Radiometric corrections of visible/infrared satellite data over terrestrial environments: angular, atmospheric and topographic effects

Monitoring ground conditions through land-surface reflectance retrieval from satellite data in the solar spectrum requires accurate radiometric corrections. Such corrections have been usually decoupled in atmospheric, topographic and intrinsic angular corrections. Actually, the decoupling is only possible when the effects are described at the first order of approximation, and the actual coupling introduces nonlinear terms which must be also accounted for. In a full description of the effects, inversion of surface reflectance from measured radiance values becomes almost impossible, unless some assumptions are made. In this paper, a review is made of the different alternative formulations, and a complete model is proposed to simultaneously account for spatially varying atmospheric, topographic and angular effects in such a way that practical application to actual remote sensing data (model inversion) is possible while still keeping consideration of all the major intervening effects