Radiometric, reflectance and atmospheric correction for Landsat 8 image

Question

I am struggling with the pre-processing process for landsat8 imagery.

I want to use some indices (e.g. NDVI, SAVI, EVI, NDMI) and create a land cover map at the end using ENVI and ArcGIS.

As a first step, I could download Landsat8 OLI/TIRS C1 Level-1 data from the USGS website. However, I am not sure whether this data is required to do radiometric/reflectance/atmospheric correction. The file name is LC08_L1TP_StartDate_EndingDate_01_T1_Band# Data value is maximum 60,000, and the minimum value is all 0 except Band12 (Figure).

I read some website (https://landsat.usgs.gov/using-usgs-landsat-8-product) but still very unclear about what I really need to do.

Answer 1

For radiometric corrections, you can use the surface reflectance data which can be ordered through EarthExplorer.Recently the USGS has developed software to apply calibration and atmospheric correction routines to Landsat level 1 data products.

Atmospheric corrections: USGS now offers higher-level science data (also known as Level-2 or Surface Reflectance), that have atmospheric corrections applied.

Reflectance corrections: Landsat 8 Surface Reflectance data are generated from the Landsat Surface Reflectance Code (LaSRC), which makes use of the coastal aerosol band to perform aerosol inversion tests, uses auxiliary climate data from MODIS and uses a unique radiative transfer model. LaSRC hardcodes the view zenith angle to “0”, and the solar zenith and view zenith angles are used for calculations as part of the atmospheric correction.

using ENVI: First of all take the satellite imagery, then make the region of interests (ROI) files. use one file as a training dataset and other to check the classification accuracy.

using ArcGIS:https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/imagery/classifying-landsat-image-services-to-make-a-land-cover-map/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hqhHJ_X7ZM

https://landsat.usgs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/lasrc_product_guide.pdf