An algorithm to retrieve Land Surface Temperature using Landsat-8 Dataset

Abstract

Soil moisture, surface temperature, and vegetation are variables that play an important role in our environment which in turn increases the demand for accurate estimation of certain geophysical parameters such as weather, flooding, and land classification. However, for accurate Land Surface Temperature (LST) estimation, remotely sensed data of key environmental forms were considered and applied in this research. The goal of this study was to apply a suitable algorithm for LST estimation from the Landsat-8 dataset that gives a great accuracy when compared with in-situ observations.

Spatial and temporal Landsat-8 data were acquired which provided the analytical structure for linking specific data successfully due to fine resolutions. The data were then applied to determine brightness temperatures, vegetation cover, and surface emissivity which demonstrated the effectiveness of the Split-Window Algorithm as an optimum method for LST retrieval from satellite.

The results show temperature variation over a long period of time can be used in observing varying temperature values based on terrain i.e. High temperatures in fully built up areas and low temperatures in the well-vegetated regions. Finally, accurate LST estimation is important for land classification, energy budget estimations as well as agricultural production.

Keywords: Emissivity, Landsat, Land Surface Temperature, Split-Window, Vegetation