A complete set of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data (75 images) is used to retrieve aerosol optical depth (AOD) over dense vegetation and over lake water in the visible AVHRR channel. The present approach for remote sensing of aerosols from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-11 AVHRR sensor is based on the detection of atmospherically dominated signals over dark surface covers such as dense dark vegetation (DDV). Such targets were identified using the reflective portion of the middle-wave AVHRR channel 3 signal. When a fixed DDV surface reflectance is subtracted from the observed reflectance after correction for all other atmospheric effects, the remaining part, which is due to aerosols, is inverted to derive aerosol optical thickness using a look-up table (LUT) similar to that used in water surface inversion. The algorithm was applied to the daily afternoon NOAA-11 AVHRR (1km61 km) data acquired from the end of May to mid-August 1994 over the Canadian 1000km61000km Boreal Ecosystem Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) domain. A validation analysis using five groundbased Sun photometers within the studied area shows the good performance of the retrieval algorithm. The approach allows detailed analysis of the AOD spatio-temporal behaviour at the regional scale useful for climate and transport model validation.