Method and results of comparing multilevel spectral reflectance measurements of various Earth surfaces

Abstract

The paper describes a method and results of comparison of quasi-synchronous space, aviation and ground-based measurements of the reflection spectra of various underlying surfaces. The purpose of such measurements is to obtain data for vicarious calibrations of satellite spectral sensors, verification of space and aviation data, as well as post-processing of this data. Measurements from the Photospectral system (PhSS) from the International space station (ISS) and images of some satellites (Landsat 8, Sentinel-2, etc.) were used as space information. As objects of research were the test site in the Gomel region (Republic of Belarus) and the volcanoes of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Spectral radiance and spectral reflectance that were measured were compared in this study. For aircraft data, the measured reflection spectra were recalculated to the top of the atmosphere (TOA) into the satellite measurements conditions, and the atmospheric correction of the aircraft spectra was carried out to obtain the reflectance at the underlying surface. Satisfactory agreement between ground-based, aviation spectra and spaceborne measurements suggests that the ground and aviation-based spectra can be used to search for the target objects (adaptive filtering) during post-processing of both hyperspectral and multispectral space images of various spatial resolutions.