ALBERT

Description: The Landsat-7 spacecraft carries the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument. This instrument images the Earth land surface in eight parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, termed spectral bands. These spectral images are used to monitor changes in the land surface, so a consistent relationship, i.e., calibration, between the image data and the Earth surface brightness, is required. The ETM+ has several on- board calibration devices that are used to monitor this calibration. The best on-board calibration source employs a flat white painted reference panel and has indicated changes of between 0.5% to 2% per year in the ETM+ response, depending on the spectral band. However, most of these changes are believed to be caused by changes in the reference panel, as opposed to changes in the instrument's sensitivity. This belief is based partially on on-orbit calibrations using instrumented ground sites and observations of "invariant sites", hyper-arid sites of the Sahara and Arabia. Changes determined from these data sets indicate are 0.1% - 0.6% per year. Tests and comparisons to other sensors also indicate that the uncertainty of the calibration is at the 5% level.

Description: As of July, 2000 the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor on Landsat-7 has been operating on-orbit for about 15 months. The ETM+ images the Earth in has eight spectral bands in the visible, near-infrared (IR), short wavelength infrared (SWIR), and thermal portions of the spectrum. Three on-board calibration systems are available for the reflective bands: (1) the Internal Calibrator (IC), (2) the Partial Aperture Solar Calibrator (PASC), and (3) the Full Aperture Solar Calibrator (FASC). The Internal Calibrator also provides the thermal band calibration. Several investigators on the Landsat science team are also regularly performing vicarious calibrations. The internal calibrator, which during much of the pre-launch testing and early on-orbit check out period, showed up to 15% variability with time, has since stabilized as the instrument has assumed a regular schedule of operations and is now typically showing only a few percent variation with time, mostly associated with warm-up. The PASC has been the most variable of the sources: the response to the PASC has increased by as much as 50% is some bands and is oscillating with time, perhaps due to contamination. The FASC has been the most stable of the sources: mid scan response to the FASC diffuser have varied from -4%/yr for band 4 (0.83 microns) to -2%/yr for band 1 (0.49 microns) to +1%/yr for band 7 (2.2 microns). These decreases in response in bands 1-4 would have been about half as large if measured on the right (west) side of the panel and about twice as large if measured on the left side of the panel. The current interpretation is that the FASC diffuser panel is changing non-uniformly in its reflectance characteristics. Vicarious ground measurements have generally been consistent with the pre-launch measurements of the instrument responsivity and have not shown evidence of a change in responsivity with time. The FASC, IC, and vicarious results suggest the instrument has not changed by more than two percent in responsivity since launch and that the absolute calibration is good to the advertised five percent.

Description: The Earth science community needs to generate consistent and standard definitions for spatial, spectral, radiometric, and geometric properties describing passive electro-optical Earth observing sensors and their products. The parameters used to describe sensors and to describe their products are often confused. In some cases, parameters for a sensor and for its products are identical; in other cases, these parameters vary widely. Sensor parameters are bound by the fundamental performance of a system, while product parameters describe what is available to the end user. Products are often resampled, edge sharpened, pan-sharpened, or compressed, and can differ drastically from the intrinsic data acquired by the sensor. Because detailed sensor performance information may not be readily available to an international science community, standardization of product parameters is of primary performance. Spatial product parameters described include Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), point spread function, line spread function, edge response, stray light, edge sharpening, aliasing, ringing, and compression effects. Spectral product parameters discussed include full width half maximum, ripple, slope edge, and out-of-band rejection. Radiometric product properties discussed include relative and absolute radiometry, noise equivalent spectral radiance, noise equivalent temperature diffenence, and signal-to-noise ratio. Geometric product properties discussed include geopositional accuracy expressed as CE90, LE90, and root mean square error. Correlated properties discussed include such parameters as band-to-band registration, which is both a spectral and a spatial property. In addition, the proliferation of staring and pushbroom sensor architectures requires new parameters to describe artifacts that are different from traditional cross-track system artifacts. A better understanding of how various system parameters affect product performance is also needed to better ascertain the utility of existing datasets and products as well as to specify the performance of new sensors and products. Examples of simulations performed for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission illustrate how various parameters affect system and product performance. Specific examples include the effects of ground sample distance, MTF, and band-to-band registration on various products.

Description: The BOREAS RSS-11 team operated a network of five automated (Cimel) and two hand-held (Miami) solar radiometers from 1994 to 1996 during the BOREAS field campaigns. The data provide aerosol optical depth measurements, size distribution, phase function, and column water vapor amounts over points in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada. The data are useful for the correction of remotely sensed aircraft and satellite images. The data are provided in tabular ASCII files.

Description: The technical innovations of precise numerical radiometry, spectral differentiation and seasonally repetitive monitoring, introduced by the Landsat series of satellites, created a new measurement approach for terrestrial monitoring. The Landsat 7 mission, successfully initiated on April 15, 1999, reflects significant progress in realizing the scientific potential of this measurement strategy. Substantial improvements in calibration procedures, both prior to launch and during normal operations, have been accomplished to insure long-term stability in the acquired spectral radiometry. For the first time, Landsat 7 will be operated with a long-term data acquisition plan that will insure, barring national emergencies, that substantially cloud-free, seasonal coverage will be recorded and archived in the US for all land areas of the globe. The expected outcome of these efforts is a rapid improvement in our understanding of the Earth system, as well as conceptual knowledge that will underpin commercial application of this technology. The Cape Town 2000 Symposium will take place approximately nine months after the Landsat 7 satellite and instrument completed its engineering checkout phase and was placed in its final orbit in late June, 1999. Thus, this presentation will provide a timely status report, in a significant international setting, regarding the early on-orbit performance of the Landsat 7 spacecraft, the ETM+ instrument, and the long-term data acquisition strategy that has been implemented. The latest data display and visualization techniques will be utilized to present this significant new source of Earth observation data.