Imagery & Remote Sensing

Band Combinations for Landsat 8

Landsat 8 has been online for a couple of months now, and the images look incredible. While all of the bands from previous Landsat missions are still incorporated, there are a couple of new ones, such as the coastal blue band water penetration/aerosol detection and the cirrus cloud band for cloud masking and other applications. Here’s a rundown of some common band combinations applied to Landsat 8, displayed as a red, green, blue (RGB):

Natural Color 4 3 2
False Color (urban) 7 6 4
Color Infrared (vegetation) 5 4 3
Agriculture 6 5 2
Atmospheric Penetration 7 6 5
Healthy Vegetation 5 6 2
Land/Water 5 6 4
Natural With Atmospheric Removal 7 5 3
Shortwave Infrared 7 5 4
Vegetation Analysis 6 5 4

Here’s how the new bands from Landsat 8 line up with Landsat 7:

Landsat 7 Landsat 8
Band Name Bandwidth (µm) Resolution (m) Band Name Bandwidth (µm) Resolution (m)
Band 1 Coastal 0.43 – 0.45 30
Band 1 Blue 0.45 – 0.52 30 Band 2 Blue 0.45 – 0.51 30
Band 2 Green 0.52 – 0.60 30 Band 3 Green 0.53 – 0.59 30
Band 3 Red 0.63 – 0.69 30 Band 4 Red 0.64 – 0.67 30
Band 4 NIR 0.77 – 0.90 30 Band 5 NIR 0.85 – 0.88 30
Band 5 SWIR 1 1.55 – 1.75 30 Band 6 SWIR 1 1.57 – 1.65 30
Band 7 SWIR 2 2.09 – 2.35 30 Band 7 SWIR 2 2.11 – 2.29 30
Band 8 Pan 0.52 – 0.90 15 Band 8 Pan 0.50 – 0.68 15
Band 9 Cirrus 1.36 – 1.38 30
Band 6 TIR 10.40 – 12.50 30/60 Band 10 TIRS 1 10.6 – 11.19 100
Band 11 TIRS 2 11.5 – 12.51 100

For the most part, the bands line up with what we’re used to, with some minor tweaking of the spectral ranges. The thermal infrared band from Landsat 7 is now split into two bands for Landsat 8. Whereas before you had one thermal band that was acquired at 60 m resolution (and resampled to 30 m) now you have increased spectral resolution at the cost of spatial resolution. It wouldn’t be remote sensing without tradeoffs, right?

Next Article

What's new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (March 2024)

Read this article