Namib Desert 1

EROS Cal/Val Center of Excellence (ECCOE)
Test Sites Catalog
Namib Desert 1
Landsat 8 LandsatLook Image Path 179 Row 77 Acquired 24 Jun 2020 with ROI indicated Google Earth Image centered on Namib Desert 1 ROI

Description

Namib Desert 1 is a vicarious calibration site located 162 kilometers (km) southeast of the Gobabeb instrumented site in Namibia, Africa (S 23.550, E 15.033). The Namib Desert has swirl dune patterns separated by homogeneous areas. The suitable area is 25 km x 25 km, although there is a color gradient across east-west. Because of this, a 10 km x 10 km or 15 km x 15 km area performs better. Swirl dune patterns disappear toward the coast (west). It has been observed that the site in Namibia has lower reflectance levels in the visible channels (about 0.28 at 670 nm), which could limit its use outside of Near Infrared [2].

Usability

Namib Desert 1 has been used as vicarious calibration test site for sensor calibration. 

Closest AERONET station = Gobabeb [23.56°, 15.04°] 

Location (City, State, Country):
Namiba, Africa
Landsat WRS - 2 Path / Row:
179/77
Center Latitude (degrees):
S 24.98
Center Longitude (degrees):
E 15.27
CEOS Region of Interest

S 24.98, E 15.27

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):
15 x 15
UTM Zone:
33
Altitude above sea level (meters):
691
Purpose:
Radiometry
Status:
Active

References:
  1. Exploitation of the CEOS Pseudo Invariant Calibration Sites (PICS) for Vicarious Calibration of Optical Imagers. http://calvalportal.ceos.org/pics-reports.
  2. Bacour, Cédric, Xavier Briottet, François-Marie Bréon, Françoise Viallefont-Robinet, and Marc Bouvet. "Revisiting Pseudo Invariant Calibration Sites (PICS) over sand deserts for vicarious calibration of optical imagers at 20 km and 100 km scales." Remote Sensing 11, no. 10 (2019): 1166.

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.