i.albedo(1grass)

💖 i.albedo — the albedo maker ✨

okay bestie, so this is i.albedo from the GRASS User's Manual, and she computes broad band albedo from surface reflectance. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

🌈 KEYWORDS 🌈

imagery, albedo, reflectance, satellite, Landsat, ASTER, AVHRR, MODIS

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

i.albedo
i.albedo --help
i.albedo [-mnl8acd] input=name[,name,...] output=name  [--overwrite]
[--help]  [--verbose]  [--quiet]  [--ui]

🎀 Flags

• -m — MODIS (7 input bands:1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
• -n — NOAA AVHRR (2 input bands:1,2)
• -l — Landsat 5+7 (6 input bands:1,2,3,4,5,7)
• -8 — Landsat 8 (7 input bands:1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
• -a — ASTER (6 input bands:1,3,5,6,8,9)
• -c — Aggressive mode (Landsat)

Albedo dry run to calculate some water to beach/sand/desert stretching, a kind of simple atmospheric correction

• -d — Soft mode (MODIS)

Albedo dry run to calculate some water to beach/sand/desert stretching, a kind of simple atmospheric correction

• --overwrite — Allow output files to overwrite existing files
• --help — Print usage summary
• --verbose — Verbose module output
• --quiet — Quiet module output
• --ui — Force launching GUI dialog

🦋 Parameters

• input=name[,name,...] [required] — Name of input raster map
• output=name [required] — Name for output raster map

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

i.albedo calculates the albedo, that is the Shortwave surface reflectance in the range of 0.3-3 micro-meters. she takes as input individual bands of surface reflectance originating from MODIS, AVHRR, Landsat or Aster satellite sensors and calculates the albedo for those. this is a precursor to r.sun and any energy-balance processing. it's giving main character energy in your energy-balance pipeline, fr fr 🌞

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📝 NOTES 📝

• for Landsat 8 she uses the weighted average reflectance (temporary solution until an algorithm is found). lowkey a placeholder but it works 💀
• it assumes MODIS product surface reflectance in [0;10000]. noted. write that down bestie 🍓

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🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

the following example creates the raster map "albedo_lsat7_1987" from the LANDSAT-TM5 bands in the North Carolina dataset:

g.region raster=lsat5_1987_10 -p
i.albedo -l input=lsat5_1987_10,lsat5_1987_20,lsat5_1987_30,lsat5_1987_40,lsat5_1987_50,lsat5_1987_70 output=albedo_lsat7_1987

Figure: Resulting albedo map from LANDSAT 5

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the following example creates the raster map "albedo_lsat7_2000" from the LANDSAT-TM7 bands in the North Carolina dataset:

g.region raster=lsat7_2000_10 -p
i.albedo -l input=lsat7_2000_10,lsat7_2000_20,lsat7_2000_30,lsat7_2000_40,lsat7_2000_50,lsat7_2000_70 output=albedo_lsat7_2000

Figure: Resulting albedo map from LANDSAT 7

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🔮 TODO 🔮

maybe change input requirement of MODIS to [0.0-1.0]? bestie said "we'll see" 🙈

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📚 REFERENCES 📚

for a 2 band determination of the Aster BB Albedo see the following:

Salleh and Chan, 2014. Land Surface Albedo Determination: Remote Sensing and Statistical Validation. in proceedings of FIG 2014 (PDF)

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

r.sun, i.vi

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Yann Chemin

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🧚 SOURCE CODE 🧚

Available at: i.albedo source code (history)

Latest change: Saturday Oct 11 04:38:40 2025 in commit: 3dd71f5fab83b72a2db2da959fe075c5b3b52200

Main index | Imagery index | Topics index | Keywords index | Graphical index | Full index

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and that's the whole page, no skips, no cuts 💖 © 2003-2026 GRASS Development Team, GRASS 8.5.0 Reference Manual — slay, periodt, go compute some albedo bestie 🎀✨