Atmospheric Correction of Landsat-8/OLI Imagery in Turbid Estuarine Waters: A Case Study for the Pearl River Estuary

Several methods have been proposed for atmospheric correction over turbid waters, including near-infrared (NIR) band based or short-wave infrared (SWIR) band-based where the signal in turbid waters can be assumed zero. Here, we adopt a new infrared extrapolation method to extend the existing turbid water atmospheric correction of the operational land imager (OLI) data on Landsat-8 platform. The atmospheric correction uses the extrapolated Rayleigh-corrected reflectance at NIR and SWIR bands to derive the ratios of NIR to SWIR and visible aerosol single-scattering contributions (aerosol epsilon). Taking the Pearl River Estuary as an example, the magnitude and spatial distribution of reflectance from OLI compare well with those of concurrent moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer /Aqua based on SWIRE atmospheric correction method. The linear regression coefficients between the resampled OLI and Aqua data have demonstrated the proposed atmospheric correction method can provide robust and realistic reflectance. The advantages of the high spatial resolution made the OLI data a good source for applications in coastal and estuarine waters.