Comparison of ASTER Global Emissivity Database (ASTER-GED) With In-Situ Measurement In Italian Vulcanic Areas

Abstract:

LP DAAC released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Emissivity Database (GED) datasets on April 2, 2014. The database was developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology. The database includes land surface emissivities derived from ASTER data acquired over the contiguous United States, Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Australia, Europe, and China.

In this work we compare ground measurements of emissivity acquired by means of Micro-FTIR (Fourier
Thermal Infrared spectrometer) instrument with the ASTER emissivity map extract from ASTER-GED and the emissivity obtained by using single ASTER data. Through this analysis we want to investigate differences existing between the ASTER-GED dataset (average from 2000 to 2008 seasoning independent) and fall in-situ emissivity measurement. Moreover the role of different spatial resolution characterizing ASTER and MODIS, 90mt and 1km respectively, by comparing them with in situ measurements. Possible differences can be due also to the different algorithms used for the emissivity estimation, Temperature and Emissivity Separation algorithm for ASTER TIR band( Gillespie et al, 1998) and the classification-based emissivity method (Snyder and al, 1998) for MODIS.

In-situ emissivity measurements have been collected during dedicated fields campaign on Mt. Etna vulcano and Solfatara of Pozzuoli.

Gillespie, A. R., Matsunaga, T., Rokugawa, S., & Hook, S. J. (1998). Temperature and emissivity separation from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 36, 1113−1125.

Snyder, W.C., Wan, Z., Zhang, Y., & Feng, Y.-Z. (1998). Classification-based emissivity for land surface temperature measurement from space. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 19, 2753-2574.