Layer stacking of Landsat 8 bands for SEBAL process

[MuhammadNaufilZahid]

Hi, This is my first post in this platform. I have a question regarding layer stacking option for Landsat 8 bands. My objective is ET estimation using SEBAL, and SEBAL requires bands 2-7 and 10, 11 (thermal) for its various analyses. How do I stack them together since their resolution is different? Would 100 m thermal bands (resampled to 30 m) cause problems for me when i estimate fluxes? And, what should be the order of the bands in which they are stacked?

[PeterBecker · Accepted solution]

You can stack any bands together in a function chain either as part of a layer or a mosaic datasets. So long as the bands are georeferenced there is no need for the pixel size to be the same. As always you do need to consider what resampling method you apply when accessing the images. (Would suggest bilinear).

The order of the bands would be as you define them in the function chain. I'm not sure if the current raster products (IE what you get when you click on a landsat .met file in catalog) creates a layer that includes both MS and Thermal bands. Would be interesting to know what function chain you foresee to compute this.

[MuhammadNaufilZahid]

Hi PeterBecker! Thank you for your comments. I would like to further explain my contention here: The Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) uses both MS and Thermal bands. The Landsat 8 collection 2 Level 1 archive has bands of both OLI and TIRS sensors. The thermal bands have been resampled by USGS in cubic convolution to 30 meters resolution in order to match with the MS bands resolution. 
For Landsat 5 TM, bands are stacked in order 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 with 6 being the thermal band. For Landsat7 ETM+, bands are stacked in order 6 (high and low gain) and 1-5, 7. So, I was not sure as to what should be my approach for Landsat 8 bands whose thermal bands are of lower resolution but have been already resampled to 30 m. 
Current raster products include both MS and thermal bands for Landsat 8. I am interested in estimating sensible heat flux, soil heat flux, instantaneous heat flux, surface emissivity, albedo etc, and for this purpose, i need to know the order of bands being stacked.

I have attached a snapshot of bands order from a SEBAL manual here.