The accuracy assessment of the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) acquired from satellite sensors at coarse spatial resolution (1 or more km) is not straightforward. One possible strategy is to compare BRDF measurements from spaceborne and airborne sensors on a test area with appropriate characteristics of spatial homogeneity. This Letter describes an experiment based on this principle, aiming at the control of the BRDF measured by POLDER/ADEOS. The BRDF derived from the satellite data is compared with that derived from spatially averaged airborne POLDER data over a forested area of the Landes region. The magnitude and shape of the BRDF measured by both sensors are found to be consistent within an accuracy of 0.01 in reflectance units, except for the principal plane in the blue band where some inconsistency is found. Similar experiments could be used for the verification of other sensors data, such as those of MISR and MODIS onboard Terra, and POLDER 2 onboard ADEOS 2 in the near future.
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