Hyperspectral imagery for disaggregation of land surface temperature with selected regression algorithms over different land use land cover scenes

Land surface temperature (LST), a key parameter in understanding thermal behavior of various terrestrial processes, changes rapidly and hence mapping and modeling its spatio-temporal evolution requires measurements at frequent intervals and finer resolutions. We designed a series of experiments for disaggregation of LST (DLST) derived from the Landsat ETM + thermal band using narrowband reflectance information derived from the EO1-Hyperion hyperspectral sensor and selected regression algorithms over three geographic locations with different climate and land use land cover (LULC) characteristics. The regression algorithms applied to this end were: partial least square regression (PLS), gradient boosting machine (GBM) and support vector machine (SVM). To understand the scale dependence of regression algorithms for predicting LST, we developed individual models (local models) at four spatial resolutions (480 m, 240 m, 120 m and 60 m) and tested the differences between these using RMSE derived from cross-validated samples. The sharpening capabilities of the models were assessed by predicting LST at finer resolutions using models developed at coarser spatial resolution. The results were also compared with LST produced by DisTrad sharpening model. It was found that scale dependence of the models is a function of the study area characteristics and regression algorithms. Considering the sharpening experiments, both GBM and SVM performed better than PLS which produced noisy LST at finer spatial resolutions. Based on the results, it can be concluded that GBM and SVM are more suitable algorithms for operational implementation of this application. These algorithms outperformed DisTrad model for heterogeneous landscapes with high variation in soil moisture content and photosynthetic activities. The variable importance measure derived from PLS and GBM provided insights about the characteristics of the relevant bands. The results indicate that wavelengths centered around 457, 671, 1488 and 2013–2083 nm are the most important in predicting LST. Nevertheless, further research is needed to improve the performance of regression algorithms when there is a large variability in LST and to examine the utility of narrowband vegetation indices to predict the LST. The benefits of this research may extend to applications such as monitoring urban heat island effect, volcanic activity and wildfire, estimating evapotranspiration and assessing drought severity.?