High-fidelity Imaging Spectroscopy (HiFIS)
The new technology is called High-fidelity Imaging Spectroscopy
(HiFIS). It is part of the Carnegie Spectranomics Project and a major
improvement of instrumentation already established aboard the Carnegie
Airborne Observatory (CAO)–a unique airborne mapping system that can
inventory and probe rain forest vegetation over nearly 40,000 acres
per day. The highly portable CAO is flown aboard a fixed-wing
aircraft. It uses waveform LiDAR (light detection and ranging) system
that maps the 3-dimensional structure of vegetation and combines it
with spectroscopic imaging.
By analyzing many wavelengths of reflected
light, this imaging reveals a forest’s biochemistry in stunningly
beautiful 3-D maps. Although already pathbreaking and successful, the
existing system lacks several critical features needed for the most
detailed chemical and taxonomic mapping. “Infrared reflectances of
tropical forest canopies are often unique signatures for species,”
noted Asner. “This generous grant, combined with funds from other
sources, will be used to develop the new HiFIS instrumentation with
vastly improved infrared sensing technology. This new technology will
help us to capture previously hidden ‘chemical fingerprints’ of rain
forest species. My hope is to take the science, conservation, and
management of these diverse ecosystems to levels only imagined until
now. It will be a new era in the rain forest research.”
The Carnegie Spectranomics Project plans to map rain forests in
Africa, Southeast Asia, Amazonia, the Caribbean, and the western
Pacific. The Moore-supported High-Fidelity Imaging Spectrometer
sub-component will be developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and
integrated with the existing Carnegie LiDAR system to create the
Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS. The existing instrument
system, which successfully imaged complex ecosystems in Hawaii and
South Africa, was enabled by generous grants from the W. M. Keck
Foundation and Carnegie trustee William R. Hearst, III. The team is
also constructing a database of plant chemical fingerprints by
collecting plants on the ground and calibrating their chemistry with
spectroscopic measurements from the air to establish a library of
thousands of individual species. For more information about the
Carnegie Airborne Observatory and the Spectranomics Project see
http://spectranomics.ciw.edu/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/ci-nrf010609.php
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