White Sands
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The White Sands site is located in south central New Mexico. Although the area has very suitable weather conditions, with many clear days, the calibration site is not ideal because its reflectance is greatly affected by changes in soil moisture. The surface also deviates considerably from a Lambertian response at high solar and viewing zenith angles.
The site is the first designated calibration site for remote sensing of spaceborne optical sensors. University of Arizona engineers have used a 500- by 500-meter area at the specified coordinates. The site has a near-Lambertian response and has been used extensively for vicarious and absolute calibration of satellite imaging sensors due to the surface target types [4]. The alkali flats region of White Sands, using different vicarious methodologies, provided postlaunch radiometric calibration updates for the Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) sensors.
| Location (City, State, Country): |
New Mexico, USA, North America
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|---|---|
| Landsat WRS - 2 Path / Row: |
33/37
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| Center Latitude (degrees): |
N 32.92
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| Center Longitude (degrees): |
W 106.35
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| CEOS Region of Interest |
N 32.92, W 106.35 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 |
| Size of Usable Area (km): |
10 x 15
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| Altitude above sea level (meters): |
1,196
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| Purpose: |
Radiometry
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| Co-located Instrumented Networks: |
AERONET
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| Status: |
Active
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Thome, K., Gellman, D., Parada, R., Biggar, S., Slater, P. and Moran, M., 1993. In-flight radiometric calibration of Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper from 1984 to present. Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), SPIE, 47-59.
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Christopher L. Brest, Indirect calibration of visible channel data, Global and Planetary Change, Volume 4, Issues 1–3, 1991, Pages 271-277, ISSN 0921-8181, https://doi.org/10.1016/0921-8181(91)90105-6.
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B. L. Markham et al., "Radiometric Calibration Of Aircraft And Satellite Sensors At White Sands, Nm," 10th Annual International Symposium on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, College Park, Maryland, USA, 1990, pp. 515-518, doi: 10.1109/IGARSS.1990.688538.
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Teillet, P. M., P. N. Slater, Y. Ding, R. P. Santer, R. D. Jackson, and M. S. Moran. "Three methods for the absolute calibration of the NOAA AVHRR sensors in-flight." Remote sensing of Environment 31, no. 2 (1990): 105-120.
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.