Scale effects and correction for land surface albedo in rugged terrain

It is well known that influence of topography must be accounted when using high-resolution remote sensing data to estimate land surface reflectance or albedo in rugged terrain. However, when moderate or low-resolution satellite remote sensing data are used, the topographic effects on albedo calculation are generally considered ignorable because the slope of the low-resolution pixels are usually small. A potential problem is that topographic effects within one low-resolution pixel have been omitted, which may cause error in albedo estimation. This problem comes from the scale effect in land surface albedo. This paper investigates in theory whether there is scale effect in land surface albedo when upscaling high-resolution surface albedo into low-resolution surface albedo in rugged terrain. Based on this analysis, we present the method to upscale high-resolution surface albedo to coarse resolution, and finally derive a correction factor for land surface albedo derived from low-resolution remote sensing data. The method puts forward in this paper is a useful and effective method for scale correction of land surface albedo; and it's also a good method to calculate albedo from low-resolution remote sensing data in rugged terrain.