Remote Sensing, Vol. 11, Pages 1710: Developing Transformation Functions for VEN?S and Sentinel-2 Surface Reflectance over Israel (Remote Sensing)

Vegetation and Environmental New micro Spacecraft (VENμS) and Sentinel-2 are both ongoing earth observation missions that provide high-resolution multispectral imagery at 10 m (VENμS) and 10–20 m (Sentinel-2), at relatively high revisit frequencies (two days for VENμS and five days for Sentinel-2). Sentinel-2 provides global coverage, whereas VENμS covers selected regions, including parts of Israel. To facilitate the combination of these sensors into a unified time-series, a transformation model between them was developed using imagery from the region of interest. For this purpose, same-day acquisitions from both sensor types covering the surface reflectance over Israel, between April 2018 and November 2018, were used in this study. Transformation coefficients from VENμS to Sentinel-2 surface reflectance were produced for their overlapping spectral bands (i.e., visible, red-edge and near-infrared). The performance of these spectral transformation functions was assessed using several methods, including orthogonal distance regression (ODR), the mean absolute difference (MAD), and spectral angle mapper (SAM). Post-transformation, the value of the ODR slopes were close to unity for the transformed VENμS reflectance with Sentinel-2 reflectance, which indicates near-identity of the two datasets following the removal of systemic bias. In addition, the transformation outputs showed better spectral similarity compared to the original images, as indicated by the decrease in SAM from 0.093 to 0.071. Similarly, the MAD was reduced post-transformation in all bands (e.g., the blue band MAD decreased from 0.0238 to 0.0186, and in the NIR it decreased from 0.0491 to 0.0386). Thus, the model helps to combine the images from Sentinel-2 and VENμS into one time-series that facilitates continuous, temporally dense vegetation monitoring.