Integrated sensing

Integrating measurements of changing land surfaces aims to enhance the physical underpinnings and fundamental abilities to measure how and why land surfaces are changing. The availability of data from near-sensing (UAVs) and from new satellite sensors (i.e. ENMAP, CHIME, GEDI) now allows for a full exploration of the spectral and 3D dimension for the purpose integrated large-area monitoring. Long-term, global in-situ networks of spectral and structural vegetation measurements, and the integration of active sensors and the third dimension (i.e. from RADAR and LIDAR) are essential for such a comprehensive assessment of land characteristics and changing land surfaces that will complement current global optical remote sensing approaches building on simple vegetation indices and a broad set of global land cover classes only. 

In this context, our in-situ and proximal sensing activities develop and use a range of sensing techniques like terrestrial and UAV-borne laser scanning, UAV-borne hyperspectral sensing and automated monitoring technology (e.g. IoT). These data streams are used to produce high quality reference data at local scale across networks of sites to represent large areas and multiple environmental conditions for the calibration and validation of EO data. Furthermore, we take a role in coordination of international networks.

Projects

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