Characterization of MSS Channel Reflectance and Derived Spectral Indices for Building Consistent Landsat 1–5 Data Record

Abstract

The Landsat 1–5 multispectral scanner system (MSS) collected records of land surface mainly during 1972–1992. Investigations on MSS have been relatively limited compared with the numerous investigations on its successors, such as Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced TM Plus (ETM+). The benefits of the Landsat program are not fully accomplished without the inclusion of MSS archives. Investigations on the Landsat 1–5 MSS channel reflectance characteristics wereperformed followed by derived vegetation spectral indices and the Tasseled Cap (TC) transformed features mainly using a collection of synthesized records. On average, the Landsat 4 MSS is generally comparable to the Landsat 5 MSS. The Landsat 1–3 MSSs show disagreement in channel reflectance compared with the Landsat 5 MSS, especially for the red channel (600–700 nm) and the near-infrared channel (700–800 nm). Meanwhile, the relative differences for vegetation spectral indices of the Landsat 3 MSS are mainly from −16% to −5% with the median about −11.5%, while those of the Landsat 2 MSS are mainly from −15% to −7%. Cross-validation tests and two case applications suggested that between-sensor consistency was improved generally through the transformation models generated by ordinary least-squares regression. To improve the consistency of the vegetation indices and the TC greenness, direct strategy employing respective transformation models was more effective than calculations based on the transformed channel reflectance. Considering the shortages of the Landsat MSS archives, further efforts are needed to improve its comparability with observations by other successive Landsat sensors.