Is it possible to do radiometric calibration on Landsat 8 using the raster calculator?

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02-17-2015 01:48 PM
GordonSeymour1
New Contributor

I am trying to sort out the most convenient way to perform radiometric calibration (to TOA reflectance values) on Landsat 8 OLI imagery data. I know it is fairly easy to do this using other applications such as ENVI, however I do not have this program at my disposal, so I was hoping I could do this correction task in ArcGIS (10.1).

 

I am already familiar with the formulas required to do this calibration manually, but am having a hard time trying to come up with a viable expression in the Raster Calculator tool.

 

Does anyone have an expression "template" I could use or work from? Any advice about this issue would be most welcome!

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3 Replies
DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

what have you got so far as an equation

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JeffreyEvans
Occasional Contributor III

Since the bands are quantized and calibrated, this is very straight forward for Landsat 8.

You will need a few band specific parameters from the scenes metadata. The scaling factors are standard so, once you have the band-specific values they can apply to any scene. However, this does not apply to the sun elevation, which is scene specific.

     Mp = REFLECTANCE_MULT_BAND_x (band-specific multiplicative rescaling factor)

     Ap = REFLECTANCE_ADD_BAND_x (band-specific additive rescaling factor)

     SE = SUN_ELEVATION (sun elevation angle)

Then, at-sensor reflectance is just a matter of some simple raster algebra in the raster calculator.

     ( Mp * Qcal + Ap ) / sin(SE)

where; Qcal = digital numbers (DN) raster of band n

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JillKelly
New Contributor III

The process is quite straightforward in Raster Calculator, but if you have already committed to the Composite Bands/Mosaic Dataset/Image Analysis window, it is completely opaque.  Raster Calculator doesn't work in that context, and while there are functions for "Apparent Reflectance" and -- inexplicably -- "Sentinel 1 Radiometric Calibration," it's not at all clear how one would put together such a function for Landsat.