Assessment of atmospheric correction methods for historical Landsat TM images in the coastal zone: A case study in Jiangsu, China

Abstract

Atmospheric correction is an essential process in quantitative remote sensing studies. There is lack of assessment of methods for coastal zone data, particularly historical data. In this study, the performances of existing methods are evaluated, with Jiangsu coastal zone, east China as the study area. Two methods, which are based on image acquisition date and on the maximal and minimal radiances, are used to convert digital number values to at-sensor radiance. The apparent reflectance method, and four image-based dark object subtraction (DOS) methods are used for correction of four historical thematic mapper (TM) images. The performances of these methods are evaluated by employing four assessment procedures. Results show that the method based on image acquisition date is superior to that based on the maximal and minimal radiances. Moreover, DOS-Iteration can achieve better results and can thus be a more reasonable correction model than the other methods.