TY - JOUR
T1 - Illuminating the capabilities of Landsat 8 for mapping night lights
AU - Levin, Noam
AU - Phinn, Stuart
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - Remote sensing of night-lights has been enhanced in recent years with the availability of the new VIIRS Day and Night band, the commercial EROS-B satellite and astronaut photographs from the International Space Station. However, dedicated space-borne multispectral sensors offering radiance calibrated night lights imagery are yet to be launched. Here we examined the capabilities of Landsat 8 to acquire night time light images of the Earth. Examining seven night-time Landsat 8 scenes, we found that brightly lit areas in both urban (Berlin, Las Vegas, Nagoya and Tel-Aviv) and gas flares (Basra, Kuwait) areas were detected in all eight bands of Landsat 8. The threshold for detection of lit areas was approximately 0.4 W/m2/μm/sr in bands 1-5 and 8 of Landsat 8. This threshold level was higher than Landsat dark noise levels, and slightly lower than post launch Landsat 8 OLI band dependent noise equivalent radiance difference levels. Drawing on this, we call on the USGS to plan an annual night-time acquisition of urban and gas flares areas globally, and to enable the performance of the future Landsat 10 to be established in a way that it will be sensitive enough to image the Earth at night, thus performing as Nightsat during the night.
AB - Remote sensing of night-lights has been enhanced in recent years with the availability of the new VIIRS Day and Night band, the commercial EROS-B satellite and astronaut photographs from the International Space Station. However, dedicated space-borne multispectral sensors offering radiance calibrated night lights imagery are yet to be launched. Here we examined the capabilities of Landsat 8 to acquire night time light images of the Earth. Examining seven night-time Landsat 8 scenes, we found that brightly lit areas in both urban (Berlin, Las Vegas, Nagoya and Tel-Aviv) and gas flares (Basra, Kuwait) areas were detected in all eight bands of Landsat 8. The threshold for detection of lit areas was approximately 0.4 W/m2/μm/sr in bands 1-5 and 8 of Landsat 8. This threshold level was higher than Landsat dark noise levels, and slightly lower than post launch Landsat 8 OLI band dependent noise equivalent radiance difference levels. Drawing on this, we call on the USGS to plan an annual night-time acquisition of urban and gas flares areas globally, and to enable the performance of the future Landsat 10 to be established in a way that it will be sensitive enough to image the Earth at night, thus performing as Nightsat during the night.
KW - Cities
KW - Gas flares
KW - Landsat 8
KW - Night lights
KW - VIIRS
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84966330163&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.021
DO - 10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.021
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AN - SCOPUS:84966330163
SN - 0034-4257
VL - 182
SP - 27
EP - 38
JO - Remote Sensing of Environment
JF - Remote Sensing of Environment
ER -