Principles of Remote Sensing

Exercise 2
Spectral Reflectance curves

Task description
Objectives of the exercise
Calculate reflectance curves from laboratory measurements and compare with other sources and
materials.

Tasks/activities
1. Use EXCEL to calculate and graph reflectance

2. Compare results

Required material & Data

Equipment:

• PC with EXCEL

Material:

• None

Data:

• Data.xls file containing lab measurement results

EM ENERGY AND REMOTE SENSING
Introduction

Incident Electro-Magnetic (EM) energy on earth materials goes through three fundamental energy
interactions: the energy is partly absorbed, transmitted and/or reflected. This is shown in the
figure below, with the example of a lake.

What you see with your eyes is in fact only the reflected fraction of the incident energy (radiance
ER (λ)). The reflectance property of the object is thus defined as:

R (λ) = ER (λ) / EI (λ)

where

R (λ) is the reflectance,

ER (λ) is the reflected portion of the energy - also called radiance,

EI (λ) is the incident energy - also called irradiance.

All the three are functions of the wavelength.

Since reflectance differs for the same material as function of the wave-length, it is a good idea to
have a look at a graphic presentation of such a function of a given material. We can use this graph
as an identifying tool for surface materials in remotely sensed imagery. It can also help us to
realize changes in the curve when they occur, and to monitor them. Take for example agricultural
crop vegetation. A farmer (also a RS fan) who looks at two reflectance curves of his wheat taken
on two different dates, can recognize if there is a drop in the near infrared NIR range of the spec-
trum (where reflection is usually high for vegetation) and through this, he can realize that
something is wrong in the field.
The graph that represents reflectance as a function of wavelength is called spectral reflectance
curve, sometimes referred to as spectral signature. One has just to bear in mind that no two
samples of the same material will ever be identical, and therefore even within spectral ‘signatures’
we should always expect some variation.

Spectral reflectance curves are measured by ‘spectrometers’ at a continu-ous (but limited) range
of wavelengths. This is done by measuring the in-cident and reflected energy and then applying
the expression given above. At the rest of this exercise you will generate such curves from
spectrome-ter data of ITC, and compare them to the ones generated for the same material at the
spectroscopy laboratory of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA.

Exercise

 Open the spreadsheet “Data.xls” (additional material). Open the worksheet “data”.

• Column A shows a sequence of wavelengths for which measurements were taken.

• Column B shows the irradiant energy from the sun EI (λ) (in radiance units: watts m-2 μm-1

• Columns C, E show the radiant energy E) R (λ) from the mineral Gyp-sum, measured in two
locations in the field (in radiance units: watts m-2 μm-1)

• You will use columns D, F (will) to calculate reflection of the mineral Gypsum (in %) )

• Columns G shows the reflection of olive trees in an orchard 1 (in %)

1. What is the λ range (min-max, in nanometers) of all measure-ments?

2. Why are radiance values (C, E) always smaller than irradiance values (B)?

Follow the steps below to generate radiance and irradiance curves of the first measurement of
Gypsum.  Select the columns that correspond to wavelength (λ, lambda) irradiance and radiance
in this case columns A, B and C, by dragging the mouse over the column headers as shown below.

1 In reality, measurements from above an orchard possibly will contain radiance reflected from olive trees and soil, but
for sake of this exercise, we assume that this data set contains informa-tion only from the olive trees.
 Show your selection as graph by starting the chart wizard on the icon bar ().

Step 1 of 4 Step 2 of 4

Step 3 of 4 Step 4 of 4.

Please note that the graph should be placed on the “curves” worksheet.
 Example of a result:

 Calculate reflectance values for the first measurement of Gypsum (column D) with the following
example.

Apply the equation given in the beginning of this exercise. Start with the calculation for cell D2. To
make reflectance more intuitive (i.e. in percent-age) multiply the fraction by 100. An example is
given in the following figure:

This expression will achieve the same result if you type “=(C2/B2)*100“

! The expression should start with the equal sign. Instead of typing addresses (cell identifiers, like
“B2”) in the equation, you can simply select the corresponding cells that contain the radiance ER
(λ) and irradiance EI (λ) values with your mouse or the arrow keys, and approve the selec-tion with
[Enter].

Finally apply the same equation to all the cells in column D. Do that by dragging the lower-right
corner of this cell (where the cursor turns into a small cross) all the way down to the last cells of
the column. The whole column is computed with correspondence to relevant cells in column B and
C. Choose any cell in column D and check its equation at the equation space (see figure below) to
see on which cells in B, C it operates.

 Calculate reflectance values for the second measurement of Gypsum (column F). Repeat the
same procedure as above. Reflectance values (%) should show this time in column F. You should
use the same ir-radiance values as above. Radiance values of the second measure-ments are listed
in column E.

Once calculated, visualize in one chart the reflectance curves of Gypsum (both measurements)
together with the one of olives. Do that in the same way you did before (steps 1-4).
3. What is common to all curves?

4. How do you explain this resemblance?

! By now you should have 2 charts in sheet “curves”.

Comparison with an external source

Open the site of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA with the Inter-net Explorer:
http://speclib.jpl.nasa.gov/search-1.

Use the “minerals” class of materials, to find the mineral Gypsum (enter-ing the name only, is
enough). You can see in the output of your query some description of the material, chemical
composition, particle size, and the spectral range of the available measurements (in microns, as X
Start, X Stop). Note that there are two different samples were used for the spec-tral
measurements (in fact two minerals with the same chemical composi-tion). The first eight spectra
were measured on sieved powder of the min-erals, and the last row shows the reflectance curve
of a sample with mixed particle size.

5. What are the full ranges of wavelengths available for the samples (in micro-meters)?

R// 0.4 a 25.044

6. How many measurements cover also the visible range?

0.4-0.7 micrometros

Choose two curves that show small and medium size particles. View the curves.

7. What is the influence of particle sizes on the reflectance?

8. How can you explain the general relationship between particle size and the reflectance?

Open the reflectance curve of the sample which is not sieved. Reduce the window size of your
browser so you can see both the ITC and the JPL sig-natures of Gypsum, side by side and compare
them visually.

9. What is the main difference between ITC curves and JPL curves?

10. How can you explain that?

Realising agreements between measurements

A popular measure to find out when two sets of values “agree” or “go to-gether” is called
correlation. We show two ways to do that; the long way (optional) and the short way.

The long way: Manual correlation calculation - Optional

The long way reads:

Correlation = 1/(n-1) x sum((Xi-meanx)/stdevx) x (Yi-meany)/stdevy))

where

N is the number of measurements

Xi is a given measurement in one set

Yi is a given measurement in the second set

mean is the average

stdev is the standard deviation

In that case you need to calculate mean and stdev for each of the sets, the so-called “scores” [e.g.
(y-meany)/stdevy], the product of correspond-ing scores, the sum of the products and the number
of measurements :-)

The short way to calculate correlation

The short way is to use the built-in CORREL function in EXCEL. In that case it will read (in the
equation space):

=CORREL(X1:Xn,Y1:Yn)

Where

CORREL is the indication of this function in excel

X1 is the first value of the first set (in your case the value in cell B2)

Xn is the last value of the first set (in your case the value in cell B647) etc…

! (Note that “:” means “up to” and not division).

 Open the worksheet “correlations”. There you can calculate the correlations as given above,
although you can choose either way. To start with, calculate correlations in the short way. In cell j5
the Correla-tion of Gypsums. In cell j6 the Correlation of Gypsum-2 and olive, and in cell j7 the
Gypsum-1 and olive. Remember that when you type for-mulas you need to start the formula with
the = sign.

If time allows you can compare the correlation of Gypsums in cell j5 with the one you calculate
using the long way. Corresponding columns and cells for mean and stdev calculations are given.

11. If you tried both ways, you should have reached the same result. Correct?

12. When will a correlation be 1? (You can check that in cell j8)