. A total of 510 Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) scenes covering the whole of China in 2013 were collected and processed. The mean relative differences between the surface and top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance for China, composited and expressed as percentages, were found to be 67, 47, 18, 13, 4, 4, and 7% for Landsat-8 OLI bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively. Then, the accuracy of MODIS atmospheric products was validated using ground-based sun-radiometer observation network data, including Sun/sky-radiometer Observation Network (SONET) and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) data collected from 14 SONET/AERONET stations. The validation results showed that the MODIS atmospheric products are reliable for China, with an R² value of 0.78 and a root mean square error (RMSE) value of 0.12 for aerosols, and an R² value of 0.98 and an RMSE of 0.25 for water vapour. Third, the SR product using our per-pixel atmospheric correction method was evaluated by comparison with the MODIS daily surface reflectance product (MOD09GA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) provisional Landsat-8 SR product, with a mean R² of 0.93 and an RMSE of 0.02 for MOD09GA; and with a mean R² of 0.97 and an RMSE of 0.01 for the USGS SR product. Finally, the advantage of our per-pixel atmospheric correction method over the per-scene method was investigated by analysis of the spatial variation of the atmospheric parameters within one Landsat scene (about 1.51.5), with a mean standard deviation value of 0.03–0.09 for aerosol. When such aerosol variation was omitted as the per-scene atmospheric correction method, the SR absolute error due to aerosol optical thickness (AOT) spatial variation was about 0.027, 0.018, 0.005, 0.003, 0.002, 0.0007, and 0.003 for the seven reflectance bands of Landsat-8. Therefore, use of Landsat-8 SR products over China with our per-pixel atmospheric correction was proved reliable, and more promising than the per-scene method, especially for the short-wavelength bands.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the RSGS (China Remote-Sensing Satellite Ground Station, www.ceode.cas.cn) and the US Landsat project management and staff for providing the Landsat-8 data. Thanks go to NASA GSFC for providing MODIS aerosol product data and MOD09GA. The SONET principal investigators and site managers are thanked for establishing and maintaining the SONET sites used in the validation analysis. The AERONET PIs are also thanked for collecting the aerosol observations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support provided for this research by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41222008] and Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science [OFSLRSS201511].