The Application of Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function Data to Recognize the Spatial Heterogeneity of Mixed Pixels in Vegetation Remote Sensing: A Simulation Study

Abstract

Spectral decomposition of mixed pixels can provide information about the abundance of end members but fails to indicate the spatial distribution of end members in vegetation remote sensing. This work is a significant attempt to use the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (<small>BRDF</small>) characteristics of mixed pixels in the prediction of spatial-heterogeneity metrics. Data sets from this function with different spatial distributions were constructed by the discrete anisotropic radiative transfer model, and three spatial aggregation and dispersion metrics were calculated: percentage of like adjacencies, spatial division index, and aggregation index. A simple linear regression method was used to construct the prediction model of spatial aggregation and dispersion metrics. The potential of multiangle remote sensing model for identifying spatial patterns well was demonstrated, and its importance was found to differ for different spatial aggregation and dispersion metrics. Specifically, the precision of the model based on multiangle reflectance used for predicting the spatial division index could meet a minimum root mean square of 5.95%. The reflectance features from backward observation on the principal plane play the leading role in recognizing the spatial heterogeneity of mixed pixels. The prediction model is sufficiently robust to distinguish the same vegetation with different growth trends, but also performs well when the ground objects have a smaller reflectance difference in the mixed pixels in a certain band. This study is expected to offer a new thought for spatial-heterogeneity identification of ground objects and thus promote the development of remote sensing technology in assessing spatial distribution.