Improved Strategies to Enhance Calibration and Validation of Landsat Thermal Data

As the United States Geological Survey (USGS) moves toward delivering higher-level Landsat products to users in their Collection 2 release, the next several years are critical to ensure that these products are developed with highly-calibrated sensor data and that they are adequately validated. The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has a long history of supporting Landsat thermal calibration and in recent years has supported the development & validation of potential surface temperature products for the Landsat thermal archive. This work proposes to use lessons learned over the past twenty years to further enhance Landsat thermal calibration and to use recent tools & technologies developed at RIT to advance the current state-of-the-art with respect to surface temperature product validation. The anticipated outcome of this research is an operational calibration & validation network that provides transparent support to the calibration of Landsat thermal data and verification of their corresponding higher-level products.