An improved high spatial and temporal data fusion approach for combining Landsat and MODIS data to generate daily synthetic Landsat imagery

•Two key weaknesses of STDFA including sensor difference and spatial variability were adjusted.•Three wildly used spatial and temporal fusion methods were compared.•The correlation coefficient r had a negative exponential relationship with ratio of land cover change pixels.•The accuracy of ISTDFA method had a logarithmic relationship with the size of applied area.

Because of low temporal resolution and cloud influence, many remote-sensing applications lack high spatial resolution remote-sensing data. To address this problem, this study introduced an improved spatial and temporal data fusion approach (ISTDFA) to generate daily synthetic Landsat imagery. This algorithm was designed to avoid the weaknesses of the spatial and temporal data fusion approach (STDFA) method, including the sensor difference and spatial variability. A weighted linear mixed model was used to adjust the spatial variability of surface reflectance. A linear-regression method was used to remove the influence of differences in sensor systems. This method was tested and validated in three study areas located in Xinjiang and Anhui province, China. The other two methods, the STDFA and the Enhanced Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (ESTARFM), were also applied and compared in those three study areas. The results showed that the ISTDFA algorithm can generate daily synthetic Landsat imagery accurately, with correlation coefficient r equal to 0.9857 and root mean square error (RMSE) equal to 0.0195, which is superior to the STDFA method. The ISTDFA method had higher accuracy than ESTARFM in areas greater than 200 × 200 MODIS pixels while the ESTARFM method had higher accuracy than the ISTDFA method in small areas. The correlation coefficient r had a negative power relation with ratio of land-cover change pixels. A land-cover change of 20.25% pixels can lead to a reduced correlation coefficient r of 0.295 in the blue band. The accuracy of the ISTDFA method indicated a logarithmic relationship with the size of the applied area, so it is recommended for use in large-scale areas.