AUTOMATED LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE RETRIEVAL FROM LANDSAT 8 SATELLITE IMAGERY: A CASE STUDY OF DIYARBAKIR - TURKEY

Abstract

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is an essential climate parameter, related to surface energy balance. The new instrument which was called Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) carried on board of the new generation of Landsat 8 captures the temperature of the Earth's surface in two bands, band 10 and band 11 with spatial resolution of 100m. The main objective of this study was to develop a tool making the LST retrieval process quite simple and automated. In this study, Radiative Transfer Equation (RTE) method has been employed in ArcGIS Model Builder to retrieve LST from Landsat 8 satellite imagery. The user just inputs required bands (Band4, Band5, and Band10) and a couple of parameters then the tool outputs the final LST imagery automatically. The tool first makes the conversions to top of atmosphere (TOA) radiance and reflectance. Then NDVI is calculated based on NIR and RED bands reflectances. Land surface emissivity is calculated based on NDVI Thresholds Method (NDVI-THM) which was developed by Sobrino et al. (2008). Finally, the tool calculates land surface temperatures in degrees Celsius.