Evaluating the Effectiveness of ICESat-2 ATL03 Data for Georeferencing Satellite Images

Abstract. ICESat-2 laser points, as a kind of public geographic data, have high ranging accuracy and have great potential in improving the geometric positioning accuracies of satellite images. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of ICESat-2 ATL03 data for georeferencing satellite image. Our study combines ATL03 laser points with an image basemap processed using open-source data positioning to construct digital control photo (DCP), facilitating the rapid transformation of laser points into laser control points for image georeferencing. Through a comprehensive analysis involving comparison with traditional georeferencing methods using ground control points (GCPs), our findings indicate a significant enhancement in accuracy and efficiency in georeferencing, showcasing the potential of ICESat-2 data in improving the quality and reliability of remote sensing images. Experiments using the extracted laser points and GeoEye-1 images to construct DCP for georeferencing IKONOS images in Hobart, Australia demonstrate that the proposed method improved the horizontal accuracy from 2.33 meters to 0.97 meters and the vertical accuracy from 3.44 meters to 0.59 meters, compared to the georeferencing method without GCPs.