Parametric surface bidirectional reflectance factor models for atmospheric radiative transfer modeling

A family of surface bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) models is found suitable for representing the surface boundary condition and of solving the problem of radiation transfer in the atmosphere. Optimal input parameters for a wide variety of surface types are available. The applicability of the models is analyzed with respect to (1) the derivation of illumination independent reflection properties of the surface, (2) the calculation of albedo, (3) the extrapolation of reflectance factors to geometries other than those of the measurements. Some of the models are linearly invertible. This family of models is proposed as part of the land surface product algorithm of the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) of NASA/JPL, due to fly in 1998 on the EOS-AM platform.