Ivanpah Playa

EROS Cal/Val Center of Excellence (ECCOE)
Test Sites Catalog
Ivanpah Playa
Landsat 8 LandsatLook Image Path 39 Row 35 Acquired 06 Aug 2020 with ROI indicated Google Earth Image centered on Ivanpah Playa ROI

Description

The Ivanpah Playa test site is a dry lakebed located in the Mohave Desert along the border of California and Nevada. The large homogenous landscape of this Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) LANDNET site is convenient to use and is spatially uniform over 1 km by 1 km area; however, there is seasonal variability. There is little to no vegetation in this area which also makes it attractive for the calibration activities. 

Usability

The site is well-characterized and is routinely used by many satellite missions for cross-sensor calibration, particularly for VNIR and SWIR bands. The spectral stability of Hyperspectral Imaging Satellite (HySIS) sensor has been analyzed using this site [1]. The site has been used for absolute calibration of RapidEye multispectral imager [2]. There is a thermal solar plant near this vicarious calibration target that could possibly be used as a new special calibration target [4]. 

Location (City, State, Country):
Primm Valley, Nevada/California, USA, North America
Landsat WRS - 2 Path / Row:
39/35
Center Latitude (degrees):
N 35.57
Center Longitude (degrees):
W 115.40
CEOS Region of Interest

N 35.57, W 115.40

Search this area in EarthExplorer (Landsat 8-9 Collection 2 Level-1) - date range, datasets, cloud cover and other criteria can be modified once initial results are returned

KML (Need help with this file?)

Size of Usable Area (km):
1 x 1
Altitude above sea level (meters):
813
Purpose:
Radiometry
Co-located Instrumented Networks:
AERONET
Status:
Active

References:
  1. S. Mahalingam et al., "Reflectance based vicarious calibration of HySIS sensors and spectral stability study over pseudo-invariant sites," 2019 IEEE Recent Advances in Geoscience and Remote Sensing : Technologies, Standards and Applications (TENGARSS), Kochi, Kerala, India, 2019, pp. 132-136, doi: 10.1109/TENGARSS48957.2019.8976044. 
  2. Naughton, Denis, Andreas Brunn, Jeffrey S. Czapla-Myers, Scott Douglass, Michael Thiele, Horst Weichelt, and Michael Oxfort. "Absolute radiometric calibration of the RapidEye multispectral imager using the reflectance-based vicarious calibration method." Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 5, no. 1 (2011): 053544. 
  3. Eliel Villa-Aleman, Robert J. Kurzeja, and Malcolm M. Pendergast "Assessment of Ivanpah Playa as a site for thermal vicarious calibration for the MTI satellite", Proc. SPIE 5093, Algorithms and Technologies for Multispectral, Hyperspectral, and Ultraspectral Imagery IX, (23 September 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.485801 
  4. Sun Seekers Unite in Ivanpah Playa (NASA, August 2014)

Additional Images:

Note: This information has been compiled by the USGS ECCOE Team, using the best sources currently known. Updates will be made as more information becomes available. Please contact eccoe@usgs.gov with any updates you would like to contribute.