European Facility For Airborne Research

European Facility For Airborne Research March 28, 2024, 10:15

Transnational Access project: MASOMED

1.General information

Project acronym

MASOMED

Project title

MApping SOil variability within rainfed MEDiterranean agroecosystems using hyperspectral data

Type

Scientific project

Scientific theme

TA-020. Airborne imaging for environmental science applications.

Main scientific field and Specific discipline

Continental surface

Participants undertaking research
Name Research status Email Institution Institution country CV Letter of reference Publication
BEN DOR Eyal Experienced researcher bendor@post.tau.ac.il TAU; Environmental studies; ; Publications (8)
CHABRILLAT Sabine Experienced researcher chabri@gfz-potsdam.de GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences; Section 1.4: Remote Sensing; Potsdam; Germany Germany Publications (8)
EISELE Andreas Post-doctoral researcher eisele@gfz-potsdam.de GFZ; Section 1.4 - Remote Sensing; ; Germany Germany Publications (1)
ESCRIBANO Paula Post-doctoral researcher paula.escribano@gmail.com Universidad de Almería; CAESCG; ; Spain Spain Publications (2)
GARCIA Monica Experienced researcher mgarc@env.dtu.dk DTU; Environment; Kongens Lyngby; Denmark Denmark Publications (1)
GUILLASO Stéphane Experienced researcher stephane.guillaso@gmail.com Université Grenoble Alpes; GIPSA-Lab; Saint Martin d'Hères; France France Publications (1)
MILEWSKI Robert Post-Graduate milewski@gfz-potsdam.de GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences; 1.4 Remote Sensing; ; Publications (1)
PELAYO Marta Experienced researcher m.pelayo@ciemat.es CIEMAT - Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas ; Department of Environment; Madrid; Spain Spain Publications (1)
REYES DIEZ Andres reyes areyesdiez@gmail.com Universidad de Alcalá; Geografi­a; ;
SCHMID Thomas Experienced researcher thomas.schmid@ciemat.es Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT); Environment; ; Publications (3)
SOBEJANO-PAZ Veronica Undergraduate veronicaspaz@gmail.com DTU; Environment; Kongens Lyngby; Denmark Denmark
Project leader

CHABRILLAT Sabine

Lead scientist's background (scientific and aircraft measurements background and experience, English level)

Physicist with a PhD degree in spectral geology, Area of specialisation is hyperspectral remote sensing for Earth and environmental science - Soil and land degradation mapping and monitoring - VNIR-SWIR-TIR soil spectroscopy.
Long term experience in the planing and organisation of hyperspectral airborne campaigns (AVIRIS, HyMap, HySpex, AISA, Telops), processing and analyses of hyperspectral data, design and acquisition of field and laboratory spectroscopy data for calibration of airborne campaign and validation of soil algorithms for retrieval of geo- and bio-chemical properties at the surface, land cover information.
Development of new methods for information extraction from hyperspectral data (e.g. Iterative Spectral Mixing Analyses ISMA, HYSOMA software interface for soil mapping). Teaching in remote sensing, field spectroscopy, soil hyperspectral mapping

Recent relevant publications by application group in last 5 years (up to 5)

Schmid, T., Rodríguez-Rastrero, M., Escribano, P., Palacios-Orueta, A Ben-Dor, E., Plaza, A., Milewski, R., Huesca, M., Bracken, A., Cicuéndez, V., Pelayo, M., Chabrillat S., 2016. Characterization of Soil Erosion Indicators Using Hyperspectral Data From a Mediterranean Rainfed Cultivated Region. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 9 (2), 845-860.

Steinberg, A., Chabrillat, S., Stevens, A., Segl, K. and Foerster, S. (2016), Prediction of common surface soil properties based on Vis-NIR airborne and simulated EnMAP imaging spectroscopy data: Prediction accuracy and influence of spatial resolution, Remote Sensing, 8(7), 613.

Notesco G., Ogen Y and E. Ben-Dor 2016, Integration of Hyperspectral Shortwave and Longwave Infrared Remote-Sensing Data for Mineral Mapping of Makhtesh Ramon in Israel. Remote Sensing . 8, 318

Morillas, L., Garcia, M., Nieto, H., Villagarcia, L., Sandholt I ., Gonzalez-Dugo M.P, Zarco-Tejada P., & Domingo, F. 2013. Using radiometric surface temperature for energy flux estimation in Mediterranean drylands from a two-source perspective. Remote Sensing of Environment 136, 234-246

Eisele, A., Chabrillat, S., Hecker, C., Hewson, R., Lau, I.C., Rogass, C., Segl, K., Cudahy, T.J., Udelhoven, T., Hostert, P., and Kaufmann, H. (2015), Advantages using the longwave infrared (LWIR) to detect and quantify semi-arid soil properties, Remote Sensing of Environment, 163: 296-311.

Scientific problems being addressed by the experiments to be performed. Brief summary of the experiments

Cultivation and land use practices have a long history within the Mediterranean region exploiting soils as a natural resource. The soils are an essential factor contributing to agricultural production of rainfed crops such as cereals, olive groves and vineyards. Inadequate management is endangering their quality and productivity. The main objective of this proposal is to map soil variability and quality related to crop stress and land management within a Mediterranean environment based on hyperspectral data within the visible, near-infrared, short-wave infrared as well as thermal infrared including medium and long wave infrared range.
The following scientific issues are considered: 1) determining soil variability throughout the study area using high resolution hyperspectral data; 2) assessing the spatial distribution of rainfed agroecosystems according to abiotic and biotic properties; 3) relating vegetation stress to soil degradation processes and conditions; 4) classify soil and crop cover related to soil erosion processes; 5) addressing the potential of future space-borne hyperspectral sensors; and 6) integrating existing space-borne sensors to enhance soil and vegetation cover information using time series.
Airborne acquisition will be accompanied by a field campaign including field spectroscopy soil sampling and analyses and characterising vegetation parameters. The aim will be to acquire data from space-borne sensors at the time of the hyperspectral acquisition as well as obtaining data sets from other selected dates during the period of the crop cultivations. An integrated methodology will be implemented to incorporate the multi-source data obtained and compile a database based on GIS technologies.

Aircraft

CASA 212 RS - INTA

Why this aircraft best suits the experiments? Proposed alternative aircraft

The INTA CASA 212-RS aircraft has got two instruments for obtaining the required data for planned experiments. The first instrument is a CASI 1500i a Wide‐Array Airborne Hyperspectral VNIR Imager (0.38-1.05 microns) with 288 bands. The second instrument is the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner AHS with a total of 80 bands in the Visible/Near infrared VNIR (up to 20 bands .45 - 1.05 microns), Short-Wave infrared (SWIR up to 43 bands 1.6 and 2 - 2.5 microns), Medium Infrared (MIR up to 7 bands 3 - 5 microns) and Long-Wave Infrared (up to 10 bands 8 - 13 microns). The combination of these sensors provide the suitable high spectral resolution data with continuous spectral coverage covering from the VNIR to the thermal IR needed for carrying out the objectives of the proposed studies related with soil properties and crop cultivations. The use of these instruments coincides with the fact that INTA is just 70 km away from the test site and will therefore optimise the flight hours necessary for the flight campaign. It enables also an improved flexibility to fly with good weather conditions regarding the unstable weather in the requested time period.



2.Description of the experiments

Scientific objectives / Proposed work / Anticipated output

Soils within Mediterranean areas form part of a fragile ecosystem, and are greatly influenced by extensive human activities for food production that imply an agricultural land use affecting soil conditions and causing soil degradation (García-Ruiz, 2010). The traditional agricultural activities in southern Europe include the cultivation of rainfed crops, vineyards and olive groves. In this case, the potential impact of agricultural practices is highly dependent on management strategies such as bare soil exposure and tillage practices. Factors such as climate, crop rotation, agricultural practices and policy regulations have a profound impact on the management of cultivated lands (Previtali, 2014). In the past, the European Common Agricultural Policy has introduced changes such as a set-aside program requiring farmers to take certain percentages of their arable land out of production (Boellstorff and Benito, 2005). It has been observed that in recent years, arable land is being cultivated on a yearly basis and that there is a diminishing tendency to leave land in fallow. This means that there is a change occurring in the land management.
This proposal is part of an overall research aiming at developing an integrated methodology using hyperspectral optical, thermal and lidar data combined with SAR single and full polarimetric data to map soil resources and land management activities. As a follow-on to the SEDMEDHY-TA proposal that successfully acquired hyperspectral and lidar data in the dry season (summer 2011) and allowed to develop a methodology to map erosion stages (Schmid et al, 2016), the present study aims at mapping the soil variability during the growing season and associated vegetation stress indicators within the rainfed Mediterranean agroecosystems based on hyperspectral optical and thermal data. For this, the following scientific issues are pursued: 1) determining soil variability throughout the study area using the full potential of visible, near infrared, and thermal infrared hyperspectral CASI 1500i and AHS data; 2) assessing the spatial distribution of the different rainfed agroecosystems according to abiotic and biotic properties; 3) relating vegetation stress to soil degradation processes and conditions; 4) detect changes related to soil erosion of soil surface covers by comparing current conditions with those identified in previous work (Schmid et al., 2016), and developing a decision tree methodology to classify the soil and crop cover related to soil erosion processes at the pixel level; 5) assessing the variability of soil properties at different spatial scales with the aim of testing the transferability of the methods used to future hyperspectral space-borne sensors such as EnMAP, HISUI, PRISMA, SHALOM; and 6) integrating existing space-borne optical, thermal infrared and radar sensors such as Landsat 8, ASTER, Copernicus Sentinel 1 and 2 and linking to Radarsat2 data to enhance soil and vegetation cover information using time series. The latter issue aims to study the potential of combining multi-source data (optical, radar, thermal) to asses and spatially map soil quality and crop stress, and to test and develop a simplified methodology that can determine soil and vegetation cover properties associated to soil degradation processes based on current satellite sensors. Data obtained from space-borne sensors will be acquired at the time of the hyperspectral acquisition as well as obtaining data sets from other selected dates during the period of the crop cultivations. Field work will include obtaining spectral data with field spectroradiometers and a thermal radiometer (multispectral CIMEL 312-2) as well as field measurements of soil and vegetation parameters and agricultural activities. An integrated methodology will be further implemented to incorporate the data obtained with the different sensors at the different spatial and spectral resolutions and compiling a database based on GIS technologies.
Hyperspectral data obtained with the CASI 1500i and AHS sensors will be used to determine land cover and soil and vegetation characteristics associated to soil degradation processes. The spatial distribution and fraction cover of soil and vegetation surfaces will be assessed and related to the agricultural management practises. For this, spectral unmixing and hard classifier methods will be used. Then visible-near infrared (VNIR: 0.4-1.0 µm) soil and vegetation spectroscopy data will be used to map soil properties (iron content, organic carbon), crop productivity through different vegetation indices (NDVI, red-edge derived indices), water crop stress (water band ~0.94 µm), crop conditions (stressed/healthy through location and slope of the red-edge). Short-wave infrared (SWIR: 1-2.45 µm) spectroscopy data will allow to determine the fraction of vegetation or plant residues, additional soil properties (clay, organic matter, carbonate content). The thermal infrared (TIR: 3-5, 8-12 µm) data will allow to further determine water crop stress, dry vegetation residues, additional soil properties (sand content, better clay and carbon determination).
The main output of our proposed activity will be a set of thematic maps of soil and crop variability and related parameters such as land cover, land use and soil properties. The methodology developed and results will be published in international peer-reviewed journals such as Catena, Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment and Remote Sensing of the Environment.

Weather conditions (e.g. clouds, atmospheric stability, wind speed and direction, weather...)

The proposed activities require clear sky conditions. Some (cumulus) clouds (less than 10%) can be accepted if not positioned on the target area as shadows.

Time constraints (time of the day, pass(es) of satellites, weekends, season...)

Time of acquisition would be ideal within +/- 2 hours local solar noon in order to reduce shadow effects. The acquisition window would be preferably in the last week of April 2017 to the first week of May 2017, before the end of the growing season for cereal crops.

Location(s) and reason for that choice

The study area is located in the centre of Spain, in the north-west sector of the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha, Province of Toledo, approximately 50 km SW from Madrid (please refer to the attached document “MASOMEDstudysite.pdf” for a map and coordinates of the proposed study site). This area joins characteristics of special interest in terms of this proposal, such as Mediterranean climate, extended agricultural rainfed uses, mostly evolved soils, and erosion features associated to contrasting soil horizons. Furthermore and most important for the aim of this proposal related to detect changes in the area, data exist from the 2011 dry season in this study area linked with the 1st Camarana EUFAR TA proposal (SEDMEDHY) and related works where erosion stages were determined in fields that were free of vegetation in summer 2011 (Schmid et al., 2016).
The study area is situated in the Tagus Basin (South Iberian Meseta), and corresponds to the Guadarrama river catchment. The climate is Mediterranean, with a continental variant that shows cool winter temperatures, and low precipitations with maximum in late autumn, winter and late spring and an outstanding minimum in summer. The meteorological station of Las Ventas de Retamosa (station 3282 of the National Network of the Spanish Ministry of Environment), situated in the northern limit of the area, provides temperature and precipitation data. The average monthly temperature is in the range of 6.1 to 24.7ºC with an average annual temperature of 14.6ºC and an average monthly rainfall of 7 to 56 mm with an average yearly rainfall of 429 mm, respectively.
The substrate is formed by Miocene arkoses (feldpars, quartz, phyllosilicates as main constituents), and Quaternary associated sediments constituting forms as glacis, terraces and alluvial fans. Such materials and forms are associated to a gently undulating relief, at altitudes between 500 and 640 m a.s.l. Dominant soils are highly developed: Alfisols (Calcic Haploxeralfs, according to the Soil Taxonomy (Soil Survey Staff, 2010)), or Luvisols, (Calcic Luvisols according to the IUSS Working Group WRB, 2006). The typical profile is characterized by an A horizon, a Bt horizon and a Ck horizon that overlies the arkosic material. Erosion intensity and plowing practices determine the presence of different soil horizons in surface, with contrasting soil properties.
An over flight in the spring period (preferably at the end of April or beginning of May) would be considered an ideal option due to the following reasons: 1) cereal crop cultivation will have a maximum active photosynthetic activity; 2) further cultivations such as grapevines and olive groves with active photosynthesis and soil exposed around the individual plants will be present; and 3) abandoned areas will be either in fallow or have an annual vegetation with a green coverage that should be clearly visible.

Number of flights / flight hours and flight patterns

In order to cover the study site of 5 km by 19 km, four parallel flight lines with a N-S direction at 2625 m above ground with the Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager CASI 1500i and three parallel flight lines at 1825 m above ground with the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner AHS would be needed to obtain 1 m (CASI) and 3 m (AHS) spatial resolution images. It would be important that the flight lines are taken always in the North to South direction meaning that the flight direction is against the sun. The total flight time is estimated to be about 5 hours.

Other constraints or requirements

None


3.Key measurements required to achieve science aims

Parameter / measurement required

Acquisition of surface reflectance and thermal emission data are required using respectively the CASI 1500i and AHS sensors. The data will be acquired for land use, soil and vegetation surface cover analyses. This will enable to determine the fraction cover and distribution of the different surface covers, and further to determine soil variability in bare soils area as well as LAI estimates, plant vigor and finally crop variability in crop areas, linked with the soil degradation processes and conditions.

If applicable, specify TA instrument required

INTA Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner

Instruments to be provided by hosting aircraft operator (basic instrumentation owned by the aircraft operator described on EUFAR website only)

Hyperspectral airborne imaging sensors include the INTA Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager CASI 1500i and the INTA Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner AHS. The CASI 1500i is a pushbroom imager in the VNIR spectral range of 0.38 to 1.05 µm. The AHS is an 80-band airborne imaging radiometer developed by ArgonST (USA). This instrument is a linescanner with 63 bands in the reflective part of the electromagnetic spectrum and 17 bands in the emissive part (seven bands in the 3 to 5 µm and 10 bands in the 8 to 13 µm range). During the flight campaign, INTA will have a thermal radiometer CIMEL CLIMAT available for calibration and validation purposes. This is a high precision portable field instrument suitable for ground campaigns that measures brightness temperature or radiances with six channels in the 8-14 um range.

Instruments to be provided by scientific group (Have already been flown. On which aircraft? Do the instruments have their own data acquisition system?)

None

Instrument operators onboard (in addition to those provided by the aircraft operator). If so, how many?

0

If applicable, plans for simultaneous field work plans / ground equipment to be used

An extensive field campaign will be carried out to collect field data for the study area as well as calibration and validation data for the airborne hyperspectral data. Two ASD field full range spectroradiometers will be available from CIEMAT and GFZ Potsdam. A previous intercalibration of the ASD instruments will be carried out.
Field spectroscopy measurements will be carried out for test sites representing the different cultivation practices (fallow land, rainfed cultivation of cereal crop, vineyard, olive grove, abandoned and tilled land, and practices with organic residue left on the soil surface) within the study area. A total of five plots will be selected for each test site. In order to account for an effective sampling of each plot, subplots will be determined according to the method used in Schmid et al. (2016).
Additionally, ground truth soils and vegetation parameters will be acquired with traditional measurements. In the representative crop test sites, vegetation parameters will be measured including vegetation type and their respective fraction cover, phenological condition, vigour, chlorophyll content (measured with a Minolta SPAD 502 supplied by CIEMAT), LAI/PAR (measured with a SunScan Canopy analysis system supplied by GFZ), plant height and biomass. In the representative bare soil test sites, a reduced set of soil samples will be acquired to complement the already exiting set of soil samples when necessary in locations not yet sampled and/or when soil conditions changed. Soil moisture and temperature will be determined in the field using TDR field sensors (supplied by GFZ). Furthermore, soil samples will be taken to estimate the field capacity, permanent wilting point and moisture content at different pressures (Madsen et al., 1986) in the lab (available in CIEMAT). Further basic physical and chemical analyses (soil colour, pH, electrical conductivity, CaCO3 content, FeO3 content, organic matter, clay, silt, sand and coarse fraction, and texture type) will also be provided. The mineral composition for selected samples will be further determined based on wet chemistry analyses.



4.Data processing and analysis

Methodology for handling the data and analysis of output (airborne data acquisition, ground-truthing / observations, data processing and interpretation)

Pre-processing of the hyperspectral CASI 1500i and AHS data will include atmospheric and geometric correction using software packages such as FLAASH, ATCOR4 (Richter, 2012). A detailed Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the study area already exists. We will use the DTM developed part of the SEDMEDHY EUFAR TA project (2011) based on ALS50 (II) airborne laser scanner data, to support the geometric and atmospheric corrections of the hyperspectral data, and also as background geomorphological information for the mapping of soil variability and crop quality. For the pre-processing of the thermal AHS data, existing recent methods for temperature-emissivity-separation (TES) and atmospheric compensation routines will be used with the aim to retrieve spectral emissivity and temperature data cubes based on the acquired airborne at sensor radiance data cubes e.g. Spectral Smoothness Methods (Horton et al., 1998), In-Scene Atmospheric Correction (ISAC) (Young et al. 2002), Automatic Retrieval of Temperature and Emissivity using Spectral Smoothness (ARTEMISS) (Borel, 2003).
The data analysis will be carried out by using methodologies among which spectral features analyses and multivariate regressions for soil and vegetation hyperspectral analyses, and decision trees to incorporate data of different types and different sources. This will include the outputs from the different analyses, terrain data as well as associated auxiliary data. For the mapping of soil and crop variability based on the hyperspectral data, a combination of spectral analyses techniques (spectral indexes for first identification steps, spectral feature analyses, continuum modeling), and hard classification techniques (Random Forests, Support Vector Machine) will be used such as in (Gislason et al., 2006; Foody and Mathur, 2004).. For soil properties quantification, spectral analyses techniques will be linked to multivariate statistical methods (Partial Least Square regressions, e.g. Gomez et al., 2012) to develop robust modeling of soil specific properties related to soil quality and fertility such as clay content, carbonate content, sand content, organic carbon content, combining the visible-near infrared with the thermal infrared part of the spectrum.
The acquired thermal and optical data will be inputs to operational models that estimate instantaneous and daily evapotranspiration and soil moisture proxies based on the surface energy balance equation and mass-transfer equations in the atmospheric boundary layer. The carbon assimilation of vegetation (GPP) will be estimated using a light use efficiency approach coupled to the evapotranspiration fluxes.
Verification of the results will be necessary for providing a useful interpretive product. Field verification will confirm spectral, spatial and morphological interpretations during the investigation carried out for this work. An existing spectral library which was developed during the projects of “Dynamic mapping of bare soil and crop residues in Mediterranean agricultural areas using remote sensing time series” (SOILMEDSEN) and “Soil Erosion Detection within MEDiterranean agricultural areas using HYperspectral data” (SEDMEDHY) complete with meta-, spectral and laboratory data will be used to carry out verifications of the results.

References used in section 2 and 4:
Boellstorff, D., Benito, G., 2005. Impacts of set-aside policy on the risk of soil erosion in central Spain. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 107 (2–3), 231–243.
Borel, C.C., 2003. Artemiss-an algorithm to retrieve temperature and emissivity from hyper-spectral thermal image data. Presented at the 28th Annual GOMACTech Conference, Tampa, Florida
García-Ruiz, J.M., 2010. The effects of land uses on soil erosion in Spain: A review. Catena 81, 1–11.
Gislason, P.O., Benediktsson, J.A., Sveinsson, J.R., 2006. Random Forests for land cover classification. Pattern Recognition Letters, Volume 27, Issue 4, pp. 294–300.
Gomez, C., Lagacherie, P., Coulouma, G., 2012. Regional predictions of eight common soil properties and their spatial structures from hyperspectral Vis–NIR data. Geoderma, 189-190, pp. 176-185.
Horton, K.A., Johnson, J.R., Lucey, P.G., 1998. Infrared Measurements of Pristine and Disturbed Soils 2. Environmental Effects and Field Data Reduction. Remote Sens. Environ. 64, 47–52
IUSS Working Group WRB, 2006. World Reference Base for Soil Resources 2006. 2nd edition. World Soil Resources Reports No. 103. FAO, Rome.
Justice C.O. and Townshend J. G., 1981. Integrating ground data with remote sensing. Terrain analysis and remote sensing (editor Townshend JG) George Allen and Uniwin, London.
Madsen H.B., Jensen C.R., Boysen, T. 1986. A comparison of the thermocouple psychrometer and the pressure plate methods for determination of soil water characteristic curves. European Journal of Soil Science, Volume 37, Issue 3 pp. 357–362.
Previtali, F., 2014. Pedoenvironments of the Mediterranean Countries: Resources and Threats. In Soil Security for Ecosystem Management, S. Kapur and S. Erşahin (eds.), Springer Briefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace 8, Springer Publisher, chapter 4, pp. 61-82.
Richter, R., 2012. Atmospheric / topographic correction for wide FOV airborne imagery: Model ATCOR4, version 6.2.0. DLR, Wessling, Germany, Rep. DLR-IB 552-05/99.
Schmid, T., Rodríguez-Rastrero, M., Escribano, P., Palacios-Orueta, A Ben-Dor, E., Plaza, A., Milewski, R., Huesca, M., Bracken, A., Cicuéndez, V., Pelayo, M., Chabrillat S., 2016. Characterization of Soil Erosion Indicators Using Hyperspectral Data From a Mediterranean Rainfed Cultivated Region. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 9 (2), 845-860.
Schmidtlein S, Zimmermann P, Schüpferling R, and Weiß C 2007. Mapping the floristic continuum: ordination space position estimated from imaging spectroscopy. Journal of Vegetation Science 18, 131–140.
Soil Survey Staff, 2010. Keys to Soil Taxonomy, 11th ed. USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, Washington, DC.
Young, S.J., Johnson, B.R., Hackwell, J.A., 2002. An in-scene method for atmospheric compensation of thermal hyperspectral data. J. Geophys. Res. Atmospheres 107, 4774

Resources available to support the project beyond the flying/data acquisition period (funding, cooperation with other projects, manpower for analysis of results and preparation of user report, availability of laboratory facilities...)

The experiment proposed in this proposal is linked to the EnMAP and several other projects at GFZ. The scientific preparation of the EnMAP hyperspectral satellite is funded by the German Ministry of industry (BMWi) for the period 2016-2018 and includes the development, calibration and validation of new thematic hyperspectral products. In particular, a component on “Digital soil mapping and monitoring” and “Soil desertification in arid and semi-arid areas” is included, with 1 PhD student attached to it. Unfortunately the EnMAP program does not include support neither for field experiments nor for hyperspectral acquisitions outside Germany. Several other projects linked to the potential of TIR data for soil properties mapping will also ensure that this project can proceed further such as the DFG post doc proposal of Mr Andreas Eisele “Potential of thermal infrared (TIR) hyperspectral airborne remote sensing for the characterization of soil surfaces in semi-arid environments” and collaborations in the frame of the preparation of thermal satellite missions (such as TMAX, ESA/EE9 call).
Several project participants (CIEMAT, GFZ, TAU) also cooperate in the frame of others hyperspectral satellite mission proposals: SHALOM (Israel), and HYPEX-2 (ESA/EE9), part of the soil and land degradation team (no funding for field/hyperspectral campaigns).
Furthermore, this proposal is linked to the SOAR (Canadian Space Agency) project “Mapping and monitoring land management activities for the conservation of soil resources within rainfed agricultural areas of Central Spain” covering the period 2015-2017 which aims at exploring the potential of RADARSAT-2 data for land-cover characterization and classification and soil surface management monitoring within the Camarena area.
This proposal is related with the H2020 JPI project: AgWit (Agricultural Water Innovations in the Tropics) where detailed maps of water, carbon and energy fluxes will be retrieved from optical and thermal cameras imagery over crops in dry regions of Costa Rica and Brazil. Similar methods will be applied here and it is of interest to test AHS sensor for this retrieval.
Equipment and computer facilities necessary for field data collection and for data processing are available within the institutes involved. Furthermore, laboratory analyses for soil samples can be carried out in CIEMAT.



5.Planning

Preferred and acceptable dates (season / time windows)

Preferred date would be April 2017, extendable depending on winter weather conditions until early May 2017.

Agreement to shate aircraft time: Yes

Agreement to share aircraft time (project clustering, cost sharing)

Yes



6.Other useful comments

Training benefit of the project (e.g. spread potential of airborne research to a wide scientific community; training of research students in experimental planning, methodology, data analysis and applications, etc)

This experiment will permit the integration of several senior researchers, junior researchers and students from different institutions (universities and research institutes), which will promote knowledge transfer between the different institutions and countries. Dissemination of the obtained results will be through presentations at congresses, publications and seminars. This will further benefit young post doctorate and several PhD students to get trained further in the acquisition, analyses and interpretation of optical and thermal spectral data, as well as under and post graduate students preparing their degree in Earth and/or remote sensing science that are planned to be taken as part of this proposal (e.g. GFZ/TU Berlin a MSc on fusion hyperspectral and radar data).

If possible, 3 scientific reviewers that EUFAR may contact

Veronique Carrere - Université de Nantes, Faculté des Sciences et des Techniques UMR-CNRS 6112 - Laboratoire Planetologie et Geodynamique 2 rue de la Houssinière BP 92208, 44322 NANTES CEDEX 3, France. (Veronique.Carrere@univ-nantes.f)
Bo Stenberg – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences SLU, Division of Precision Agriculture and Pedometrics, Department of Soil and Environment, SLU, PO Box 234, 532 23 Skara, Sweden (Bo.Stenberg@slu.se)
Cecile Gomez – IRD/UMR LISAH Laboratoire d'Etude des Interactions entre Sol-Agrosystème-Hydrosystème, Equipe Organisation Spatiale et Fonctionnement des paysages Cultivés, 2 place Viala 34060 Montpellier cedex 2 FRANCE (cecile.gomez@ird.fr)

Sources of funding of the project and of related projects (if clustering with existing projects supported either by national or other EC funding, how the project add additional or complementary aims to the already funded experiments)

This proposal will greatly benefit to the hyperspectral soil research at GFZ and to different research such as 1) the EnMAP satellite science preparation program since it will provide background data (ground truth and hyperspectral imagery) over semi-arid crop fields. These data will allow to develop, calibrate and validate new methods for soil mapping and monitoring based on hyperspectral imagery, so that such algorithms can be included in the EnMAP–Box in the EnSOMAP/HYSOMA (EnMAP soil Mapper/ Hyperspectral soil mapper) toolbox. 2) Several projects are on the potential of thermal infrared to map soil properties such as TMAX (thermal satellite ESA/EE9 call), DFG proposal “Potential of thermal infrared (TIR) hyperspectral airborne remote sensing for the characterization of soil surfaces in semi-arid environments”.
This proposal will benefit to different hyperspectral satellite preparation programs where GFZ CIEMAT and/or Tel-Aviv University participate such as SHALOM Israel satellite preparation program, HYPEX-2 ESA/EE9 hyperspectral satellite proposal.
Additionally, this project complement the SOAR project “Mapping and monitoring land management activities for the conservation of soil resources within rainfed agricultural areas of Central Spain” that acquired data over the Camarena site for the past 2 years.
This project is also related with the H2020 JPI project: AgWit (Agricultural Water Innovations in the Tropics) about the retrieval of water, carbon and energy fluxes.

Scientific training provided by lead scientist to other EUFAR sponsored scientists within the fields of the proposed experiments and analysis

Yes

Number of students

2

Number of days recommended

7

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