RSL prepares for APEX flight campaign in June 2011

The RSL staff participated to an instruments hands-on day in preparation of the upcoming Airborne Prism Experiment (APEX) flight campaign to take place in June 2011. The collection of in-situ data is a crucial part to validate instrument behaviour of a remote sensing device and to calibrate or force parameter retrieval algorithms. The hands-on activities allowed everyone to either get in first contact with the ground equipment or to refresh the existing knowledge. Due unstable weather conditions, the hands-on day was carried out in-doors.
RSL operates a variety of ground truthing instruments, i.e. several handheld field spectroradiometers, sun photometers, a thermal camera, a goniometer device and various instrumentation to assess plant canopy status (i.e. leaf area index (LAI), leaf chlorophyll content or leaf reflectance and transmittance using an integrating sphere). Participants of the workshop were trained by instructors in small groups, allowing enough time to get in contact with instrument handling, data acquisition methodology as well as measurement protocols. The training was open to HyperSwissNet partners. During the two weeks APEX flight campaign in June, a wealth of in-flight characterization data and imaging spectroscopy data sets will be acquired in support of Earth System science. Test sites in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium comprise agricultural plots, Swiss Midlands forests, urban areas and high alpine ecosystems. Extensive ground truth campaigns are planned to support data validation, model calibration and retrieval of quantitative information from imaging spectrometer data.