Consistency and Correction of Landsat MSS and TM Based NDVI in Vegetation-Covered Area: Case Study in Qinshui, China

As the only multispectral earth observation data in the 1970s, Landsat MSS plays a significant role in time-series researches. However, as the bands of MSS are much more different compared with the later Landsat TM sensor, the consistency and correction method of reflectance and vegetation indices needs to be studied. In this paper, we use the PROSAIL model to simulate vegetation-covered reflectance profiles and calculate the effective reflectance over the MSS and TM bands. The method of correcting MSS-based NDVI to TM-based NDVI and the method of calculating the MSS-based NDVI after correcting the MSS reflectance to TM reflectance are proposed. A case study in Qinshui, China shows that the correction coefficients of PROSAIL simulated data perform well in the real NDVI image comparison for the vegetation-covered area.