Comparison of LANDSAT-2 and Field Spectrometer Reflectance Signatures of South Texas Rangeland Plant Communities

We tested the accuracy of an atmospheric correction method that depends on clear water bodies to infer solar and atmospheric parameters for radiative transfer equations by measuring the reflectance signature of four prominent south Texas rangeland plants with the Earth Resource Technology (LANDSAT) satellite multispectral scanner (MSS) and a ground-based Exotech Model 20 spectroradiometer. The rangeland plant reflectance produced by the two sensors were correlated with no significant deviation of the slope from unity or of the intercept from zero. These results indicated that the atmospheric correction produced LANDSAT HSS estimates of rangeland plant reflectances that areas accurate as the ground-based Exotech spectroradiometer.