A METHODOLOGY FOR OBTAINING THE CROP TEMPERATURE FROM NOAA-9 AVHRR DATA

In this paper a methodology for obtaining the crop temperature from NOAA-9 AVHRR data has been developed, which is based on a theoretical model that permits interpreting the remote sensing temperature measurement in heterogeneous and rough surfaces. This procedure determines the crop temperature by evaluating previously: (1) the temperature difference between crop and ground, (2) the atmospheric and emissivity corrections, (3) the ground and vegetation emissivities in the AVHRR bands 4 (10.3-11.3-mu-m) and 5 (11.5-12.5-mu-m), and (4) the proportion of ground in each pixel. We have applied this method to obtain a map of orange-tree temperatures for the Valencian region and satisfactory results have been obtained.