Correcting topographic effect on Landsat-8 images: An evaluation of using different DEMs in Indonesia

Topographic feature is one of the several factors affecting the distortion of the real reflectance value of objects. Digital processing used the surface reflectance values of satellite imagery needs the corrected images with the most minimized disturbances, hence several topographic correction methods using digital elevation data have been developed. This study examined the different result of topographic correction from several available elevation data in Indonesia, including SRTM DEM, topographic map (RBI), and DEMNAS. Sun-Canopy-Sensor+C (SCS+C) correction was applied on Landsat-8 data over Menoreh Mountains, Indonesia. The results obtained showed that DEMNAS produced the most topographically normalized images based on statistical and visual analysis. The availability of DEMNAS throughout Indonesia is the advantage to be used as an input of this pre-processing method. However, it needs to be examined first since the quality is not surely similar to our study site.