Sensitivity analysis for CAS500-4 atmospheric correction using simulated images and suggestion of the use of geostationary satellite-based atmospheric parameters

Abstract

As part of the next-generation Compact Advanced Satellite 500 (CAS500) project, CAS500-4 is scheduled to be launched in 2025 focusing on the remote sensing of agriculture and forestry. To obtain quantitative information on vegetation from satellite images, it is necessary to acquire surface reflectance through atmospheric correction. Thus, it is essential to develop an atmospheric correction method suitable for CAS500-4. Since the absorption and scattering characteristics in the atmosphere vary depending on the wavelength, it is needed to analyze the sensitivity of atmospheric correction parameters such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) and water vapor (WV) considering the wavelengths of CAS500-4. In addition, as CAS500-4 has only five channels (blue, green, red, red edge, and near-infrared), making it difficult to directly calculate key parameters for atmospheric correction, external parameter data should be used. Therefore, this study performed a sensitivity analysis of the key parameters (AOD, WV, and O3) using the simulated images based on Sentinel-2 satellite data, which has similar wavelength specifications to CAS500-4, and examined the possibility of using the products of GEOKOMPSAT-2A (GK2A) as atmospheric parameters. The sensitivity analysis showed that AOD was the most important parameter with greater sensitivity in visible channels than in the near-infrared region. In particular, since AOD change of 20% causes about a 100% error rate in the blue channel surface reflectance in forests, a highly reliable AOD is needed to obtain accurate surface reflectance. The atmospherically corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD and WV was compared with the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data through the separability index of the known land cover pixels. The result showed that two corrected surface reflectance had similar Seperability index (SI) values, the atmospheric corrected surface reflectance based on the GK2A AOD showed higher SI than the Sentinel-2 L2A reflectance data in short-wavelength channels. Thus, it is judged that the parameters provided by GK2A can be fully utilized for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4. The research findings will provide a basis for atmospheric correction of the CAS500-4 in the future. © This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.