Comparisons of indicatrices of desert and urban areas obtained from Landsat MSS data

The indicatrices of ground glass surfaces were obtained as a measurement of their roughness and expressed by the Minnaert constant k. The indicatrices were also obtained for downtown areas of San Francisco and Berkeley and the desert areas in Nevada and California by using Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) data with varying Sun elevations. The values of k for each training area were obtained. Finally the biconical spectral reflectance of sand collected from the desert of the training areas was measured in the laboratory, and the computed values of k were compared with those derived from the Landsat MSS data.