Future Applications, Sensor Developments and Research Programmes in the Field of Imaging Spectrometry

Abstract

The recent status of imaging spectrometry is characterised by the experimental to pre-operational deployment of airborne imaging spectrometers such as AVIRIS, CASI and GER-IS. In the next years also European airborne imaging spectrometers are expected to be provided in the commercial world to cover the requirements for high spatial and spectral resolution data acquisition for operational research and applications. In Europe national and international facilities such as the EC/ESA EARSEC programme are envisaged to satisfy the needs of the user community. In this context, full coverage of the VIS/NIR/SWIR (400 – 2500 nm) spectral region is increasingly requested by all disciplines related to land applications.

The next major step in the development of imaging spectrometry will be the launch of spaceborne instruments like MER1S (ESA) and MODIS (NASA) on the first ESA and NASA Polar Platforms scheduled for the end of the century. These sensors providing only moderate spatial resolutions (250 – 1000 m pixel size) essentially in the VIS/NIR spectral region (400 – 1050 nm) are mainly designed for the monitoring of global change in the framework of ESA’s POEM and NASA’s EOS programmes addressing mainly the requirement to establish long term global data bases. Besides these sensors, also high spatial resolution imaging spectrometers covering the full VIS/NIR/SWIR spectral range are considered indispensable for the monitoring, examination and assessment of sensitive dynamic processes and fluxes within the terrestrial ecosystem, such as soil erosion, sediment transport, nutrient flux and others. To cover these requirements, instruments like HIRIS (NASA) and HRIS (ESA) are under development and are discussed as candidates for the second generation of Polar Platforms.