ASTER L2 Surface Reflectance: VNIR and SWIR Data with Atmospheric Correction

ASTER Surface Reflectance VNIR and Crosstalk Corrected SWIR (AST_07XT) data measures the fraction of solar radiation reflected from Earth's surface, corrected for atmospheric effects and viewing geometry. The product is generated by NASA from ASTER L1B imagery, with VNIR bands at 15-meter and SWIR bands at 30-meter spatial resolution. Version 4 incorporates improved atmospheric correction using MERRA-2 data and applies a crosstalk correction to SWIR bands.

Use Cases

• Model land surface properties based on atmospherically corrected reflectance values.
• Monitor land cover change over time using multi-spectral VNIR and SWIR data.
• Calibrate or validate other satellite products using the crosstalk-corrected SWIR bands.
• Analyze surface radiative properties for climate or agricultural studies.

Strengths

• Atmospheric correction applied using MERRA-2 data, improving precision.
• SWIR crosstalk correction reduces stray light artifacts.
• Spatial resolution is 15 meters for VNIR bands and 30 meters for SWIR bands.
• Fallback mechanisms (GDAS, climatology) ensure continuous data processing.

Limitations

• SWIR data acquired after April 2008 may exhibit anomalous saturation and striping.
• Level 2 products on the international date line have incorrect bounding coordinates in metadata.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Generated from Terra ASTER L1B satellite imagery with atmospheric and crosstalk corrections.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is not explicitly stated in the input.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 09:18:43.340390; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from the ASTER instrument.