The existing kernel-based methods for retrieving land surface bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs) usually use a pre-determined combination of kernels and it is fixed for an entire image, which is unable to accommodate the different characteristics from various land cover types. In this study, a multi-kernel method based on l¹-norm optimization is proposed. This method is able to automatically select appropriate kernels for each pixel from a kernel dictionary that contains several commonly used kernels. Experimental results show that BRDF retrieval accuracy is improved by adopting this new method.