Gap Fill of Land Surface Temperature and Reflectance Products in Landsat Analysis Ready Data

Abstract

The recently released Landsat analysis ready data (ARD) over the United States provides the opportunity to investigate landscape dynamics using dense time series observations at 30-m resolution. However, the dataset often contains data gaps (or missing data) because of cloud contamination or data acquisition strategy, which result in different capabilities for seasonality modeling. We present a new algorithm that focuses on data gap filling using clear observations from orbit overlap regions. Multiple linear regression models were established for each pixel time series to estimate stable predictions and uncertainties. The model’s training data came from stratified random samples based on the time series similarity between the pixel and data from the overlap regions. The algorithm was first evaluated using four tiles (5000 × 5000 30-m pixels for each tile) from 2018 land surface temperature data (LST) in Atlanta, Georgia. The accuracy was assessed using randomly masked clear observations with an average Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 3.88 and an average bias of −0.37, which were comparable to the product accuracy. We also applied the method on ARD surface reflectance bands at Fairbanks, Alaska. The accuracy assessment suggested a majority RMSE of less than 0.04 and a bias of less than 0.0023. The gap-filled time series can be of help for reliable seasonal modeling and reducing artifacts related to data availability. This approach can also be applied to other datasets, vegetation indexes, or spectral reflectance bands of other sensors.