The absolute radiometric calibration of the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager using the reflectance-based approach and the Radiometric Calibration Test Site (RadCaTS)

Landsat 8 was launched on 11 February 2013 as the newest platform in the Landsat program. It contains two Earth-observing instruments, one of which is the Operational Land Imager (OLI). OLI includes an onboard radiometric calibration system that is used to monitor changes in its responsivity throughout the mission lifetime, and it consists of Spectralon solar diffuser panels as well as tungsten lamp assemblies. External techniques are used to monitor both OLI and its calibration system, and they include lunar views, side slither maneuvers of the satellite, and ground-based vicarious calibration. This work presents the absolute radiometric calibration results for Landsat 8 OLI that were obtained using two ground-based measurement techniques. The first is the reflectance-based approach, where measurements of atmospheric and surface properties are made during a Landsat 8 overpass, and it requires personnel to be on site during the time of measurement. The second uses the Radiometric Calibration Test Site (RadCaTS), which was developed by the Remote Sensing Group in the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona so that radiometric calibration data can be collected without the requirement of on-site personnel. It allows more data to be collected annually, which increases the temporal sampling of trending results.