title: Land surface reflectance retrieval from hyperspectral data collected by an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Baotou test site.
abstract: To evaluate the in-flight performance of a new hyperspectral sensor onboard an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV-HYPER), a comprehensive field campaign was conducted over the Baotou test site in China on 3 September 2011. Several portable reference reflectance targets were deployed across the test site. The radiometric performance of the UAV-HYPER sensor was assessed in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the calibration accuracy. The SNR of the different bands of the UAV-HYPER sensor was estimated to be between approximately 5 and 120 over the homogeneous targets, and the linear response of the apparent reflectance ranged from approximately 0.05 to 0.45. The uniform and non-uniform Lambertian land surface reflectance was retrieved and validated using in situ measurements, with root mean square error (RMSE) of approximately 0.01-0.07 and relative RMSE of approximately 5%-12%. There were small discrepancies between the retrieved uniform and non-uniform Lambertian land surface reflectance over the homogeneous targets and under low aerosol optical depth (AOD) conditions (AOD = 0.18). However, these discrepancies must be taken into account when adjacent pixels had large land surface reflectance contrast and under high AOD conditions (e.g. AOD = 1.0).
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environment Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Si-Bo
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Zhao-Liang
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Bo-Hui
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Lingling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Enyu
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Chuanrong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*