Characterizing Land Surface Anisotropic Reflectance over Rugged Terrain: A Review of Concepts and Recent Developments

• Main Authors: Jianguang Wen, Qiang Liu, Qing Xiao, Qinhuo Liu, Dongqin You, Dalei Hao, Shengbiao Wu, Xingwen Lin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-02-01
• Series: Remote Sensing
• Subjects: anisotropic reflectance; BRDF; rugged terrain; solo slope; composite slope
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/3/370

Rugged terrain, including mountains, hills, and some high lands are typical land surfaces around the world. As a physical parameter for characterizing the anisotropic reflectance of the land surface, the importance of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) has been gradually recognized in the remote sensing community, and great efforts have been dedicated to build BRDF models over various terrain types. However, on rugged terrain, the topography intensely affects the shape and magnitude of the BRDF and creates challenges in modeling the BRDF. In this paper, after a brief introduction of the theoretical background of the BRDF over rugged terrain, the status of estimating land surface BRDF properties over rugged terrain is comprehensively reviewed from a historical perspective and summarized in two categories: BRDFs describing solo slopes and those describing composite slopes. The discussion focuses on land surface reflectance retrieval over mountainous areas, the difference in solo slope and composite slope BRDF models, and suggested future research to improve the accuracy of BRDFs derived with remote sensing satellites.