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Landsat 4 Thematic Mapper Calibration UpdateThe Landsat-4 Thematic Mapper collected imagery of the Earth's surface from 1982 to 1993. Although largely overshadowed by Landsat 5, which was launched in 1984, Landsat 4 TM imagery extends the Thematic Mapper-based record of the Earth back to 1982 and also substantially supplements the image archive collected by Landsat 5. To provide a consistent calibration record for the TM instruments, Landsat 4 TM was cross-calibrated to Landsat 5 using nearly simultaneous overpass imagery of pseudo-invariant calibration sites (PICS) in the time period of 1988 through 1990. To determine if the radiometric gain of Landsat 4 had changed over its lifetime, time series from two PICS locations, a Saharan site known as Libya 4 and a site in southwest North America, commonly referred to as the Sonoran Desert PICS, were developed. Results indicated that Landsat 4 had been very stable over its lifetime with no discernible degradation in sensor performance in all the reflective bands except band 1. In contrast, band 1 exhibited a 12% decay in responsivity over the lifetime of the instrument. Results from this work have been implemented at USGS EROS, which enables users of Landsat TM data sets to obtain consistently calibrated data from Landsat 4 and 5 TM as well as Landsat 7 ETM+ instruments.
Document ID
20110015528
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Helder, Dennis (South Dakota State Univ. Brookings, SD, United States)
Malla. Rimy
Mettler, Cory (American Science and Technology Chicago, IL, United States)
Markham, Brian (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Micijevic, Esad (Geological Survey United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2011
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Report/Patent Number
GSFC.JA.4947.2011
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

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