Estimating of Surface Albedo in Geomorphological Facies of Desert Regions of the Yazd-Ardakan Plain Using Landsat 8 Data

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate, Combating of Desertification, Faculty of Natural Resources and Eremology, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources and Eremology, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

3 Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources and Eremology, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

Abstract

Surface albedo is one of the key controlling geophysical parameters in surface energy budget research and environmental and climate studies. As an efficient tool for monitoring earth surfaces, remote sensing is widely used for estimating albedo over recent decades and various algorithms of satellite data have been developed to estimate albedo. Up to now, albedo has been estimated using different types of sensors. This study presents procedures for computing of albedo using OLI sensor Landsat 8 data in different geomorphology facies, arable soil and asphalt in the Yazd- Ardakan Plain. In this way, required data from each nine images metadata of Landsat 8 were extracted for summer and autumn, 2017 and then albedo was calculated using meteorological data. Results showed that there is a difference between values of albedo in different geomorphology facies. Surface albedo average of clay land, pavement, sand dune, bare land, sand sheet, arable land and asphalt are 0.30, 0.22, 0.24, 0.26, 0.24, 0.23 and 0.24, respectively. The highest calculated albedo is related to clay land, while the lowest is observed in desert pavement facies.

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