Land surface temperature (LST) is a crucial parameter that reflects land–atmosphere interaction and has thus attracted wide interest from geoscientists. Owing to the rapid development of Earth observation technologies, remotely sensed LST is playing an increasingly essential role in various fields. This review aims to summarize the progress in LST estimation algorithms and accelerate its further applications. Thus, we briefly review the most‐used thermal infrared (TIR) LST estimation algorithms. More importantly, this review provides a comprehensive collection of the widely used TIR‐based LST products and offers important insights into the uncertainties in these products with respect to different land cover conditions via a systematic intercomparison analysis of several representative products. In addition to the discussion on product accuracy, we address problems related to the spatial discontinuity, spatiotemporal incomparability, and short time span of current LST products by introducing the most effective methods. With the aim of overcoming these challenges in available LST products, much progress has been made in developing spatiotemporal seamless LST data, which significantly promotes the successful applications of these products in the field of surface evapotranspiration and soil moisture estimation, agriculture drought monitoring, thermal environment monitoring, thermal anomaly monitoring, and climate change. Overall, this review encompasses the most recent advances in TIR‐based LST and the state‐of‐the‐art of applications of LST products at various spatial and temporal scales, identifies critical further research needs and directions to advance and optimize retrieval methods, and promotes the application of LST to improve the understanding of surface thermal dynamics and exchanges.

This paper developed a practical split-window (SW) algorithm to estimate land surface temperature (LST) from Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) aboard Landsat 8. The coefficients of the SW algorithm were determined based on atmospheric water vapor sub-ranges, which were obtained through a modified split-window covariance–variance ratio method. The channel emissivities were acquired from newly released global land cover products at 30 m and from a fraction of the vegetation cover calculated from visible and near-infrared images aboard Landsat 8. Simulation results showed that the new algorithm can obtain LST with an accuracy of better than 1.0 K. The model consistency to the noise of the brightness temperature, emissivity and water vapor was conducted, which indicated the robustness of the new algorithm in LST retrieval. Furthermore, based on comparisons, the new algorithm performed better than the existing algorithms in retrieving LST from TIRS data. Finally, the SW algorithm was proven to be reliable through application in different regions. To further confirm the credibility of the SW algorithm, the LST will be validated in the future.

The estimation of leaf area index (LAI) from optical remotely sensed data based on vegetation indices (VIs) is a quick and practical approach to acquire LAI over vast areas. Reflectance in the red-edge bands is sensitive to vegetation status, and its information is thought to be useful in agricultural applications. Based on three red-edge band observations (represented as RE1, RE2, and RE3 for bands 5-7) from the Multispectral Instrument (MSI) onboard the Sentinel-2 satellite, this article aims to investigate the feasibility and performance of using red-edge bands for LAI estimates with the VI method and ground-measured LAI data sets. Sensitivity analysis from PROSAIL simulations revealed that RE1 is mainly affected by the influence of the leaf chlorophyll content, and this uncertainty should not be ignored during LAI estimation. For the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), modified simple ratio (MSR), chlorophyll index (CI), and wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI), the optimal combination of Sentinel-2 bands for LAI estimation was RE2 and RE3, with a minimum root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.75. Four 3-band red-edge VIs were proposed to exploit the full content of the red-edge bands of Sentinel-2, and their performance in LAI estimation improved slightly. However, both 2-band red-edge VIs and 3-band red-edge VIs remained slightly saturated at high LAI levels; therefore, a segmental estimation with a threshold was suggested for large LAIs. The results indicate that the optimal 2-band red-edge VIs and proposed 3-band red-edge VIs are effective tools for crop LAI estimation in multiple-growth stages with Sentinel-2 MSI images.

Accurate and timely crop yield estimation is critical for food security and sustainable development. The rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offers a new approach to acquire high spatio-temporal resolution imagery of farmland at a low cost. In order to realize the full potential of UAV platform and sensor, machine learning has been introduced to estimate crop yield, but the shortages of field measurements have troubled researchers. In this article, the CW-RF model, a new wheat yield estimation model suitable for the North China plain, was established using random forest, and the crop growth model (the CERES-wheat model) was chosen to simulate abundant training samples for random forest at field plot scale. According to CERES-wheat model simulation, the leaf area index (LAI) and leaf nitrogen content (LNC) at the wheat jointing and heading stages were selected as the most sensitive parameters, and were retrieved from UAV hyperspectral imagery using the directional second derivative and angular insensitivity vegetation index methods, respectively. Then the retrieved LAI and LNC results were input into the CW-RF model to estimate winter wheat yield. The field validation in Luohe, Henan showed that the root-mean-squared error of the retrieved LAI and LNC were 6.27% and 12.17% at jointing stages, 9.21% and 13.64% at heading stages, respectively. The RMSE of estimated yield was 1,008.08 kg/ha, and the mean absolute percent error of estimated yield was 9.36%, demonstrating the available of the CW-RF model in wheat yield estimation at field plot scale. Apart from Luohe, validations in some other fields (e.g., Xiaotangshan, Beijing), prove the wide applicability of the CW-RF model. In addition, the UAV hyperspectral data were found to significantly improve the retrieval accuracy, and further improve CW-RF model estimation accuracy. In conclusion, this article showed that the CERES-Wheat model simulation can be important data source for machine learning-based wheat yield estimation model at field plot scale, and the hyperspectral sensor mounted on a UAV is a feasible remote sensing data acquisition mode for winter wheat growth monitoring and yield estimation.