Landsat 8 has been online for a couple of months now, and the images look incredible. While all of the bands from previous Landsat missions are still incorporated, there are a couple of new ones, such as the coastal blue band water penetration/aerosol detection and the cirrus cloud band for cloud masking and other applications. Here’s a rundown of some common band combinations applied to Landsat 8, displayed as a red, green, blue (RGB): Natural Color | 4 3 2 | False Color (urban) | 7 6 4 | Color Infrared (vegetation) | 5 4 3 | Agriculture | 6 5 2 | Atmospheric Penetration | 7 6 5 | Healthy Vegetation | 5 6 2 | Land/Water | 5 6 4 | Natural With Atmospheric Removal | 7 5 3 | Shortwave Infrared | 7 5 4 | Vegetation Analysis | 6 5 4 |
Here’s how the new bands from Landsat 8 line up with Landsat 7: | | Band Name | Bandwidth (μm) | Resolution (m) | Band Name | Bandwidth (μm) | Resolution (m) | | | | Band 1 Coastal | | | Band 1 Blue | | | Band 2 Blue | | | Band 2 Green | | | Band 3 Green | | | Band 3 Red | | | Band 4 Red | | | Band 4 NIR | | | Band 5 NIR | | | Band 5 SWIR 1 | | | Band 6 SWIR 1 | | | Band 7 SWIR 2 | | | Band 7 SWIR 2 | | | Band 8 Pan | | | Band 8 Pan | | | | | | Band 9 Cirrus | | | Band 6 TIR | | | Band 10 TIRS 1 | | | Band 11 TIRS 2 | | |
For the most part, the bands line up with what we’re used to, with some minor tweaking of the spectral ranges. The thermal infrared band from Landsat 7 is now split into two bands for Landsat 8. Whereas before you had one thermal band that was acquired at 60 m resolution (and resampled to 30 m) now you have increased spectral resolution at the cost of spatial resolution. It wouldn’t be remote sensing without tradeoffs, right?
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