Atmospheric correction of high-spatial-resolution satellite images with adjacency effects: application to EO-1 ALI data

Abstract

Adjacency effects are an interesting physical phenomenon caused by multiple scattering between the atmosphere and the surface. It is necessary to remove adjacency effects in the surface reflectance retrieved from satellite data at a high spatial resolution. In this study, we propose an atmospheric correction method with adjacency effect correction to derive surface reflectance from Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) data. Adjacency effects are corrected using an atmospheric point spread function. An analytical expression of the atmospheric point spread function is presented based on a single scattering approximation. This method was applied to ALI imagery acquired through Watershed Airborne Telemetry Experimental Research (WATER) on 20 May 2008. Compared with the surface reflectance before the adjacency effects were corrected for, the surface reflectance after correction exhibited increased between-pixel contrast. Furthermore, the discrepancies between the surface reflectance before and after corrections decreased from the blue band to the shortwave infrared band.