Efficient and accurate atmospheric correction of high-resolution patches over heterogeneous terrain: applications to surface reflectance and vegetation index products

Abstract

A new method for atmospheric correction of high-resolution patches over heterogeneous terrain is presented. This highly efficient method allows for the correction of high-resolution surface pressure variations of a patch surrounding an Aeronet site in heterogeneous terrain. The method efficiency stems from the smoothness of the functions used in the atmospheric correction with surface pressure. The smoothness of these functions is exploited to decouple the high-resolution variation of elevation/pressure in the atmospheric correction process, resulting in very few radiative transfer code evaluations independent of the number of high-resolution pixels in the patch. The method allows pressure correction at every point of a high-resolution scene, decreasing the errors in heterogeneous terrains by up to two orders of magnitude for the visible bands and vegetation indices NDVI and EVI. This technique can be applied for calibration and validation of surface reflectance and vegetation index products to provide much greater volume of data for performance evaluation.