Principles of Remote Sensing, Exercise

Exercise 2.2
Spectral Reflectance
curves

Tal Feingersh, Wan Bakx, Zoltán Vekerdy and Valentyn Tolpekin

April 2010
LESSON 2

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

Estimated time
Estimated time required to do this assignment: 2 hours

Required material & Data

Equipment:
• PC with EXCEL
Material:
• None
Data:
• Sig.xls file containing lab measurement results

Deliverables
The following deliverables are expected:

In house Module
None

Distance Module
None

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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.

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LESSON 2

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 “sig.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.

 Show your selection as graph by starting the chart wizard on the icon

bar ( ).

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.

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Step 1 of 4 Step 2 of 4

Step 4 of 4. Please note that the graph

should be placed on the “curves”
worksheet.

Step 3 of 4

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:

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LESSON 2

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 E R (λ) and irradiance
E I (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)?

6. How many measurements cover also the visible range?

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

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

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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.

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LESSON 2

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)

13. Can we use correlation along this long range of wavelengths as an

identifying tool?

 Following the steps above, calculate the correlation of the spectra but
only for the range of 600-700 nm by limiting the input ranges of the
CORREL function. In cell i5 the Correlation of Gypsums. In cell j26 the
Correlation of Gypsum-2 and olive, and in cell j27 the Gypsum-1 and
olive.

14. Which are the two spectra with the largest correlation in the range
of 600-700 nm?
15. Is it possible to see differences between the minerals and the olive
trees in this range?
16. What is better to use for identifying the materials: broad spectral
ranges or narrow spectral ranges?
17. Look at the reflectance curves in the range 600-700 nm. Could you
relate the outcome of the correlation analysis to these curves?

Summary
Spectral reflectance curves illustrate the fraction of electro-magnetic en-
ergy, which is not absorbed or transmitted by a material. Curves can be
generated by indicating the reflectance (%) of an observed target at
(many) distinct wavelengths. That is reached by dividing radiance by ir-
radiance at distinct wavelengths.
You generated spectral reflectance curves for olives and for the mineral
Gypsum, and compared your measurements with those of JPLs spectral
library, having different sampling values and sampling resolutions.
Spectral reflectance curves are called, sometimes, spectral signatures.
However one should realize that theoretical typical curves do not show
natural variability of measurements of the same materials. Finally, you
computed correlation to see agreement between different measurements.

Conclusions
Wavelength sampling resolution, moisture content, particle size, material
properties etc. can all influence the measurements.
Two measurements of the material Gypsum reached a strong positive cor-
relation (0.8). That means that given a reflectance measurement of one of
these sets we can predict the reflectance measurement of the second set
with a good chance of being right. Unfortunately, gypsum and olive show
also strong positive correlation, which can make identification of these
materials difficult.
We can conclude that correlation using a wide wavelength range is not
very powerful in identifying the materials. On the contrary, comparison of
the reflectance spectra at well-selected narrow wavelength ranges can
show significant differences, so this can be a way of identifying materials.

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For more reading, refer to:

 Lillesand, T. M. and Kiefer, R. W. (1994), Remote sensing and image

interpretation. 3rd. Wiley & Sons, New York. pp. 12-21.

 Janssen L.L.F. (ed.), (2000), Principles of Remote Sensing. 2nd. ITC,

Enschede. pp. 36-38.

 Hass, M., and Sutherland, G.B.B.M. (1956), The infra-red spectrum and
crystal structure of gypsum: Proceedings of the Royal Society, (London),
v. 236, p. 427-445

 Hunt, G.R., J.W. Salisbury, and C.J. Lenhoff, 1971, Visible and near-
infrared spectra of minerals and rocks: IV. Sulphides and sulphates. Mod-
ern Geology, v. 3, p. 1-14.

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