Use of IRS-P4 Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) images for tracing the red edge of the terrestrial vegetation reflectance spectrum

A methodology is put forward to retrieve the red edge for terrestrial vegetated regions of IRS P4 Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) images. The objective is to utilize land-related portions of the archived OCM images that contain a significant amount of digital information on land cover. OCM band data were simulated from spectroradiometric reflectance of fresh green leaves and hyperspectral reflectance of vegetated regions derived from EO-1 Hyperion images. The red edge recovered from these model data using numerical techniques of Lagrange interpolation and inverted Gaussian was compared with the original one and reasonable accuracy was obtained. The technique was then applied to the actual red and near-infrared bands of OCM images, and red edge reflectance curves were computed for evergreen, deciduous and mangrove forest regions of the images for winter and spring seasons. Consistent results were obtained for seasonal changes, and vegetated and non-vegetated areas could be distinguished.