Determination of effective emissivity and temperature over inhomogeneous land surfaces - Results from field campaign

The paper describes the use of satellite received radiance for estimation o f surface emissivity in the sensor's spectral channels over heterogeneous a reas. The estimation of emissivity is based on the information of Normalize d Difference Vegetation Index in conjunction with proportion of vegetation cover at pixel resolution. The estimated emissivity values at channel resol ution have been used in the split-window algorithm for estimation of surfac e temperature over heterogeneous surfaces from satellite sensor data. The e stimated surface temperature values are compared with the in situ data over the region and are found to be within error limits of less than 1 degrees. The results indicate the effective use of the methodology for land surface estimation over heterogeneous landscape.