A simple bidirectional reflectance model for terrestrial surfaces

A simple bidirectional reflectance model is derived for terrestrial surfaces. This model uses photometric relationships together with data from the Nimbus 7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) Experiment. It is shown that the model provides a good description of bidirectional patterns derived from satellite observations for two classes of broad uniform surfaces, namely, land and desert. Dependency of the derived albedo model on solar zenith angle is also studied and compared with several observations made at the surface of the earth. Despite the simplicity of the approach the proposed bidirectional reflectance model might be useful for several applications in satellite remote sensing.