A Systematic Survey on Different Topographic Correction Techniques for Rugged Terrain Satellite Imagery

In remote sensed data, topographic corrections are very important to overcome the topographic effects such as shadow effects. These topographic effects occurs especially in case of rugged terrain because sun facing slope represents maximum reflectance values and opposite side slope represents minimum reflectance values. These topographic effects leads to an inaccurate classification into different land cover classes due to different topographic angles. Therefore, effective removal or minimization of topographic effects is necessary in satellite imagery data of rugged terrain to extract the maximum information. Different topographic correction techniques have been developed to reduce topographical effects but each topographic technique has a different impact in different situation. In paper report, all recently developed different topographic correction techniques for land use/cover have been discussed with their feature and limitation for rugged terrain. Further research with comparative analysis of each method is needed on a global basis to derive guidelines on which method performs best under which situation.