FlexBRDF: A Flexible BRDF Correction for Grouped Processing of Airborne Imaging Spectroscopy Flightlines

Bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) effects are a persistent issue for the analysis of vegetation in airborne imaging spectroscopy data, especially when mosaicking results from adjacent flightlines. With the advent of large airborne imaging efforts from NASA and the U.S. National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), there is increasing need for methods that are flexible and automatable across images with diverse land cover. Flexible bidirectional reflectance distribution function (FlexBRDF) is built upon the widely used kernel method, with additional features including stratified random sampling across flightline groups, dynamic land cover stratification by normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), interpolation of correction coefficients across NDVI bins, and the use of a reference solar zenith angle. We demonstrate FlexBRDF using nine long (150-400 km) airborne visible/infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS)-Classic flightlines collected on 22 May 2013 over Southern California, where diverse land cover and a wide range of solar illumination yield significant BRDF effects. We further test the approach on additional AVIRIS-Classic data from California, AVIRIS-Next Generation data from the Arctic and India, and NEON imagery from Wisconsin. Comparison of overlapping areas of flightlines show that models built from multiple flightlines performed better than those built for single images (root mean square error improved up to 2.3% and mean absolute deviation 2.5%). Standardization to a common solar zenith angle among a flightline group improved performance, and interpolation across bins minimized between-bin boundaries. While BRDF corrections for individual sites suffice for local studies, FlexBRDF is an open source option that is compatible with bulk processing of large airborne data sets covering diverse land cover needed for calibration/validation of forthcoming spaceborne imaging spectroscopy missions.