Comparing DMSP/OLS Stable Nighttime Light With Radiance Calibrated Nighttime Light

Two types of nighttime light products were derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS). One called stable nighttime light (NTL) is saturated in urban centers, and the other called radiance calibrated NTL (RCNTL) does not have saturation. This study compared these two types of images from three perspectives. For the radiometric attributes, these two types of images were fitted well by both the power function and the logarithmic function in the whole of China with the lowest R² value of 0.867 and the highest of 0.937, and the power function fitting performed better. In addition, the complex many-to-many relationship between these two types of images was quantified by the coefficients of variation. For the spatial attributes, through wavelet decomposition, the RCNTL images provide more spatial details than the stable NTL images with the higher energy proportions of the detail component. For economic modeling capacity, the sum of RCNTL correlates better with gross regional product than the sum of stable NTL. Comparison results indicate that the RCNTL images correlate well with the stable NTL images, and these two images have different advantages in different aspects.