Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc(λ))

Use this Forum to find information on, or ask a question about, NASA Earth Science data.
Post Reply
johan_ma
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2025 4:00 am America/New_York
Answers: 0

Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc(λ))

by johan_ma » Sat Sep 20, 2025 4:18 am America/New_York

I am working on monitoring floating macroalgae (Ulva prolifera) and would like to use Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc(λ)) instead of the fully corrected remote sensing reflectance Rrs(λ). As pointed out by Chuanmin Hu , aerosol or other atmospheric corrections can fail for pixels containing U. prolifera because their strong NIR/SWIR reflectance contaminates the aerosol correction bands.

My goal is to use l2gen in SeaDAS to:
Input Level-1B data.
Output Rrc(λ) (TOA reflectance after Rayleigh correction only)

So far, I have found or tried the following:
Parameter aer_opt = -99 is mentioned to turn off aerosol correction.

Questions:
Is there a specific combination of l2gen parameters that will directly produce Rrc(λ)?
If not, which intermediate product(s) should I request (e.g., rhos)
Has anyone processed floating algae (like U. prolifera) with SeaDAS in a similar way and could share their settings or experience?

Any guidance or example configurations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help

Filters:

jared
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2020 1:29 pm America/New_York
Answers: 0
Endorsed: 7 times

Re: Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc(λ))

by jared » Mon Sep 22, 2025 10:28 am America/New_York

Hi there,

Products "rhos" in SeaDAS is equivalante to Rrc.

Minwei

OB.DAAC - SeanBailey
User Services
User Services
Posts: 61
Joined: Mon Dec 16, 2024 8:43 am America/New_York
Answers: 0
Endorsed: 5 times

Re: Rayleigh-corrected reflectance (Rrc(λ))

by OB.DAAC - SeanBailey » Mon Sep 22, 2025 3:07 pm America/New_York

To add to Minwei's response...

rhos also accounts for gaseous absorption (in addition to simple Rayleigh scattering). It does not require "atmospheric correction" (really, aerosol correction...we're bad at being clear about what the parameters do), so you can set atmocor=0 to speed up the processing (aer_opt would therefore be irrelevant)

Regards,
Sean

Post Reply