Landsat cross-calibration based on near simultaneous imaging of common ground targets

Abstract The paper presents the results of an extended analysis of image data sets acquired during the tandem-orbit configuration in 1999 for the purposes of radiometric cross-calibration of the Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) sensors. Earlier work focused on the tandem pair for the Railroad Valley Playa, Nevada (RVPN) site to tie down the Landsat-5 TM calibration based on the more accurate Landsat-7 ETM+ calibration. This paper describes new results based on as many as eight tandem image pairs. The additional tandem images are of primarily vegetated areas for which little or no ground reference data were available. Increasing the number of tandem pairs yielded results for the Landsat 5 TM gain coefficients within approximately ± 1% of the RVPN-based results in spectral bands 1, 2, 3 and 7, and within − 2% and − 4% of the RVPN-based results for spectral bands 4 and 5, respectively.