Remote Sensing of Environment

Lab 2: Images Calibration and Atmospheric Correction

Due on Sept. 25, 2015
Please upload the required files and your document to folder lab2 in
your drop box.

Research of remote sensing starts from reflectance. In this lab, you will learn the
basic procedure of digital image processing from converting the raw digital numbers
(DNs) to radiance, and then to reflectance. Such reflectance is also called top-ofatmosphere (TOA) reflectance. To eliminate atmospheric effects, simple
atmospheric correction will be introduced to covert TOA reflectance to ground
reflectance.
The data files used in this lab are part of one scene of California images acquired by
Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) sensors on Sep 9, 2009. The exercises include:
Covert TM images to TOA reflectance
Atmospherically correct images using the dark subtraction method
Compare reflectance changes before and after atmospheric correction

Part I: Convert TM images to TOA reflectance

The Landsat TM sensors acquire signals from the earth and store this information as
a digital number (DN) with a range between 0 and 255. It is possible to convert these
DNs to TOA Reflectance using a two step process:
The first step is to convert the DNs to radiance values using the bias and gain
values specific to the individual scene you are working with.
The second step converts the radiance data to TOA reflectance.
If you are working with Landsat data from the USGS in the USGS GeoTIFF with
Metadata format, ENVI can easily convert these data in a single step. This process
is described in #2 of this Part II. However, for all other Landsat data, you will need
to apply the two-step process by using band math. This process is described in #3 of
this PartII.
The data files used in the lab is in the USGS GeoTIFF with Metadata format. Thus
we could try both ways.

#1 View and Display TM images

1. To open the raw TM data, from the Main ENVI menu bar select File/Open
Image File and Browse in the \data\TM directory for the lab7. You will find the
TIF image files representing the 7 bands of TM sensor and other supplementary
files. Select all these TIF files and Click Open.
2. In the Available Bands List window, select the RGB Color tab and select
bands 4, 3, and 2 and press Load RGB. What you see is a false color composite
TM image.
Note that, this image is in raw DNs and as such need to be converted into TOA
reflectance.
#2 Convert TM images to TOA reflectance for USGS GeoTIFF with Metadata
The USGS now provides data in the GeoTIFF with Metadata format. Using ENVI
software you can easily convert the optical band data to TOA reflectance values.
1. Use Notepad, and open the file LT50420342007252PAC01_MTL.txt. This is the
header file for the TM imagery and contains important information.
2. From the ENVI main menu bar, select Basic Tools / Preprocessing/
Calibration Utilities / Landsat TM. Then the TM Calibration Input File dialog
appears.
3. Select band 1 LT50420342007252PAC01_B1and click OK. Note that, each time
you can only calibrate only one band. Then the TM Calibration Parameters
dialog appears.
4. You need to fill in all of the calibration parameters. These parameters are from
the file LT50420342007252PAC01_MTL.txt opened in Step 1.

SPACECRAFT_ID = "LANDSAT_5"

DATE_ACQUIRED = 2007-09-09

SUN_ELEVATION = 52.20105801

RADIANCE_MAXIMUM_BAND_1 = 193.000
RADIANCE_MINIMUM_BAND_1 = -1.520

5. Click on the Reflectance radio button, navigate your output file directory, and
enter an output file name B1_TOARef. As a reminder, reflectance values range
from 0.0 to 1.0 and are stored in floating point data format.
6. Repeat step 2-5 for the calibration of band 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7, then name the output
files as B2_TOARef, B3_TOARef, B4_TOARef, B5_TOARef, and B7_TOARef.
Note that, band 6 is the thermal band for temperature, and we wont use it in this
lab.
7. Create a multi-band file from these six individual files, B1_TOARef, B2_TOARef,
B3_TOARef, B4_TOARef, B5_TOARef, and B7_TOARef. Use the Basic Tools /
Layer Stacking, and make sure that you reorder them sequentially as
B1_TOARef, B2_TOARef, B3_TOARef, B4_TOARef, B5_TOARef, and
B7_TOARef from top to bottom. Then name the output file as TOARef_123457.

#3 Convert TM images to TOA reflectance for other data format

As stated above, this is a two-step process. First you must convert DNs to radiance
values. Then you need to convert these radiance values to reflectance values.
DN to Radiance:
=

( )
()

( ) +

(1)

where - spectral radiance at wavelength ;

- digital number;
- the minimum quantized calibrated pixel value ( = 1);
- the maximum quantized calibrated pixel value ( = 255);
- spectral radiance scales to ;
- spectral radiance scales to ;
You can find the required parameters in the header file for the TM imagery. In this
lab, the header file is LT50420342007252PAC01_MTL.txt.
Radiance to TOA reflectance:
=

(2)

where - spectral reflectance at wavelength ;

- spectral radiance (from earlier step);
- Earth-Sun distance in astronomical units;
- mean solar exoatmospheric irradiances;
- solar zenith angle.
You can find the Earth-Sun distance value from the file \data\ Earth-Sun
distance.xlsx. It was calculated from the Julian day.
(W m-2 m-1) for each TM band is in the following table I:
Table I
Units: ESUN = W/ (m2m)
Band

Landsat 5 TM

1957

1826

1554

1036

215.0

80.67

Solar zenith angle can be obtained from the Landsat TM header file and is equal to
(90- SUN_ELEVATION angle).
Exercise 1: Using this method to convert 1 band DN to TOA reflectance
1. Use Notepad, and open the file LT50420342007252PAC01_MTL.txt.
2. Write down the sun elevation angle
Now calculate 90 this angle =
calculate cos =
.

.
to get the solar zenith angle, . Now

3. From looking at the MTL file, write down the values of

LMIN(RADIANCE_MINIMUM) and LMAX(RADIANCE_MAXIMUM) for
each band:
LMIN

LMAX

Band1
Band2
Band3
Band4
Band5
Band7
4. We now have all the information we need to use equation (1). For instance,
for band 1 would look like:
1 =

(193.000(1.520))
(2551)

( 1) + (1.520)

5. Use this equation in ENVI. Select Basic Tools/Band Math from the Main ENVI
menu bar. Write in the expression, using the term b1 to denote B1. Navigate to
your output directory and enter an output file name B1_TOARad.

The file is now in radiance.

6. To convert this file to TOA reflectance, we need to parameterize equation (2).
For ESUN, write down the band 1 value from Table I =
.
For d, find the acquisition date of the image from the MTL file =
using something like Excel convert this date to Julian Days (JD) =
go to the Excel file Earth-Sun distance.xlsx and write down its d value =
Note that 1st January = JD 1 and 31st December = JD 365.

and
. Then
.

7. We now have all the information we need to use equation (2). For instance,
for band 1 would look like:
1 =

1 (1.0072409)2
1957cos(9052.20105801)

8. Use this equation in ENVI. Select Basic Tools/Band Math from the Main ENVI
menu bar. Write in the expression, using the term b1 to denote B1_TOARad.

Navigate to your output directory and enter an output file name B1_TOARef_II.

9. Repeat step 4-8 for the calibration of band 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7, then name the output
files as B2_TOARef_II, B3_TOARef_II, B4_TOARef_II, B5_TOARef_II, and
B7_TOARef_II.
10.Create a multi-band file from these six individual files, B1_TOARef_II,
B2_TOARef_II, B3_TOARef_II, B4_TOARef_II, B5_TOARef_II, and
B7_TOARef_II. Use the Basic Tools / Layer Stacking, and make sure that you
reorder them sequentially as B1_TOARef_2, B2_TOARef_2, B3_TOARef_2,
B4_TOARef_2, B5_TOARef_2, and B7_TOARef_2 from top to bottom. Then
name the output file as TOARef_II_123457.
11.Compare TOARef_II_123457 with TOARef_123457 you created earlier: link
these two images and see the values for the same band at the same location. The
values for the same band at the same location should be same or very close.

Part II: Atmospheric Correction

Remotely sensed radiance includes two parts: one from the target area (which is what
we want), the other one is from the path (path radiance, which is what we do not
want). The process to remove the path radiance is called atmospheric correction.
There are two types of atmospheric corrections: absolute atmospheric correction;
and relative radiometric correction. Dark Object Subtraction (DOS) is a simple
relative radiometric correction. In this lab, we will do a simple DOS correction.
The principals of DOS include:
Find the darkest object in the image;
Assume that its spectral reflectance should be all zero (target radiance);
The measured values above zero are assumed to be the atmospheric noise (or
path radiance) and uniformly distributed on the image area;
Subtract the path radiance from radiance for each pixel of the image, and then
we should get a relatively atmospheric free image.
Usually these dark objects are water bodies since they have very low reflectance.
1. In ENVI, the DOS is called Dark Subtract.
Click Basic Tool / Preprocessing / General Purpose Utilities / Dark Subtract,
select TOARef_II_123457 image as the input file, and click OK.
2. In the Dark Subtraction Parameters dialog, select Band Minimum as subtraction
method.
This means that the minimum value of each band will be automatically selected,
and then this value will be subtracted from all pixels in this band.
3. In the Dark Subtraction Parameters dialog, click Choose radio button, navigate
to your output directory and name it as DOS_123457. Click OK.

DOS_123457 is representing the ground reflectance image which is corrected for

atmospheric effects.
Exercise 2: upload the atmospheric corrected image to your dropbox. Since the file
DOS_123457 is too big, you just need to clip part of this image and upload it.
Tips:

From ENVI main menu, click Basic Tools / Resize Data, select DOS_123457 as input
file.
Click Spatial Subset radio button, the Select Spatial Subset appears: in the Samples
field, setup it as 1 to 500; in the Lines field, setup it as 1 to 500.Click OK.
Then return back to the Resize Data Input File dialog, click OK.
Navigate to your output directory and name the output file as DOS_123457_clip.
Upload DOS_123457_clip and its header file to your dropbox.

Exercise 3: Compare changes before atmospheric correction and after atmospheric

correction: TOARef_II_123457 VS. DOS_123457.
Tips:

Display TOARef_II_123457 image in RGB color (Band 4, 3, 2) in Display #1.

Display DOS_123457 image in RGB color (Band 4, 3, 2) in Display #2.
Link these two files and compare their Z Profile (Spectrum) for the same targets at
the same location.
Select different targets (e.g., vegetation, water bodies), and see the difference of the
spectrum before and after atmospheric correction.
Take a screenshot for your comparison result. Try to describe the changes before and
after atmospheric correction or explain that.

Homework
1. Explain DNs, radiance, and reflectance (definitions and units). What is the
equation converting DNs to radiance, and then to reflectance?
2. Explain why we need to do atmospheric correction in remote sensing.