Accuracy of ASTER Level-2 thermal-infrared Standard Products of an agricultural area in Spain

Abstract The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) collects five-channel thermal-infrared images that are calibrated, corrected for atmospheric effects, and then converted to land surface temperature and emissivity products by the ASTER Temperature/Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm. TES scales low- and high-contrast surfaces differently, and has been validated over water (low contrast) and rock (high contrast). Performance of TES over agricultural areas, however, has not been evaluated specifically. To address this issue, field measurements of “ground truth” were made over bare soil in addition to green grass, alfalfa and corn, at an agricultural researc…