Evaluation of the Consistency of Simultaneously Acquired Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 Imagery on Plastic Covered Greenhouses

Manuel Ángel Aguilar,Rafael Jiménez-Lao,Fernando José Aguilar,Dilek Koc-San,Eufemia Tarantino,Abderrahim Nemmaoui,Mimoun Chourak

doi:10.3390/rs12122015

Manuel Ángel Aguilar, Rafael Jiménez-Lao + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12122015

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Abstract

Remote sensing techniques based on medium resolution satellite imagery are being widely applied for mapping plastic covered greenhouses (PCG). This article aims at testing the spectral consistency of surface reflectance values of Sentinel-2 MSI (S2 L2A) and Landsat 8 OLI (L8 L2 and the pansharpened and atmospherically corrected product from L1T product; L8 PANSH) data in PCG areas located in Spain, Morocco, Italy and Turkey. The six corresponding bands of S2 and L8, together with the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), were generated through an OBIA approach for each PCG study site. The coefficient of determination (r2) and the root mean square error (RMSE) were computed in sixteen cloud-free simultaneously acquired image pairs from the four study sites to evaluate the coherence between the two sensors. It was found that the S2 and L8 correlation (r2 > 0.840, RMSE < 9.917%) was quite good in most bands and NDVI. However, the correlation of the two sensors fluctuated between study sites, showing occasional sun glint effects on PCG roofs related to the sensor orbit and sun position. Moreover, higher surface reflectance discrepancies between L8 L2 and L8 PANSH data, mainly in the visible bands, were always observed in areas with high-level aerosol values derived from the aerosol quality band included in the L8 L2 product (SR aerosol). In this way, the consistency between L8 PANSH and S2 L2A was improved mainly in high-level aerosol areas according to the SR aerosol band.

Highlights

The rapid growth of the world population over the past 70 years is requiring higher agricultural yields [1]
The first inter-sensor radiometric comparison was performed between the Landsat 8 (L8) PANSH 15 m Ground Sample Distance (GSD) images and the official L8 L2 30 m GSD product
Analyzing the dates with the worst consistency between L8 L2 and L8 PANSH products, such as SS1 January 9, SS2 July 16 or SS4 December 18, it was found that those polygons presenting higher surface reflectance discrepancies were always in areas with high-level aerosol derived from the aerosol quality band included in L8 L2 product (SR aerosol)

Summary

Introduction

The rapid growth of the world population over the past 70 years is requiring higher agricultural yields [1]. This increase in agricultural production is being partially supported by plastic covered agriculture ( known as plasticulture or protected agriculture) [2], including greenhouse, medium or low tunnels and plastic mulch. Plasticulture has shown to be a reliable option to move up the first harvest and increase the yield of crops [2,3] These advantages have increased the use of plastic materials worldwide during the past decades [4]. Plasticulture has several negative environmental effects such as the generation and accumulation of organic and plastic waste, microclimate modification, altering pollinators distribution, aesthetic pollution of the rural landscape, over-exploitation of the water resources and invasion of protected natural areas [2,6,7,8]

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