Analysis and quantification of seabed adjacency effects in the subsurface upward radiance in shallow waters.

The estimation of the bathymetry and the detection of targets located on the seabed of shallow waters using remote sensing techniques is of great interest for many environmental applications in coastal areas such as benthic habitat mapping, monitoring of seabed aquatic plants and the subsequent management of littoral zones. For that purpose, knowledge of the optical effects induced by the neighborhood of a given seabed target and by the water column itself is required to better interpret the subsurface upward radiance measured by satellite or shipborne radiometers. In this paper, the various sources of photons that contribute to the subsurface upward radiance are analyzed.

Estimation of soil moisture content from the spectral reflectance of bare soils in the 0.4-2.5 µm domain.

This work aims to compare the performance of new methods to estimate the Soil Moisture Content (SMC) of bare soils from their spectral signatures in the reflective domain (0.4-2.5 µm) in comparison with widely used spectral indices like Normalized Soil Moisture Index (NSMI) and Water Index SOIL (WISOIL).

OSIS: remote sensing code for estimating aerosol optical properties in urban areas from very high spatial resolution images.

The achievement of new satellite or airborne remote sensing instruments enables the more precise study of cities with metric spatial resolutions. For studies such as the radiative characterization of urban features, knowledge of the atmosphere and particularly of aerosols is required to perform first an atmospheric compensation of the remote sensing images. However, to our knowledge, no efficient aerosol characterization technique adapted both to urban areas and to very high spatial resolution images has yet been developed.

A nonlinear unmixing method in the infrared domain.

This paper presents the physical principle of a new (to our knowledge) unmixing method to retrieve optical properties (reflectance and emissivity) and surface temperatures over a heterogeneous and a folded landscape using hyperspectral and multiangular airborne images acquired with high spatial resolution. In fact, over such a complex scene, the linear mixing model of the reflectance commonly used in the reflective domain is no longer valid in the IR range for the two following reasons: multiple reflections due to the three-dimensional (3D) structure and the radiative phenomenon introduced by the temperature by way of the black body law. Thus, to solve this nonlinear unmixing problem, a new physical model of aggregation is used.

Aggregation process of optical properties and temperature over heterogeneous surfaces in infrared domain.

We propose a modeling of the aggregation processes of optical properties and temperature over the heterogeneous landscape in the infrared domain (3-14 microm). The main objectives of the modeling are to understand how these parameters aggregate and to study their links at different spatial scales. As the landscape is described at each scale by its radiative parameters, general equations linking the radiative parameters at a given high spatial scale to those at a rough scale are proposed.

Thermal infrared radiance simulation with aggregation modeling (TITAN): an infrared radiative transfer model for heterogeneous three-dimensional surface--application over urban areas.

The thermal infrared radiance simulation with aggregation modeling (TITAN) model, presented here, is an innovative transfer radiative code in the infrared domain (3-14 microm). It takes into account the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the landscape and simulates all the radiative components introduced by this 3D structure, which are due to the reflection and emission of walls and sloping roofs. Examples are given to illustrate the new opportunities offered by TITAN over urban areas.

Remote sensing of aerosol plumes: a semianalytical model.

A semianalytical model, named APOM (aerosol plume optical model) and predicting the radiative effects of aerosol plumes in the spectral range [0.4,2.5 microm], is presented in the case of nadir viewing.

Sensor radiance physical model for rugged heterogeneous surfaces in the 3-14 mum region.

We present a physical model describing the radiance acquired by an infrared sensor over a rugged heterogeneous surface. This model predicts the radiance seen over complex landscapes like urban areas and provides an accurate analysis of the signal, as each component is available at ground and sensor level. Plus, it allows data comparison from different instruments.