Identification of surface areas to represent a suitable surface boundary condition for atmospheric radiative transfer analysis

This paper describes a method for identification of surfaces of prespecified bidirectional reflectance characteristics within satellite imagery in the optical spectral domain on the basis of radiative transfer modeling of satellite-level reflectances. The method takes both spectral, temporal and directional information into account. The approach is particularly promising for the new generation of optical satellite sensors due to be launched towards the end of the millenium.