Improvement of Temporal Resolution for Land Surface Monitoring by the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager Data

With the increasing need for high temporal resolution satellite imagery for monitoring land surfaces, this study evaluated the temporal resolution of the NDVI composites from Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data. The GOCI is the first geostationary satellite sensor designed to provide continuous images over a 2,500x2,500 km(2) area of the northeast Asian region with relatively high spatial resolution of 500 m. We used total 2,944 hourly images of the GOCI level 1B radiance data obtained during the one-year period from April 2011 to March 2012. A daily NDVI composite was produced by maximum value compositing of eight hourly images captured during day-time. Further NDVI composites were created with different compositing periods ranging from two to five days. The cloud coverage of each composite was estimated by the cloud detection method developed in study and then compared with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua cloud product and 16-day NDVI composite. The GOCI NDVI composites showed much higher temporal resolution with less cloud coverage than the MODIS NDVI products. The average of cloud coverage for the five-day GOCI composites during the one year was only 2.5%, which is a significant improvement compared to the 8.9%similar to 19.3% cloud coverage in the MODIS 16-day NDVI composites.