Simulating Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) sampling and retrieval of soil surface roughness and composition changes using a bi-directional soil spectral reflectance model

Soil surface changes due to soil erosion can be detected by ground-based, hyperspectral measurements of angular reflectance and a bi-directional soil spectral reflectance model. The next generation of wind and water erosion models should incorporate directional remote sensing data to improve large area assessment more frequently in time. The utility of this approach was investigated by simulating the angular sampling of pre-defined soil surface spectral reflectance models using the configuration of the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) sensor. At least two solar zenith angles, regardless of the number of solar azimuth angles, were required to simulateMISR overpasses andmatch the ‘true’ values. The simulatedMISR parameter values were used to detect soil surface change after rainfall and aeolian abrasion. The coarse spectral resolution and range of the simulated MISR wavebands limited the inferences that were made about the soil surface changes compared to earlier work.