Nima Pahlevan
Claudio Clemente Faria Barbosa
Evlyn Marcia Leao de Moraes de Novo
Rejane Souza Paulino
Vitor Souza Martins
Eric Vermote
Christopher J. Crawford
Daniel Andrade Maciel
2023
<p><span>Originally developed for terrestrial science and applications, the US Geological Survey Landsat surface reflectance (SR) archive spanning ~ 40 yr of observations has been increasingly utilized in large-scale water-quality studies. These products, however, have not been rigorously validated using in situ measured reflectance. This letter quantifies and demonstrates the quality of the SR products by harnessing a sizeable global dataset (</span><i>N</i><span> = 1100). We found that the Landsat 8/9 SR in the green and red bands marginally meet the targeted accuracy requirements (30%), whereas the uncertainties in the blue and coastal-aerosol bands ranged from 48% to 110%. We further observed > +25% biases in the visible bands of Landsat 5/7 SR, which can introduce an apparent downward trend when applied in time-series analyses combined with Landsat 8/9. Users must exercise caution when using this archive for trend analyses, and progress in atmospheric correction is required to foster advanced applications of the Landsat archive for aquatic science.</span></p>
application/pdf
10.1002/lol2.10344
en
Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography
Validity of the Landsat surface reflectance archive for aquatic science: Implications for cloud-based analysis
article